Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've read a lot about setting up PDFs in groups and I was wondering what would be wrong with setting up four different species or so in a well planted 55 gallon tank, but with just one animal of each species. I really don't want to mess with having a bunch of tads and such to deal with and right now, that's what is stopping me from jumping into the PDF hobby. I'm talking about a 55 gallon tank with:

1 D. tinctorius
1 D. azureus
1 D. leucomelas
1 D. auratus

the only thing I think would be wrong would be the chance of cross-breeding, but is there really a chance of that? I really hope I get some good answers, thanks!

would suggest not putting tincs with auratus and the lueks they will deffinitely hog all the food. If you do end up crossing a way to not get any eggs is to just buy males. I know this is what most Zoos do. Good luck but don't put the tincs with the auratus or lueks

Dragon,
Your fears are a little misplaced. You can place these animals together if you like. The key is making sure that they have plenty of food available to them. Adult frogs are not a problem together provided they have plenty of room and the enclosure is well planted. As far as buying all of one sex to place in the tank, good luck. Dendros can be rough to sex and even rougher to depend on someone else sexing them for you and sending them on. Zoos simply display both sexes, and deal with breeding as a seperate issue. Rest assured, you are not going to have 100s of eggs to deal with. You will not have tadpoles galore to take on. There won't be a tank full of hybrids hopping around making even more polliwogs. The deal is, that unless personally make the effort to breed these animals and have a program in place, your chances of seeing any little offspring are virtually nil. Dendro eggs in a terrarium usually don't last long. They dessicate, fungus over, get walked on, and most likely..eaten by the tankmates.
I've kept these frogs together for years in mixed species tanks with no issues. If I decide I want to propagate, (the frogs, not me) I normally pull some breeders for that purpose and set these up in a different enclosure.
Bottom line is...no problem on the mixing, no worries on the population explosion. However, I would advise researching these animals a little more before plunging in.

Doug H.

thanks for your informative response and for backing up your answers, I would like to know how you go about feeding a large array of frogs in one tank. Do you have any tricks for doing this and getting enough food around?

Yes Dragon,
Feed often and abundantly. Normally if you drop in enough crickets, termites, drosophila, or whatever you're feeding, the food supply will disperse itself and the frogs will find it from there. Watch the frogs for weight loss. These guys drop weight very quickly (matter of a few days) and close monitoring is essential, as it is with any animal really. You'll find that for the most part the frogs will feed without much regard to the others around them.

DH

If you put a large piece of orange on a petri dish or plastic lid the flies will be attracted to the juice. You should dump enough flies into the tank so that this orange is *always* covered with *some* fruitflies. Most of the flies will scatter but eventually will seek out the fruit. After a time the frogs associate the orange with the food and will go to it when they are hungry.

The key is to breed alot of fruit flies or find another fresh, small insect source. It is very important to change the orange every other day or so or it gets moldy.

i've talked to the care takers of the frogs specfically about darts and they said that in the display tanks they had all males. This was just at one of the zoos i've been to however.

If you were to keep the tinc with the small and lessaggressive auratus and lueks then make sure there is huge amounts of food.

Perhaps a zoo or two does display all of one sex. All females would seem to be a better method if aggression were the driving methodology. But I really don't see why anyone would go to that much trouble. Most I know just display what the exhibit will bear regardless. I certainly wouldn't bother with it. However, I'm not here to debate it.

Although....in regards to feeding a "huge" amount of food. I would be cautious of offering too much at a time. Crickets are just like any live food. They bite. A cricket bite may be small but with a neo-tropical setup, all that humidity will fester a wound quickly. Frog wounds tend to get nasty and can be tough to treat. Add enough food so that everyone eats well, and a few scragglers wander around, but not so much that you have a plethora of leftover crickets in the tank.
As far as agression between the species, they do okay. The auratus, leucomalus, and even the little pumilio do fine and fend for themselves quite nicely. They key, as with any multiple species tank is to provide enough hide areas and visual barriers to keep any aggression to a minimum. Think of it as a big fish tank, without the fish, and the pumps, and the heaters, and gravel, ...but you can still get one of those skeletons on the treasure chest with a sword through 'em, because those things are cool.

DH

Females in the tinct group (and azureus) are aggressive to other females....

Ed

sigh...bottom line is...I've never had a problem with this. Done it with a number of successful exhibits and raised countless froglets. Just answering the question from personal experience with an accurate perspective. Not here to play the "pick apart everyone's post" game that's so prevalant among these boards. Wind up drawing out a thread out for 300 postings.
Question asked. Answer given.

DH

And I have kept and bred tincts, azureus, auratus and other species for more than a decade in single species colonies without all of the concomitant problems that are often reported but this does not mean that it is the rule instead I view it as the exception.
Ed

I'd like to thank you all for your great answers that I can tell are based on actual experience. I hope ever question I post is met with such responses.