How to Breed Poison Dart Frogs

Breeding dart frogs is either easy or impossible, depending on whether your frogs decide to cooperate and lay eggs! But if you have a male/female pair anyway, you might as well give it a try. Read on to learn more.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Provide a place to lay eggs: Dart frogs want to lay their eggs in a humid spot, and you want to be able to remove the eggs from the enclosure. Fortunately, they will lay their eggs in a petri dish or the lid of a plastic deli container if you place it under a hide which both gives them privacy and keeps in the humidity. If you want the hide to look natural, you can use half a coconut shell with a entrance cut in it. These can be purchased already ready for use. If you don't care about appearance, a dark-colored plastic container with an entrance cut in it will work just as well.
2. Remove the dish of eggs when they are laid. Rinse them with de-chlorinated water if there is dirt or debris in the dish. Replace the dish with a clean one in case the frogs lay again.
3. Keep the eggs moist but not swimming in water. You can put the dish inside a plastic container and cover it with plastic wrap or a lid. You want a clear lid so you know when you need to moisten the eggs and can observe their development.
4. When tadpoles hatch, move them to a container of water. You can keep them in individual cups and change the water a couple of times a week. Or you can keep them all in a small tank or plastic tray and do partial water changes as needed. Adding some plant cuttings to a large tray allows the tads to keep out of each other's way.
5. Feed tads small amounts of flake fish food or commercial tadpole food daily. Make sure you don't overfeed and foul the water.
6. When back legs develop, add objects like rocks and branches to the water that the frogs can climb out onto when their front legs develop. At this point, be sure the tank has a lid, because they can climb right up the sides once their legs develop.
7. Remove tadpoles from the water when they develop all four legs and their tails are mostly gone. They can drown; so check the tank every day.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't scrub algae from the insides of the tad containers--the tadpoles will eat it.
• The hardest part of breeding dart frogs starts just when you think you've been successful--it's when you've got the froglets out of the water and need food that's small enough for them to eat. You will need to buy spring tails from a commercial supplier until your babies are big enough to eat fruit flies, and also see How to Raise Crickets For Frog Food.
• Eggs will sometimes go bad. They may mold, but in some cases, especially a pair's first few clutches, they may just be defective in some way. Just keep trying.
• When tads are kept together, there may be some cannibalism in some species. But tads kept in larger trays do seem to grow bigger and more robust, so it may be worth losing a few.