Dart Den

This may sound like a silly question, so please try to refrain from the flame.

Does anybody routinely remove frog poo from their viv's? More specifically, poo on the leaves of brom's?

My Paru pair create nice, large stools, and most of the time it ends up on the leaves of the brom's. In the interest of keeping the axil water pools clean(er), I thought it may be a good idea to pick them up. I have no plans to scour the leaf litter looking for poo.

Thoughts?

No need, the poo will be fine. Also, I don't clean my broms unless there is a bunch of algae in them, or when they are done flowering, I try to flush them out more, otherwise just keep water in the axils...

If it's a visual thing -constantly seeing the frog-logs / cigars...

When I'm spraying the viv, I will direct a stream onto the area of the log and wash it away. I would not go so far as to do this regularly and never by hand.

I would also try not to spray the poo into the brom axils.

Poo sprayed off the leaves and onto the leaf litter /substrate is good for the plants (fertilizer) and microfauna.

No worries.

A random thought,I wonder if some poo getting into the brom axils where tads are deposited is actually beneficial to the tad,it's a mechanism where by the hopefully heathly gut flora of the parents can get into the tad,so aiding establishment of benfcial gut flora in sad tadpole. No substance in this statement,just pondering :roll:


Stu

Very interesting Stu, old chum. From modern herpetoculture, we know that Iguanas, uromastyx and some skinks engage in coprophagia for the exact reasons you cite. I believe an adolescent human female made the news here in the U.S this year by undergoing a treatment whereby her mother's feces were added to her 'gut' as well.

The tadpole is such an early stage in the frog metamorphosis, I wonder if seeding it's 'gut' would be beneficial at that stage. Add to that the unique obligate egg eaters...but here, I'm of the notion that they ARE eating more than just unfertilized eggs -ff's, algae ect.

"Food" (yuck) for thought, indeed.

Ere less of the old,I'm not 50 for a month yet :lol: .

Serious side,yup I agree yuk,but this is where the pondering comes from plus what I would one day love to see for our frogs: I've reared a lot of birds Phil,mainly poultry rare breeds but also a mad variety of Pheasants waterfowl.I'm told and I believe it that very young birds get a kickstart to their gut flora from their mothers poo. When i first started working with these on a full time basis,we used to have problems with the day olds,only recourse was antibiotics. but we started to use this thing called a probiotic,basically a culture of all the beneficial bacteria in a chuck's gut. This basically natural remedy,removed most of our problems.If you swamp the bad stuff with good stuff,the animal doesn't need our chemicals,it just has what it's meant to and does. Essentially when a bird hatches it's gut is clean,somewhat similar I guess to a tad. If it gets swamped with beneficial bacteria,form the off,there is little room for bad bacteria to flourish,similar to the reps you have mentioned eh? So I'm pondering two fold,first whether their is a deliberate ploy by oophaga,to seed that gut. Second how much I would like access and a comprehensive study of our darts gut,which would lead us to a non invasive way ,a probiotic, treatment, to restore gut flora/possibly fauna. Hell its applicable to us Phil,live yogurt after a stomach upset,coarse of antibi's,restore the guts natural state with beneficial bacteria.

All of this boils down to knowing what is happening inside a frog..

So essentially I do believe that seeding a tads gut with all the good stuff,would be a beneficial approach,right from the off,first meal,cobber them with it. Trouble is I need a boffin to prove this ,not some silly guy from blighty,who can't: who is only going on his 'er dare I say gut instinct.

Tell ya what me old(payback :lol mucker,this is where our hobby will move forward,when we get answers to this type of question,few will take it seriously this,but maybe,just maybe this will be verified, before we really are old.

Food for thought was bad mate, but bloody funny,sometimes all the answers are in what we see,we just don't know how to interpret them,tis all.

No good being in the box mate,the stuff outside is where we learn

bring it on

Stu