Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have heard that Mantellas will no longer be imported from Madagascar soon. Does anyone have more information about this? I am trying to set up several colonies to captive breed them, but there is not alot of information out there on them. Does anyone here breed them and can offer tips? If they are no longer imported then they will be hard to come by since they aren't commonly captive bred like the dart frogs. I have just really gotten into them.

I read that same thing in the kingsnake.com classified adds. It seems to me that most likely the dealer that posted that add just wanted to make a few extra dollars by pressuring people to buy the so called last mantella frogs to be imported. There could be some truth to it, maybe they are re-examining the wild populations of mantella frogs and adding a few more species to CITES but I doubt that they will never be imported again. I remember early last year some rumors like this spread around but Madagascar only closed from around May to October and then once again started exporting animals.

Right now I have steady amount of golden mantella frogs being produced. I have over 70 frogs out of the water and another 20 or so tadpoles in the water from a new clutch of eggs. I have 5 males and 1 female in a 29 gallon aquarium. Each year around this time I cool the temperatures, decrease the amount I feed and reduce the photoperiod from 14 hours a day to 8. After a month or two like this the cage starts to warm up, I increase the amount of time the light is on, I start to feed more and I increase the amount that I mist the terrarium. So far I've had really good luck breeding them, it might also be because I have such a high male to female ratio. The book Mantellas by Marc Staniszewski is wonderful and is well worth the $40 or so. If you don't have it you might want to buy it. Good luck,
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Devin
devin@amphibiancare.com
www.amphibiancare.com
3.2 Dendrobates tinctorius 'Dwarf French Guiana'
1.1 Dendrobates tinctorius 'Powder Blue'
5.1 Mantella aurantiaca
2.1 Mantella crocea
1.0 Ceratophrys cranwelli
1.0 Bufo americanus
0.0.1 Salamandra salamandra
1.0 Ambystoma tigrinum
0.1 Chamaeleo calyptratus
0.1 Phelsuma dubia
1.1 Uroplatus ebenaui
0.0.1 Chrysemys scripta
0.0.1 Chrysemys picta belli
1.0 Terrapene carolina triunguis

I did find on the CITES website that they are considering placing all Mantella species on CITES appendix 2 along with the golden Mantellas. As far as I can tell this has not been passed yet.