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| October 2000 - January 2001 In October i got the message that the vivarium was ready for pick-up. The whole vivarium was ordered via e-mail and some telephones since the distance from me to Vivaria Amsterdam was rather big and i had no trips to Amsterdam planned during that period. The size of the vivarium was the first problem to cope with, since it was 125x100x50, it was too big to fit in my family car. I had to arrange a mini truck to get the thing home. Luckily my family could help me out. At Vivaria in Amsterdam i also found some large oak roots and the peat bricks to make the landscaping in the vivarium. It came home in one piece, and in a few hours of work I could do the landscaping, connect all the wires and the water systems and even planted my first plants ( orchids and bromelaids) to start the vivarium. Then a relatively long waiting period lasted, to get the plants growing, get the cultures started and receive a ecological equilibrium in the vivarium. This period i used to get the climate in the vivarium as optimal as possible to accomodate the posion frogs. Unfortunately the sliding front window fell out and broke on the floor after 2 months. I was lucky that i did not have any frogs inside since i would not know what to do then. The construction was modified with some sturdy aluminium frames instead of glued acrylic sliding frames. This however changed the air circulation quite strongly, which caused another period of regulating the fan so that the windows did not fog up and arranging the water temperature so that the 25 degrees celcius was maintained on floor level. The final technical breakthrough was drilling some holes in the acrylic top sheet, so that the warm air from the lamps was blown inside the vivarium, along the windows. This prevented fog up without too much ventilation and increased the temperature in the vivarium towards the desired level. Learning point for me : take your time in setting up the vivarium, as boring as it may seem, you can not imagine how much small improvements and sometimes big improvements you can apply during this period before you expose the rare, fragile and very sensitive poison frogs to the created habitat. |
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February 2001 - March 2001 Finally the moment arrived when i could no longer wait and started to purchase my first frog. After the waiting period of 3 months, the vivarium turned to look green, from the plants, algea and mosses that florished inside. The temperature was under control and the humidity and water supply via the nozzles was tuned so that the evaporated water was compensated by the "rain" form the nozzles. ( the consumptions is about 20 litres of deionized water per week ) It was my first frog, a Dendrobates Leucomelas small / half grown specimen (1,5 cm). Since this was my "dummy-frog" i left it with one specimen, secondly i did not have any experience with the food supply and food sourcing. This first frog had several weeks of a reasonably happy life. I also bought the green anole at the same time. It became very clear that a stable food supply was required due to the 3 weeks cycle of the fruit flies. Secondly it was cold and winter like weather so the supply of fruit flies to the stores was also minimal or none at all. I spent a lot of money on fuel cruising limburg to receive some fruitflies anywere, but the anole and leuco survived the sometimes low food supply in the large vivarium ( i used a piece of banana to keep the fruitflies at a spot were they could be found ). Unfortunately the small frog fell in the water exactly on the water heating element, which was cleaned just before. That spot did not have the thick layer of waterferns that covered the rest of the water and i found the small frog dead half in the water. When taking him out of the vivarium i looked carefully for life and pressed on its chest a few times ( note 1.5 cm frog reanimation in place) and his heart started beating again ( a miracle indeed ). Altough he started to jump around the vivarium after a few hours, he became very slow and could not coordinate his attacks on fruitflies anymore. Therefore he became weaker and weaker and more and more stressfull. At that moment i had enough fruitflies to feed him and the anole, but i think his brains were too much damaged by the whole affair. After a few days he finally stressed out and died ( As a reaction to this homepage, it was mentioned that it could be just a bad frog with a vitamin disorder during its growth, on hintsight this might be true since his legs were very skinny, therefore never buy the last frog in a shop, since there is not enough comparison material and most likely the best specimens are already sold, so you are stuck with the one nobody wants ) During that period i bought 2 full grown dendrobates leucomelas and a phyllobates vittatus, these frogs sturdy as they are adepted very easily and appreciated the created habitat to a great extend. Both frogs have inspected the whole vivarium by now, but prefer thelower bromelaid as their resting place. Learning point for me : before you start with the frogs make sure that you have a stable supply of food for them and have at least a few cultures of fruitflies available with flies and larvae. Learning point for me : make sure your frogs can not drown in the water or touch very hot parts of the installation work. |
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April 2001 - May 2001 During april i decided to exchange the Phyllobates Vittatus for another Leucomelas. The main reason for this was my own mistake since the phyllobates did not climb at all in the vivarium which makes the ground space his only territory, Therefore he used only a small part of the vivarium which is 1 meter high. Both leucomelases climbe all teh way to the highest places in the vivarium, although the top might be to warm and dry for them. Therefore i made the decision to concentrate on the Leucomelas and other climbing species of dendrobates. On april 22nd the poison frog exchange gathering was planned by Dendrobates Netherlands, on which show I bought 2 medium sized leucomelas frogs and 3 dendrobates auratus.. I am aware of the fact that it is reported that they might mix with each other, but let's wait and see. All frogs acclimatized very easily and seem to have a good time here. They all eat well and have no problems getting to the flies, springtails and crickets. One of the auratus frogs tends to stay in the same bromelaid as the frist 2 leucomelas, but since it is lage enough, i did not see any fighting yet. With a total of 8 frogs in the vivarium, there is still room for more, but i think that it is good to wait for a while how things evolve. At least there is a group of frogs now that seem to live well with each other. The food supply is good at this moment but after some poor experimenting with my own fruitfly cultures, i found some good adresses on the internet that provide mail service of all required food animals. It is of course more expensive but with a delivery every 2 weeks, without having to drive 30 km for the nearest food supply, works for me at this moment. I think i will start my own fruitfly cultures again after a while, but i need a brain wave how to get rid of those mytes ( dutch : huismijten ) that seem to overrun the cultures all the time. During the evening when the nozzles have done their work the male frogs start to call, which is a pleasant sound. It is difficult to locate which frog makes the noise, but when i can i will make a video of it to share this with you. Learning point for me : if you can, wait for a poison frog exchange meeting to by or trade frogs, the quality is good and the choice is overwhelming compared to even specialized shops Another learning point : if you are serious about poison frogs and want to share your experiences and questions maybe the following group could be a good idea ( in dutch ). During May I have entered two coconut halves to provide breeding huts for the frogs, although they have all inspected the huts it will take a while before they will be used since the frogs are stil relatively young and inmature, lets wait and see what happens. As the roses in my garden started to receive a big load of aphids, i tested them as food for the frogs, they are readily eaten , but since they do not move that quickly and the frogs react on the movement of the prey, they spread around the vivarium more. This has the advantage that not only the fast frogs will get something te eat, but also the slow movers. After consulting the e-group on poison frogs green lice seem to provide good food for the frogs and they are powdered easy. The best way to collect them is by shaking the aphids and not breaking the twigs. Unfortunately the rest of the family also wants to receive flowers on the roses so they have used the green soap, alcohol mixture to treat the plants, which makes this foodsource useless for a while. |
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June 2001 - July 2001 Now I really enjoyed the life in the vivarium with so much frogs inside, all the frogs seem te be healthy and they eat very well. The food sources are strong at this moment and also my own breeds of fruitflies. This problem is out of the way. In order to get rid of the problems with the mytes in the fruit fly colonies, i used standard insect powder ( for ants and such therefore ground dwellers ) from the drug store on the floor of the cabinets were i keep the fruit flies, also lowering the temperature from 25-28 C to 23 C helped a great deal. Now the colonies keep producing until the substrate is finished. Since I went on holiday in June for 3 weeks I needed some help to keep the vivarium moving. Luckily a friendly nephew was so kind to do this work for me. I ordered the food via the internet to give him ample supply of fruit flies during my absence and showed him how and how much he should feed. Secondly I wrote a 2 page note on all the aspects ( water, spraying, supply of water) and gave him my mobile number for emergencies. Everything went fine and when i came back one of the orchids ( a phaleonopsis ) was blooming, which provides a very nice welcome. All the frogs survived without problems. Learning point for me : Use standard insect powder ( for ants ) on the floor of the cabinet were the fruit flies are kept to prevent mytes ( and the nice odour that comes with it ). Make sure not to add this powder to the vivarium. Learning point for me : Make sure you have a realiable person taking care of the vivarium during holidays and the frogs, do not underestimate that job. |
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| August 2001 - September 2001 During july the vivarium grew steady, i ordered new nozzles since the older nozzles were filled with debris and stopped misting but only dripped water. With the new nozzles the misting started again and soon new mosses started to grow. This was great since i hoped that the vivarium would become greener and greener al the time. The frogs grew steadily, only two of the auratus frogs, showed growth problems, they show clear abnormalities in the back legs and the spinal cord, which is caused by inbreed or bad feeding during the early stages of development. Unfortunately this is one of the backlogs of buying younger frogs, the history of the frogs is unclear and these surprises can happen. The leucomelas frogs i bought on the frog exchange grew fine as wel as one other auratus, which i bought from somebody else, therefore it is not caused by me. As long as they survive i let them live, but i hope they do not start breeding. I learned a new recipe to make fruit flie cultures and tried it immediately, since the internet ordering started to become rather expensive and did not always provided the results i wanted and needed due to the hot summer days. This recipe is shown in an albert hein format in a new page added recently. This new way of making fruit flies runs incident free so far and is a great help in making this hobby more affordable. One of the dendrobium orchids started blooming beatifully. While the other phaleonopsis is still blooming today ( from june to september !!!). The leucomelas male frog calls regularly but there is no real breeding movement yet. I ordered some new small orchids to fill the vivarium a little further and added some plants on the bottom, now the vivarium is a lot greener and better looking again, after almost a full year, i think i have learned a lot and have reached more of a maintenance state, instead of a development state with the vivarium and the frogs, i hope the frogs start breeding soon, so that new smaller viv's can be made for the tadpoles and froglets !!!!. |
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October 2001 - December 2001 I went to the frog exchange again and could not withstand the urge to buy a number of frogs again. As a duthmen i was always amazed by the azureus frogs, which were readily available at the exchange. i bought 3 of them at different stands from different breeders. The frogs are really astonishing and although they start to become common and affordable, they do not loose the their splendor for me. Although they are seen as mainly ground dwellers, they climb all accros the vivarium all the way to the top and back as well as the leucomelas do. The leucomelas male starts calling almost every day after the "rain" but i can not find any eggs under the honeymoon huts, lets wait and see what happens and then ask additional advice. I also bought some bromelaids and tillandsias to add to the vivarium, especially the tillandsias were placed in the top of the vivarium to resemble the natural circumstances more, since they do not like it very wet. Most plants and mosses grow very quickly at this moment and a dendrobium started blooming again, unfortunately they do not bloom as long as the phaleonopsis type of orchid. At the end of december ( during the holidays ) the back wall panels collapsed by its own weight ( with all the water they are very heavy ) and probably the effect of rotting. I had to repair them with the frogs inside which was not easy and took the liberty to change the water for the first time in the vivarium. The repaired back wall looks a lot better, since the surface is not completely flat anymore and looks more natural. I used some of the old cocos panels to add some extra structure to the surface. Luckily no frogs got trapped under the fallen panels, they are certainly heavy enough to kill one of these precious animals instantly. |
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January 2002 - February 2002 The situation in the vivarium is quite relaxed nowadays ( after the collapsed panels ) . Things grow, mosses bloom and a orchid brings new flower spikes every now and then. The frog population is stable and the anole seems to do it OK too. No stress therefore. I filled most of the website during this period and i am now looking for new ideas extra's, articles etc etc. The fruit fly cultures do well, although practice has learned that after 2 - 3 months fresh fruit flies should be bought/ordered to keep the cultures in a good state. The flies become either smaller, but also the learn to fly. Apperently the culture selects the strongest versions every time which promotes flying for the large flightless fruitfly type. I found a good adress to mailorder the fruit flies and therefore this is a well under control. Also the springtale culture is under control. I made the mistake to give the culture too much water, which drowned 90% of the population, after that it took at least 2 months to come up to strength again with these animals, but the culture is very strong at this moment I added some aquarium plants that can grow above the water to give more difference on the bottom substrate and the tillandsia has bloomed, while a phaleonopsis starts blooming with a large new spike. |
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March 2002 - April 2002 As always you keep on changing in the vivarium, during march i added a female anole in the enclosure. Especially the start was quite hectic. I knew that anoles would not accept other quickly, males will not live together with males, but females can be accepted. The start looked OK, after some initial brutal contact of the male, showing of his macho character, and harrassing the new smaller female quite a few times, they seem to accept each other better, and i found them one day together side by side on a orchid leaf, so progress has been made. If this would not have happened i would have been forced to bring her back to the pet shop, since dead by starvation is the only alternative for her then since the male will not let her eat if he does not accept her. Also bought a new male leucomelas at Ruud Schoutens poison frog breeding farm : kwekerij Rana, since it was difficult to find this website i was surprised to have found him and that his place is closer to me than the pet shop i usually visit. This place is the poison frogs dream place, i have never sen so many species together in one place. Anyway his allocated guess about the sex of the leucomelas was right and i got a extra male in the viv right know, who is calling his longs out at the moment i write this piece. Sexing leucomelas is always very difficult and you can not be sure, now i have 2 males and 3 females, hope they start breeding this year, since they are more than 1 year old now. 20 april was the date for the new frog exchange day of dendrobates netherlands, Besides from starting as the new treasurer of Dendrobates netherlands, i could not resist the temptation to add another another species in the vivarium, After discussing waht would be a good frog in it that would be consistent with the setting i choose the dendorbates imitator. I was worried about the combination with the anoles, but the breeder kept some phelsumas together with this tiny frog, which convinced me enough. 3 days later the stressfull message came from my wife that the anole had a frog in its mouth, during a meeting at work. This was the end of my attention at work and i went home early to capture the anoles to get them out of the viv. And safe what could be saved. The frog that was almost swalowed was spit out by the anole ( they obviously taste pretty bad ) and it jumped away somewhat later as if noting happened. This is unbelievable looking at the picture of the awefull event. I don't take this chance anymore therefore i brought the anoles back to the pet shop for them to sell to somebody else. Learning point for me : never combine Anoles with small frogs, half grown Leucomelas is fine, if you want to combine with smaller frogs look at the frog friends section of this site and think again. |
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May 2002 - July 2002 During the following months after the anole drama i lost 2 imitators because the still could find a way to the lighting hood. Although i checked and rechecked the space that they need is really astonishingy small. This hood should be completely closed to hold these ine animals. So far only fruit flies found their way to the hood, so i expected no frog to pass this barrier. But since they climb the windows when they are really fogged up in the morning it was stupid of me not to realize that they would find this 1-2 mm slit between the sliding window and the light hood. one imitator left Again the whole back panel dropped down with all the plants on top of them. After the first @@#$$$!#&*#$&!#@#%#!^@#$# and much more i pulled myself together and started to fix it for the last time. New plates were ordered and fixed to the back window with ample silicone. Another trick i used was to glue the back side of the cocos panels with standard wood glue. Let this dry for a day or two, and they use the silicone to stick it on the back window. Since wood glue is based on water, it absorbs inside the first few milimeters of the cocos panel and forms a hard layer, providing more stability than expected. Hopefully this trick works. Since i got bored with the water ferns, i bought an additional of 4 peat bricks and filled up most of the water part with it. Leaving a small water body in the middle for the eventual tadpoles. The floor is much dryer now which is beneficial for both ground plants and frogs ( they don't like constant wet feet ). I used some additional plants ( some carnivorous plants ). And after a few days ( evenings ) the job was done. I did everything with the frogs inside. I assumed the stress from trying to catch the frog in the vivarium would be more than the stress of remodeling with them in their respective hiding places. The result is shown to the right. Hope you like it as much as i do !! |
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August 2002 - October 2002 The new setup of the vivarium prooved very succesfull, the frogs like it, the plants like it ( at least they are doing well ) and the added land section provided enough area for some new frogs to be added. Since the small imitators were not succesfull in this set-up, mainly because of some extremely small openings between the top sheet and the lighting. I decided to leave the small species for what they are in this vivarium and add only the larger ones. My eyes fell on a few very nice tinctorius frogs, which i could buy at kwekerij Rana in Heerlen, the Netherlands ( very near to where i live ). They were larger than half grown and very lively. i bought 2 males and two females. They are doing well in the vivarium and have grown significantly in the first few weeks to almost full grown now. They are very large compared to the leucomelas and the leuco's are sometimes intimidated by some of the more agressive one's. Since i feed the fruit flies all over the vivarium, all frogs get ample food and are doing well. There is no visible interaction between the species, but since the tinctorius are almost 50% more heavy as the leucomelas, they stay out of the way. At the start the tinctorius were hiding away, finding their way around the vivarium. After a few days some of them became more bold and now they are seen all the time and rarely hide away when i come. Just like the leucomelas they show a lot. Leucomelas tends to climb morea and higher, but the tinc's have found there place halfway the vivarium too. One of the small orchids (pleurothallis ) started blooming which is a nice site. For your pleasure i have added a picture of this mini-orchid to the side. |
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November 2002 - January 2003 The turn of the year has been a period of some dissappointment, although the website was greatly improved by the addition of many frog descriptions, the succes of my own frogs was opposite to the succes of the web site. During this period, but with a climax during january, the temperature in my basement went down due to heavy freezing outside. This made the inside temperature in the vivarium less than 20°C during the night and around 23°C during the day. This most likely caused the tinctorius to be more susceptible to diseases. Since they are real temperature lovers the symptoms looked at first like worms, which usually can be treated with levamisol droplets which i have. This disease however was extremely quick, one frog ( the largest one ) went from looking perfectly happy to being dead in 6 days, the other 3 lasted longer ( 2 weeks ). The leucomelas did not show any sign of sickness and all survived without problems. This drove my decision not to start with new tinctorius type frogs inside my vivarium. Temperature control is one of the essentials to keep a happy frog, despite all my good interests and heavy investment in a "problem free" vivarium. The problem with the vivarium was that there is no option to controll the temperature !!! The good news is that there are 2 ochids blooming or starting to bloom and making flower pins, one phaleonopsis and one paphiopedilium orchid. The other item is that the dissapointment of the functionality of a ready bought vivarium drove my decision to use my technological background to design the perfect vivarium for a new set of frogs, with adjustable temperature control and a lot of other stuff. I will make this vivarium in a small area in the basement again, but this time with ample isolation and temperature controll capability other than lighting. The construction is started and all the supplies have been purchased. This self made vivarium of 2000 litres ( 450 Gallon ) will cost about the same as the ready bought other vivarium ( it takes a little more time and effort however ). I trust that with the knowledge i have today i will make a close to perfect biotope for the frogs I would like to keep in there. I am making pictures of the process so do not worry, you will be informed of all the technicalities and details in the vivarium section when the process is a little bit further. I sincerely hope that this vivarium will provide a better surrounding for these precious animals in my care.... |
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February 2003 - October 2003 Although it took quite a while for me to build and finish the new vivarium, the process provided great joy, since there were no dissappointments in the work and the design and construction plan worked exactly as planned in my head. Now that it is ready and the design works great with perfect temperature controll and all the things i desired i hope the frogs will do well inside. I have added 4 phyllobates terriblis, 2 ventrimaculatus and 2 imitator in this large vivarium. There are more to come, but the tumbnail frogs need some more time to observe and see if they are really happy frogs inside. In the other vivarium things are moving along, I had eggs inside of the leucomelasses, descovered by accident since i moved a part of the large bromeliad to the new vivarium and there were eggs inside this bromelaid. These eggs grew into tadpoles, but they did not survive my holidays inside the new vivarium. I added a number of epipedobates tricolor in the old vivarium a sturdy frog, with lots of sound and vocals, which should be able to withstand the colder winter in my basement ( better than the tinctorius). During the recent frog day in holland i could not resist buying 1 highland tricolor version which was almost completely green on its back. Given the right moment i will add some aditional pictures in the frogs section on tricolor. |
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November 2003 - January 2003 The large vivarium is doing very well and growing amazingly well. A number of plants have emerged spontanuously from the fern root and i had to weed some of the plants already, to give others a better chance. The bottom is now almost completely covered with nice green moss, proving the fact the the lighting is OK. ! of the ventrimaculatuses unfortunately found a mini hole in the section in between the door and the glass for the watersection and mummyfied completely due to the fact that the heating is provided via that slit. Extra fine mesh has been added to block even the finest holes and no casualties have been reported since. All frogs are doing well, the imitators have found each other. Recently I have added 5 semiadult D. Azureus ( 1.2.2 ), they have been a bit shy and intimidated by the much older and larger terriblis for a while but are now use dto the vivarium and have adapted to finding their food in the spots that are more difficult te reach for the more terrestial bound terriblises. Azureus occupies the lower middle sections of the vivarium, while the thumbnails are in the middle -high sections and rarely on the ground. The terriblisses are usually on the ground - lower middle sections. The Oncidium spec orchid has bloomed and looks great in this large viv ! The other vivarium is doing well and is ultra stable, the tricolors make a lot of sound every day and 2 of the orchids are making large bulbs again to start blooming soon. |
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