Changing Water for Poisonous Dart Tadpoles

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Richard Rivas, co-owner of Black Jungle Terrarium Supply and today I am here on behalf of expertvillage.com discussing the proper way to take your poison dart frogs from egg through the tadpole stage into frogletts. At this point, our tadpoles have hatched and we now need to get them into their bins. One of the most important aspects of successfully raising the tadpoles is the use of proper water. In some areas of the US, you are lucky enough to be able to use tap water as we do here. We have very low dissolved minerals and our PH is at 7.0 right out of the tap. In other parts of the country where you may have to contend with higher amounts of dissolved solids, especially salts and chlorides and also higher PH’s, you will have to use bottled water. Reverse osmosis is probably one of the best options as it is not overly purified but still all of the harmful contaminants have been removed. Whichever type of water you do use, you also want to be sure to add something to acidify it and provide additional tenons. Here at Black Jungle we use either the Kent fresh water, black water expert or the tetra black water extract. Both of these basically provide tenons in a very quick and easy form. We typically use about 10 times the aquarium dosage in order to turn the water to a darker tea shade. The tenons and the acidifying properties that they add help to prevent bacterial and fungal infections from affecting the tadpoles. Additionally, if you are dealing with smaller numbers the Indian Omland leaves are another ideal and more natural way of adding tenons to the water. Some species such as the Eppapidabates Triaphatotus, tri color and even some filobates will actually even eat the leaves basically reducing them down to a skeleton providing even more variation than the diet. "