I just have to share new babies, especially since this one was a surprise. You can see it in the brome with spring tails and melanogaster fruit flies, but his caregivers were an odd couple, and it took them a long time to get it right. Although when first deposited in this particular brome cup, I could see the tadpole occasionally, the parents both sat in the same brome cup, apparently cuddling together at night, and after awhile, I could no longer discern a tadpole in it at all when they were absent. I figured they'd probably trampled it by crowding down in there together to do what ever adult things they were doing. However today, here it is, all by its little self out of the water and wondering what to do with the springtails and fruit flies. It may not be into eating yet, but it is certainly interested in them. It is about 3/8ths inch long. The tiny flat snail next to it is one of the few tiny snails that never seem to do any damage. It is probably feeding on the algae or micro-oragnisms that grow on the brome leaves, other plant leaves, sides of the glass, never doing any obvious damage to the plants. I don't know what it is, but it is a nice addition to a tank, unlike most snails and slugs. In one instance, when one wandered into a brome cup with another imitator tadpole in a different tank, I saw the tad take it apart, literally thrash it around and suck it out of it's shell like escargot. As adults, the imitators aren't as voracious, but as tads, they are both cannibalistic to other tads in the same axil, and can attack any loose insect that gets in there, along with eating their mother's infertile eggs she lays for them.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho
4 D. auratus blue
5 D. galactonotus pumpkin orange splash back
5 D. imitator
6 D. leucomelas
4 D. pumilio Bastimentos
4 D. fantasticus
4 P. terribilis
4 D. reticulatus
4 D. castaneoticus
2 D. azureus
4 P vittatus
