# Wanting to keep mossy frogs.



## supatips (May 29, 2012)

Hi, I hope everyone is well. 

I've a rough idea I suppose and have been hassling another member via PM (I'm sure he will reveal himself in due time!) and have been given some great advice. 

I just wanted to run through a few things with everyone. I think I might have most of the equipment I need to get started.

Is the care identical between theloderma corticale, theloderma bicolor and theloderma asperum. I can't find anything that suggests anything radically different care wise anyway.

I've got a 3ft aquarium with I was told would be ok to house a few in. I also have spare aquarium filters for the water. They are fluval minis which I used when keeping small musk turtles in shallow water, I just layed them horizontally because of the depth of water. Would I be wanting to do the same here? Or can anyone reccomend a better filter for the job.

I've also read they don't require UV but if you were intending to grow plants in the aquarium you would need a plant growing light. Is the really the case? 

With diet I was told they eat crickets, I hate those things and use locusts mainly would I be able to use anything live that wasn't crickets? 

How high and how low are the tempratures they can tolerate. I live in an old house and it gets very cold in the winter but in the summer it gets very warm. 

Appologies for this next question sounding daft but are they very noisy? It will have a bearing on where I would put them.

Thanks for reading that lot.


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## Athravan (Dec 28, 2006)

I have been keeping & breeding aspernum for a few years. So I can only comment on those. I'm actually hoping to pick corticale up at Hamm this March.

Aspernum are the easiest frog to breed I've ever had, with a group of 5 adults (2 males 3 females) producing over 50 tadpoles, of which I must have had a 95% success rate raising them to froglets.

I use the Arcadia Jungle Dawn LED in all my live planted vivs at the moment and it is pretty good, and I use a compact UVB too even though I've read it's not needed, I don't feel like enough scientific study has been done to say it's not needed for sure. There are a bunch of lizards that don't "need" it but get good health benefits if they have it, so I'm playing safe and sure anyway with all my frogs.

I feed mine exclusively on dusted roaches. I had the roach dish floating in the water in breeding season and they would jump into it and gobble them up, shoving them into their mouths.. very greedy. I suspect they will eat anything that moves.

I don't know how big that filter is but I had to remove my filter in tadpole season because the tadpoles are so tiny at the start I was seriously worried about them getting injured by it. If you are taking the taddies out then I imagine it would be fine anyway - I just let them grow up in the tank and experienced almost no cannibalisation from the other tads, and nothing from parents.

I kept them in my bedroom last season and it didn't stop me from sleeping. They chirp - it sounds more like birds. If you've ever kept finches, they remind me of zebra finches. It is not the loud call I usually associate with frogs - but it is definitely audible and at peak times it can be very frequent.

That's my experience anyway. Hope it helps a little.


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## supatips (May 29, 2012)

Thats a great help thanks.

When you removed the filter because of the tadpoles how did you manage the water clarity? Or are they far cleaner than I am imagining.

I have a spare 2ft tank. I would proably move tadpoles into that. Speaking of which am I likley to get over run with frogs? Or are they easy enough to find homes for? 

I've never kept phibs before but it sounds like it could be an interesting thing to do.


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## Athravan (Dec 28, 2006)

supatips said:


> Thats a great help thanks.
> 
> When you removed the filter because of the tadpoles how did you manage the water clarity? Or are they far cleaner than I am imagining.
> 
> ...


I did a 1/3rd water change every 2 weeks and the water really did not get that dirty.

You probably will get over run if you leave them in an aquatic tank all the time. They will breed endlessly - to the detriment of the females health. I removed my adults out to a terrestrial tank because give them enough water to swim and they'll be at it constantly. By the end of the summer my females were definitely looking a little on the thin side - now with the winter on land they're all nice and fat again. So if you get too many tadpoles or think the females had enough it's easy enough to stop them breeding as mine have not even attempted to breed in a tank that doesn't have a large water area.

I guess that's how nature would do it in the wild - since they breed in tree hollows and temporary water constructs rather than a permanent water source they would breed like absolutely crazy whilst the water is there to try and get as many offspring out as possible, then once the water is gone they'll work on building up their resources until it comes back. In captivity they have no way of knowing when it's healthy to "stop" unless we monitor them and tell them by removing the water. Since they breed in stagnant water perhaps this is why I was fine without a filter also. They would be used to it raining and filling up and then drying out a bit and filling up again etc.


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## supatips (May 29, 2012)

Do they need a land area or can they be kept exclusivly aquatically?

When you say you moved them to a terrestrial tank do you mean without water or just a shallow bowl? In a terrestrial tank I'm guessing you would need to spray it a few times a day to keep the humidity up. Does not having acess to a lot of water cause any issues for them? Could they be kept of spanghum moss in a terrestrial setup

Sorry for the newbie questions, I'm just trying to get as much information as I can about them.

How do you know the sexes? I've read they are quite difficult to differentiate. Would it be easy enough for a beginner to tell?


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## colinm (Sep 20, 2008)

I keep all three species in very similar conditions. A simple vivarium with a couple of plants, Scindapsus are good, And a few pieces of cork bark vertically up the sides of the vivarium.On the bottom I have a couple of inches of U heated water.I don't filter the water just change half of two thirds weekly, especially as the corticale are messy and produce a lot of faecal matter. They really are simple to keep and I find that the lowering of winter temperatures reduces their breeding.

Normal household temperatures seem fine , although they will take temperatures up into the 80s and 90s for short periods .The lowest that I have kept them is in the mid 50s without any problems. At present I don't use an u.v .on the adults but It certainly wouldn't do any harm, 2 or 5% I would suggest.


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## Athravan (Dec 28, 2006)

supatips said:


> Do they need a land area or can they be kept exclusivly aquatically?
> 
> When you say you moved them to a terrestrial tank do you mean without water or just a shallow bowl? In a terrestrial tank I'm guessing you would need to spray it a few times a day to keep the humidity up. Does not having acess to a lot of water cause any issues for them? Could they be kept of spanghum moss in a terrestrial setup
> 
> ...


I moved them to a setup similar to most of my dart frogs just for the winter with a large water bowl and I spray them all every day. In the summer I had them in an paladrium setup with an area of water that was 45x45cm surface area and maybe 4" deep and they literally spent 100% of their time in the water. Didn't even bother with the rest I'd made for them :lol2: I have no idea about the other sub species but certainly aspernum the females are significantly bigger than the males so once they're adult it's fairly easy to tell visually but I haven't found a way of sexing juveniles.


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## Arcadiajohn (Jan 30, 2011)

Fantastic advice here! 

I have nothing of value to add, listen to these guys! its all good

john


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## supatips (May 29, 2012)

Cheers for the replies.

At it's most basic level the tank setup doesn't sound a million miles away from how I set up my musk turtle enclosure when they were tiny.

I'm thinking along the lines of some decent sized rocks/pebbles in the water and perhaps some cork bark they could climb onto along with the suggestions for plants.

It's interesting about the UV, I wanted to give them a day/night cycle but wasn't sure if they were sensitive to UV and would have used a plain bulb. Would one of those screw in compacts be suitable (a low UV output one) As long as it doesn't cause them harm it's somthing worth considering.

They sound quite suited to a range of tempratures. The lowest my house has been so far is about 8oc. At worst I could perhaps consider a heatmat under the tank if I was concerned about it getting too low. 

With feeding would they accept locusts? I tend to have a lot of them as I feed them to my beardie. Other than that it's generally silkworms and earthworms I have. The landlord draws the line at roaches unfortunately.

If they got too hot do they aestivate?


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## Arcadiajohn (Jan 30, 2011)

I would suggest that the 2.4% UVFLOOD fitting would be better, it is flicker free and emits over a targeted area with a stable emission and it is totally waterproof which screw in lamps cannot be,

that is what I would do

john





supatips said:


> Cheers for the replies.
> 
> At it's most basic level the tank setup doesn't sound a million miles away from how I set up my musk turtle enclosure when they were tiny.
> 
> ...


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