well this was unexpected this morning-i woke up to this image(they are in a tank next to my bed). the couple was still laying and the male was seen to 'squirt' onto the eggs still- but the eggs at the bottom of the mass had already cleaved, i am wondering if this is done in stages?
i really dont own a good camera-so this image is from a web cam. 20 minutes later i looked in on them and they were off the leaf but still in amplexus. my previous (and first)breeding was on march 30, 2003-the tadpoles from that breeding are currently morphing. i had about 100-150 eggs originally, but only 50 or so hatched, when morphing started i had 33 tads, i have lost a few froglets and tads since.
when i saw the original batch on the glass of the tank at water level i was unsure of how to keep them hydrated (were they supposed to be in the water??) i now find out that they are supposed to be laid above water on an overhanging plant-the tadpoles/eggs are unpigmented to start, within a few days they will develop into an underdeveloped tadpole with a huge yolk reserve-they then do a lot of wiggling and fall into the water and sit on the bottom for a few days.
since this is his second breeding (it is my dominant male both time i think-the lesser male never calls as much)it appears that more of the eggs this time are fertilized-before almost 1/2 never developed-but i may have been at fault there-i took the egg mass and put it on a floating lilly pad so that it was at water level and wet from the water-so that may have affected the eggs. these are obviously easy to breed tree frogs and recommend these and other hyperolius-the only deterrent from keeping them is the volume of their calls (this species is relatively quiet) despit them being 1-1.5 inch frogs-their vocal sacs are about 1/2 the body!
