Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After reading the posts about the difficulties in breeding D. pumilio "blue jeans", a thought came to me. Someone mentioned that it's not that hard to get blue jeans to lay eggs, they are just not very good parents. Has anyone ever tried raising them artificially with eggs taken from other frogs? If you had a pair (or several) of extremely prolific frogs, like E. tricolor or D. azureus, could you take the eggs that they laid and feed them to your pumilio tadpoles? It seems like this would eliminate the need for attentive pumilio parents, and allow you to feed the tads a natural food. Maybe it would be a way to get more consistent results with the species. Just a thought. Does anyone think this would work? BTW, maybe this is a crackpot idea, seeing as I have no experience with pumilio.
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1.2 D. azureus

I have heard of people using auratus eggs to feed them. The results weren't as good as you would think. There doesn't seem to be any method proven to be suitable to replace natural infertile egg deposition, although many people still try.

Kevin Hoff

I have not breed pumilio but as for blue jeans I know they are one of the most prolific darts in the wild. Has any one tryed raising them in large groups with many females(LOL many females) just wondering if this species may rely on other mothers to help produce eggs. It seems like a lot of eggsfor one pumilio. I know in they wild you can usually find many blue Jeans in one area.

Darryl
Dart-Frogs.com

A good idea.....but one that has been experimented with before, with poor results. I have tried it also with other infertile pumilio eggs. Apparently, the tads will only take the egg without surrounding jelly. I've even tried surrogate parenting them with other pumilios. Just doesn't work. I think there might be some other factor - maybe some kind of chemical signal or something. I know of people that breed some blue jeans, but the output is slow and the females often neglect tads.

Brian