Posted by:
Grassypeak
at Mon Jun 18 12:59:04 2007 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Grassypeak ]
Holding off on mixing until you develop some experience with the individual species is priceless advice. Mixing always gets peoples hackles up because of the hybrid issue. Aside from hybrids there are other problems. These animals are stressed easily and most if not almost all of them come with a parasite load. Stress can easily reduce the ability of the frog’s immune system to deal with these parasites. Putting too many frogs in an viv adds to the stress on each animal. Aggressive behavior also increases stress. I would suggest sticking with one bold, interesting, group tolerant species for a while. You can always try a second species in a separate viv down the road and experiment with mixing from there. I think that If you become serious about these animals you will probably skip the mixing altogether. They are interesting enough on their own.
As far as numbers go. I think terrestrial species should be given an absolute minimum of 100 square inches of floor space per frog. If your 90 gallon tank is 48” long and 18” deep (as in wide), then your floor space is 864 square inches. At most, this means you could keep eight frogs. As Patty already said, this would be too crowded. I like the idea of 200 square inches per large terrestrial dart. This guide would only allow you four frogs. Whatever you decide, the more barriers to sight that you include the less stress the frogs will be under.
I also like to have a fecal done on the frogs while they are in quarantine. If they need to be wormed, you definitely want to do this prior to introducing them to the viv. There is a lot of controversy over whether or not this is necessary though.
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