Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey just had a question after lookin at some of your pics. I've had my albino pacman for atleast 5 years and he has always been active and healthy looking however. He is like 3.5" and never got any bigger. I know its probably just the frog but is there something special that some of you are getting 6-9" pacmans and mine never got thta big. I want to buy another now and just see if i'm doing something wrong or if it just varies that much lol

first off i want to see pics if anyone has any 6-9". mine is 6" and is a female ornate. as far as max size it has to do with a few things. first off is care. the proper setup and diet (although proper diet may be a little hard to define, variety seems to be the consensus). past that there is sex. females get larger. has yours ever croaked or made any vocalizations? if so it is a male. the last thing is genetic variability. you could have a dozen and do everything exactly the same with every one of them and they will all end up being different sizes.

The major contributing factor to adult size in herps is diet, temperature and to a lesser extent gender (there can be genetic variability but this hasn't been demonstrated in C. ornata.)

With respect to diet, the adult size at sexual maturity is going to indicate the adult size as the caloric resources are going to be diverted from growth to reproduction. Females will grow larger as the size of the female at sexual maturity is indicative of the clutch size so there is some genetic advantage to getting as large as possible.
Balanced diets that provide large amounts of protien will allow for maximal growth in both sexes but the temperature also needs to be warm enough to facilitate the ability to uptake and use the calories and protien.

The frogs do continue to grow throughout thier lives but after sexual maturity, the rate of growth is greatly reduced.

Ed