How to Care for Poison Dart Tadpoles - Stage one of hatching poisonous dart tadpoles

Hi! My name is Richard Rivas, co-owner of Black Jungle Terrarium Supply and today I am here on behalf of expertvillage.com to discuss the proper way of raising your poison dart frogs from the egg through the tadpole stage. At this point, our embryos have fully developed and have hatched and it is time to now transfer them into tadpole rearing containers. In this situation right here, we have a clutch of Dendrobates Tinctorius Regina that have hatched and are now outside of their gel. The first step that we take is to remove the gel from the lid before putting the tadpoles into their rearing containers. Using a bulb syringe, I simply flood the deli lid to help free the embryos and then use the syringe to draw up the gel from the tadpoles. You need to be careful not to draw the tadpoles with it. Although to be honest with you, they are quite rubbery and don’t seem to mind if they get sucked in. The main reason for removing the excess gel is that it can actually entrap embryos or tadpoles in the rearing containers and as it decomposes, just adds more organic material that needs to be broken down. Once they are free, it is just a matter of lowering the lid into their container that is filled with our tadpole rearing water. The water that we use here is actually just simply tap water that has been aged and then we also add a black water extract to provide tenons and further acidify the water. This helps prevent bacterial or fungal infections from occurring. Depending on your location in the US, you may or may not be able to use your tap water. The main concern being is any type of heavy metals or any type of excessive calcium, magnesium, any type of additional hardness to the water that may need to be reduced. Using a water softener also will prohibit you from using the tap water. In areas of the country where you can’t use your tap water, bottled such as reverse osmosis or distilled is suitable although there is much controversy over whether or not to use distilled water. Typically when you are further supplementing the water by adding the tenons, we have never found this to be a problem. Reverse osmosis is not as pure as distilled so if it is still a concern of yours, reverse osmosis is a fine substitute.