Dart Den

azureus egg cleaved late and hatched early! Is this a temp thing?
There is one more egg to hatch...already lost 3

Gina

Congratulations! I'm a newb and my first darts (azureus!) have begun breeding. Figured I'd give you some dates and counts from the first two clutches my pair produced for comparison.

They produced a clutch on 7/14 of 5 eggs in a bromeliad (tight squeeze), 4 of which were developing for the first 9 days. On 7/23 they began producing a second clutch of 6 eggs in a petri dish in a cave toward the back of the viv...the inexperienced male kept going back to the bromeliad (my guess was he was attempting to fertilize the original clutch again instead of the new one). He ended up displacing the eggs so I removed the first clutch, but 3 of the remaining 4 stopped developing. It's 7/28 and my single egg from 7/14 continues to develop, but it has not hatched. The second clutch currently only has two eggs developing, though they seem to be coming along slower than the first clutch.

Room temp is 78 during the day, 76 at night.

Hope this helps - sorry I can't be of more help - this is all new to me. I've been posting pictures of the remaining egg's development on another thread FWIW. Good luck!

^^ Good Temps....try to keep steady and no 4-5 or more degree swings either up or down.

Keep moist - water to the edge of the eggs but never covering. Use 'regular' water and never R.O / Reverse osmosis or Distilled (will kill the embryo).

Phil--Why would RO or distilled water be harmful to the embryo? We use it to mist, I would think it would be preferred?

I'm no expert, but I have looked into this lately and I found this thread on water to be an interesting read:
http://dartden.com/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=...led#p21611

I pulled a few posts that I found helpful:

Philsuma Wrote:IMO:

Distilled water is fine for misting and plant spraying. You just don't want to use it for eggs or tadpoles all by itself. Many people apply commercially available aquarium additives to RO or distilled water. RO and Distilled water is very "pure" and as such, will seek to "pull in" elements and this results in leaching needed chemicals ect from your frog egg or tadpole - depriving it and often causing death.

A simplistic "safe" answer to new hobbyists, is grocery store bottled "Spring Water" for almost everything. If you are comfortable using a good quality human grade water filter for your tap water - then that's about the same level of precaution in my book.

Once you are in the hobby for a while you may embark on a quest to have a friend who works at a water laboratory, test and recommend water for you, but until then....the quick, easy and safest method (if you are scared of your Tap water) is to use the grocery store spring water.

There is NO expert opinion on water or anything else in the Dart Frog hobby. There are no "expert hobbyists" here either IMO, so you can't rely on anyone to say: "The water you should use is ___ ". Just take some time and read the Water subforum here. There are at least 4 other threads that I see / know of that also have good information on your questions above. Above all, don't ever be afraid to post.....questions, or anything else. We are here to help.

Most agree that distilled / RO is not good for tad water, but there are a variety of methods for tad water solutions. I thought this was a good summary (though there are other methods):

Cindy Dicken Wrote:We use bottled springwater (Ozarka) to raise tadpoles in.
We use RO or distilled in our misting system.
We use treated tap water to top off the water features. We treat our tap water with Prime, it will remove chlorine as well as chloramine.
I think if you took a sample of rain water and had it analyzed it would scare the hell out of you.
For those that are curious about rainwater, you might find this link of interest.
http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/

Well I responded without any factual knowledge from me!

Here it is

Nice ! and a very artistic shot too, I may add.

Gina--Sorry about the 3 you lost, but congrats on the tad you now have! And I agree with Phil--very artistic shot!
Jim (and Phil and Cindy)--Thanks for the water info. Somehow I've missed that important bit in all my research But can correct it now. I am not yet raising tads, per se, so hopefully no harm done. I mist with either distilled or spring water (never really thought there was a difference!) But I believe my imitators are raising eggs/tads, hopefully! I saw the male transporting a tad almost 2 weeks ago, don't know where he's tucked it away. They have a very favorite brom, could be in one of the many axils, they also have film cans and other plants. I am new at this and don't want to damage anything, so I haven't poked around too much, just mist and feed and keep my fingers crossed!

Thanks! I may do 5 day intervals...or not. Just depends on how lazy/motivated I am
It's all a big science project. Hopefully these 2 make it.
I just decided to rip my viv apart and rebuild so no idea how the adults are going to take the remodel...

Here is Day 10! I was out of town for 5 days. They grew and are really active now.
The water is NOT this clean. I pulled this one into a new solo cup for the shot

he looks....smug.

Indian almond leaves...they love a slice. Biofilm...security....

I was using oak, but I know I should use the Ind. Almond. I will order from Josh's tonight. It's crazy that their eyes actually have an iris since you don't see them at all as adults. His cheeks are even rosy lol.

3 more eggs just got dropped today and I watched the males do his thing for about 2 hours. Hopefully he was thorough !

Two in the oven!

Wow...whatever you do...get some artwork done. Framed pics, prints, giclee SOMETHING for sale. You are very talented. You can put stuff up for sale here for free. I just ask that it's Dart Frog related.

and...

Please keep submitting stuff here (ANYwhere on this site) for consideration for our "Cover" shot -or - Picture of the Month (POTM).

Great photos.Well done M'lady.Well done !

Thanks so much! I got day 20 of the first tad coming today

Lost his twin today He's an only child now.