Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

Does anyone have any advice they can share on how to properly keep a southern leopard frog? I gather crickets is the best thing to feed them, but don't know if I need to supply any supplements or any other diet items. Also any advice on lighting, tank makeup, or anything else?

My son and I rescued a number of tadpoles from a drying pond. We are letting them go as they change, but one is mutated and can't hop properly (extra leg and extra foot on another leg), so we are keeping it to give it a chance at living.

I keep my northies in an easy-to-clean setup.
You put a cloth towel on the bottom of the tank, making sure the whole tank bottom is covered. Then you put newspaper in multiple sheets above this, patting it down to make it moist. Then all you need is a large water bowl and you're set.

Just curious, where did you find this particular pond? Northern Leopard Frogs had very high numbers of mal-formities about 10 years ago and it's still being worked on. It would be quite interesting if high levels of mal-formities began to crop up in Southern Leopard Frogs as well.

I've never cared for this species for very long. As a kid I had a Northern Leopard Frog that had 3 extra mangled mutated legs sticking out of its chest but if I remember correctly I eventually let it go. Leopard Frogs are a grassland species and it may be difficult to mimic that exact habitat type. In looking into it, this website does a pretty good job at explaining how a tank should be set up:
http://exoticpets.about.com/cs/frogsandtoads/a/leopardfrogs.htm

It mentions that a UV light is not required and while that is probably true, I would highly recommed picking one up and mounting it a few feet above the enclosure. Also, it specifies that 10 gallons is large enough and that is just fine and dandy for a young frog like yours but once it gets a couple inches long I would personally upgrade to a sretched 20 gallon tank or larger. It mentions that depth is not important, it's surface area. With tanks larger than 10 gallons there are often a few dimension options -- don't bother with the tall ones, try to get one that's longer or wider. That being said, for your little guy, you won't have to worry about it too much. If he/she lives long enough to require more space, you can worry about that when the time comes.

Would you mind posting any pics? The leopard frog malformities interest me...

Thanks for both of your input. I will use the information when I build the tank.

Here is the extra info regarding the frog. First, I think it is a Southern Leopard Frog, but I'm not 100% certain since I just did my best to identify it from what I read on the internet. The frog came out of the Christiana River in Delaware. It overflows in areas and leaves behind shallow pools which dry out when it gets very hot. We rescued about 10 or so tadpoles from the mud. So far 5 have changed into normal frogs, but this one was mutated. We've seen a lot of other frogs this summer, but no other mutated ones, so I can't say I've noticed any wide spread mutations. If the subject interests you, I found the following web site when I was trying to ID the frog. They have a section were you can file a report if you find a mutated amphibian, and when I uploaded our picture I was able to browse their ftp site and see what others had submitted.

I hope I can keep it alive, so far I don't think it has eaten anything, but I'll keep trying.

http://frogweb.nbii.gov/narcam/report.html

pretty much same care as bullfrogs, so look for care on them.