I believe that Leopardy is a girl... seems to have the bump in back over her cloaca that serves as ovipositor on female frogs. I still occassionally hear singing, but am uncertain which of the frogs is doing it! So that would make, if I am correct, three females and two male froglets. Buggy-Eyes, Zeyonda, and Leopardy being the females and Spotless and Spotty the boys. They could prove me wrong, they are still quite small and it is hard to see much detail. None of the froglets have black arms, but Spotty's arms are a good deal darker than those of the other frogs.

chirp chirp chirp

I hear singing! It appeared to be coming from Spotless, as he was the only one not hiding and as soon as he saw me walk past the tank, the chirping stopped and he ran away to hide. All of the frogs are still a little skittish, but seem to be getting more used to my presence. They know when I turn off the filter and make a tapping sound that it's time to eat. I have started feeding them twice a day again, but much much less at a time. I am cleaning the tank whenever I think of it, and doing a partial water change once a week. I can't imagine how messy the tank will get when they are big frogs!

I do have some recent photos to share:

Zeyonda (top) and Spotty. You can't really tell in this photo, but Zeyonda has really grown to be a bit larger than Spotty now.


Spotless in the food dish (never mind that brown algae - yuck!)


Leopardy peeking out (he is still the most shy of all five froglets)


And two photos of Buggy-Eyes, just because she is a camera hound :)
first with a very full belly (see the lump?)

and her typical standing pose in the plants

Spotty is a boy...

I think Spotty is a boy. Not real sure, but now Zeyonda has grown larger than him, and he has dark arms and hands (sometimes). Zeyonda and Buggy-Eyes I am certain are girls, but they might suprise me some day! They are still quite small. The two new guys I still think are boys, but they do not have the darker hands and arms that Spotty sometimes has, and they are big and fat like Buggy-Eyes. I have new photos I need to crop and upload, hopefully will do that later today!

a few more photos!

This really illustrates the difference in size between our froglets. Spotless (top right) is somewhat smaller than BuggyEyes, but still quite a bit larger than Zeyonda (bottom left), as you can see here:



and..... drum roll please....

some photos of the elusive Leopardy
front


and rear

a few new photos

I had absolutely no luck getting a picture of Leopardy, he is really pretty, but very timid and would not come out to say "cheese"!

Here is Miss BuggyEyes, our largest froglet.

and


BuggyEyes and Spotty (in the background)


Spotless!


Spotless and Spotty


Spotty


and Zeyonda, the smallest of them all. To get an idea of what Leopardy looks like, imagine this frog just a bit bigger with darker spots and a whiter belly.

Little frogs poop a lot, y'all!

Brown Algae

A few days ago, I noticed this brown discoloration of some of the decorations in the froggy tank. Today, I finally realized it was brown algae and the tank got it's first scrubbing, inside and out because I know that stuff can take over a tank in no time at all. EEEEWWWWWW!!! Little frogs poop a lot, y'all! I thought, since the tank is half bare-bottom and rocks are only in part of the tank, that as long as I fed them over the glass, and kept the poop and extra food regularly sucked up (using the turkey baster, still haven't justified in my own head the expense of one of those fancy dancy gravel vacuums) that it would be pretty clean. okay then... so today I decide to really clean the tank. I started by sucking up any gunk from the edges of the rocky places. Oh, that was nasty. Really really nasty brown goopy grossness. EEEWWWWW - so I wonder what is under the rest of the rocks and get to cleaning everything really really well. I got three gallons of dark brown gunk from under the rocks and decorations, which I used to water my houseplants, they should love it. I scrubbed the brown slime from the food dish and hidey holes, then realized there was brown gunk (algae) growing on the glass, too. *sigh* It looks as though I've been greatly overfeeding the little frogs and undercleaning the tank.

the little frogs have been getting bigger and bigger... so big, in fact, I had to lower the water level because they were hitting their heads on the glass when they came up for a breath of air!!

Had a scare a few days ago. I thought Buggy-Eyes had eaten one of her sisters. I walked by the tank, and noticed something sticking out of her mouth. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a frog's front leg, and it was moving, waving at me!! I totally freaked out. After calming myself down, and sending an urgent question to the froggy friends yahoo list, I gave the frogs some tubifex worms to tempt them out of their hiding places. I counted all five froglets, so nobody had been lunch. It must have been some shed skin or something. I didn't think she could fit one of the little ones in her mouth, but at the time, I couldn't think of any other explanation.

and now there are FIVE!!

We adopted two more froglets that needed a new home. They just arrived this morning, and I realize these are not the best photos, but just have to share them!!! I'll take more pics later today, when I feed them. DD had no trouble choosing names for the new guys.

Introducing....

Spotless!



and Leopardy!

new froggy photos!

I wish I could get a picture of all three together, to show you how much larger Buggy Eyes is than the other two...
here's Miss Buggy

she is at least twice the body mass of her sisters (and I'm still convinced they are all female, but may be proven wrong in time)

here is Zeyonda
does that not look as though she has a cloacal flap or scute or whatever they call it that serves as an ovipositor? She is the smallest of the three frogs.

and here is Spotty, hiding as usual

for more information....

Check out some of these links. Surf around these sites for lots of helpful info:
http://clawedfrogs.tripod.com/
http://fluffyfrog.com/
http://allaboutfrogs.org/
http://www.geocities.com/mamafrog0538/froggy_place.html
http://aquaticfrogs.tripod.com/
http://www.froggyplace.50megs.com/
http://www.mypetfrog.org/
http://www.xenopus.com/husbandry.htm
http://www.pollywog.co.uk/
http://members.aol.com/sirchin/afc.htm

...or google for african clawed frog or xenopus :)

Please let me know if you want me to add another link to this list!

Here they are!

We have no problem differentiating between our three frogs. I was afraid we might. My daughter has stood firm in her choice of names, and the three frogs have kept the same names they were given when they first morphed from tadpoles into frogs.

From left to right, this is a photo of Spotty, Zeyonda, and Buggy-Eyes. I think they are all three females, but I know it might be too soon to tell. It looks as though they all have a cloacal flap, but maybe they are just always pooping! LOL

Buggy-Eyes has always had the best appetite, was the first to transform, and is now at least half again larger than the other two.


Spotty is indeed the spottiest, even though we didn't know that when she first morphed from tadpole to frog. She is also the shyest and spends her time hiding unless she's eating.


Zeyonda was the last to transform, and has the darkest markings, looking nearly black at times.
They all three do change color from time to time and depending on where they are resting. They look greener when they are hiding in the plants. They all looked a pale yellowish-tan color when they were living in the pickle jar which had beige and yellow sand in the bottom of it.

Peekaboo!

They love their new home!

feeding frenzy


hello



We moved the froglets into the 40 gal tank last night.
The thinnest, darkest one was the last to transform, and is now much smaller than the other two, who are growing at an alarming rate and getting fatter by the hour! But they are all doing well, it seems, and really love their new home.
I do have to turn the filter off in order to feed them.
They are pretty smart, and have already figured out that I put the majority of their food in the terra cotta dish. I was worried at first when they didn't seem to be able to find food unless they accidentally landed on top of it!

If they could talk, they'd be saying *wheeeee*!

The most recently morphed froglet is now eating, but not as voraciously as the other two. Buggy-Eyes is still the piggiest, and gets way more of the food than the others. His belly is the fattest, as a result. I'm so afraid I'm going to over feed him, as I'm trying to make sure the other two get enough. They are no longer afraid of me, and will come up to the side of the jar and stand up like they are begging for food everytime anyone walks by. The third froglet is still a bit darker and a bit larger than the other two, I'm hoping that one is female. They love to play! It looks like a game of tag where they chase each other around, and almost do loop-de-loops in the water. My husband said last night, "If they could talk, they'd be saying *wheeeee*!"

The tank is now set up

Just waiting a little longer before the froglets are moved into their new home. I chose large and medium sized pebbles, leaving part of the bottom bare glass to make it easier to clean. Will probably add many more plants later this week, but we think it's pretty the way it is right now.
I piled the rocks up over the half-flowerpot hidey cave to give the tank another level. There is also a resin hollow log for them to hide inside, and I put a terra-cotta dish to make it easier to feed them (and clean up what food does not get eaten). The plants are suction-cupped to the sides, but they look very realistic for the cheapest plastic plants I could find at the petstore! Hobby Lobby was closed yesterday, Sunday, so I didn't get to check out what sort of artificial plants they had. I'm sure their prices would be much better than those at the petstore.

I'm continuing to do a fishless cycle. The old dirty filter from our guppy tank is inside the big filter on the frog tank, and I have been using the turkey baster to suck up the scum and gunk from the bottom of the tadpole jar and from the gravel in the guppy tank, doing small partial water changes every day, and putting all the dirty water and gunk in the new tank to give the good bacteria stuff to eat.

and then there were three

The third tadpole has very nearly completely absorbed its tail. That one is still slightly larger than the other two, and for now at least, is darker in color. It is not eating the frog pellets yet. The other two froglets have turned a yellowish-tan color, apparently to match the color of the sand in the bottom of their jar. One appears to have a line going down its back, which helps to tell the two apart. The other one is fatter and a more voracious eater, and I think that one is Buggy-Eyes. But we are still going to wait until they are bigger before we decide which one gets which name (DD is still adamant that their names are Buggy-Eyes, Spotty, and Zeyonda - we just don't know which one gets which name right now). Those two will gobble up all the pellets I can put in there with them, so I'm trying to be careful not to overfeed them. It's amazing how large their bellies will stretch! They look fat and happy, and don't seem so afraid of me anymore.

I did a partial water change in the tadpole jar as well as the guppy tank, and put the dirty water into the empty frog tank to help it cycle faster. I used my turkey baster (I finally found one at Kmart) to suck up the gunk from the bottom, so the beneficial bacteria would have more to eat. As soon as the bio-wheel in the filter looks like it has a good bacteria colony, I'm going to put the froglets in there. Tomorrow we are going shopping for greenery and maybe some rocks and sticks and things to decorate the tank. Right now it only has a hollow log and half of a plastic flower pot in there. I have decided it would probably be best to leave the bottom bare rather than put gravel/substrate down.

40 gallons is a lot of water!

The new tank is full and cycling now. I'm using a dirty filter from my fish tank to help cycle the new frog tank, and hope it works okay. I did a bunch of reading about fishless cycling online, but I might still put a guppy or two in there for a while, just to speed things up a bit.

The last tadpole is now starting to absorb its tail. The other two only have tiny black spots where their tails used to be. They are eating machines and will gobble up as much food as I put in there! I was worried about it a little bit when Buggy-Eyes was hogging all the food and Spotty wasn't getting as much, but I started breaking the pellets up into smaller pieces and not dropping them all in the same place. Now Spotty has a big fat belly, too!

Tiny thorn-tails

Buggy-Eyes and Spotty still have the tiniest remnants of their tails. Just a little black thorn-like protrusion on their backsides. They started eating frog food yesterday, stuffing the bites into their mouths with their hands. The room in which I plan to locate their permanent home now has one coat of yellow paint, and should be finished this evening so I can start cycling the tank soon. The frogs are so tiny! They are about half the size our full-grown dwarf frog was, about the size of a dime or maybe a nickel if you include their legs, and I no longer have reservations about keeping them in a one-gallon jar for a while. They actually seem a good bit smaller now than they were when they first arrived here as tadpoles!

almost froggy

Buggy Eyes' tail has turned black and is about as long as one of his toes. I beleive it will be completely gone later today. The other tadpoles are developing at the same rate. One has a tail about the same length as Buggy's tail was yesterday at this time. The other is still swimming head down and gulping water, and seems to be about at the stage the other two were at on Sunday or Monday. Next weekend I will have three tiny little frogs! It's very difficult to get decent photos of these little guys! Bear in mind that the glass jar has distorted the image of the tadpole in the background.

update

Buggy Eyes' tail is now shorter than his/her hind legs, and is acting like a frog now instead of a tadpole. DD has named the other two Spotty and Zeyonda (I have no idea where that name came from). She said we can wait until they are bigger before deciding which one is Zeyonda to make sure it's a female that gets the name. :) Both girls are now very excited about the froggies, and have been checking on them all day long. I have decided where the tank should go, but am waiting for DH to paint the walls first, because it won't be possible after there are 40 gallons of water and rocks in the way. Plus, I don't want the paint fumes (even though we are using low-fume latex indoor wall paint) to hurt my froggies, either. I hope I like yellow walls in here, because it will be another ten years before I can get him to paint again!

Buggy Eyes

DD has named the most developed of the pollywogs Buggy Eyes. It fits. That one is already absorbing its tail! The other "frogpole" has twice the tail that one has. Those two are breathing air from the surface now. And the third tadpole now has arms. I bought a 40 gallon aquarium yesterday, as well as a filter meant for a 75 gallon tank, and I also ordered a glass top for it. That ran me about $200 in total (including the top that I don't have yet). I went ahead and got a larger tank so to avoid the expense of having to buy another if they outgrew their first one. I can't imagine three frogs outgrowing such a large tank! As soon as I figure out exactly where I want it to be, I will start filling it to let the water cycle for a week or a month or so before introducing the frogs to their new home. Tank decorations will have to wait a while, I can't justify spending more money right now. I do have some decor for the tank, hidey holes and plastic plants, but not near enough for such a large aquarium.

shrinking heads, Oh my!

Now I realize why the less developed of the three tadpoles seemed a little larger and lighter in color than the other two! It was a gradual change, so I didn't notice until yesterday that as the tadpoles develop into frogs, their heads shrink and their skin loses transparency. The frogpoles' heads are half the size of that of the remaining tadpole. It appears the last one may develop arms today or tomorrow.

WOW! a "frogpole" already!

One of the tadpoles looks more like a frog now, just with a tail. It doesn't seem to be gulping as much water anymore, and spends its time horizontal more than vertical head-down like before. Its arms look like froggy front legs, too! The less-developed one does not seem to be changing as fast as the other two did, and still has very small hind legs. The middle one seems to be just a day or two behind the most frog-like one in development, its arms are still tiny and it still looks more like a tadpole than a frog. They look different every time I check on them! Gotta get that tank set up soon...

As always, click on any of the pictures to see a bigger image.

arms!!

Like magic, arms have appeared! We got back from having dinner, and one tadpole has two tiny arms, complete with fingers, where bumps were earlier today, one tadpole has only one arm and one bump, and the third tadpole has no arms yet (the one with less developed legs, previously the largest of the three tadpoles). Pretty cool, huh?

lookit them legs!

It sure is hard to get decent photos of tadpoles swimming around inside a gallon sized glass pickle jar! It makes it that much harder that they absolutely hate the camera's red auto-focus light and try to get away from it as soon as they see me with the camera in my hands! These little guys are a lot smarter than I ever would have imagined.
They now have visible spots and markings on their faces, but you have to look really really closely to see them. It looks somewhat like freckles across their noses. The tad with the smallest legs is no longer larger than the other two.

I'm running into much resistance with the names I keep coming up with. Nobody likes my choices. I did tell DD that she could pick their names, but I can't stand it that they don't have any names yet. So I thought Marilyn, Bobby, and Jack would be good names. No dice. What about Jimi, Janis, and Elvis? Nope. Winken, Blinken, and Nod? Hippy, Happy, and Hoppy? Flip-Flop, Plip-Plop, Hip-Hop? *sigh*

here are some photos of what they look like today. The largest tadpole still has the smallest legs. The other two now have much more froggy-looking legs, and they are constantly kicking with them. Maybe if you look real close you can see the bumps where their arms will be! In the second photo, you can see the larger tadpole hoovering the floor of their jar. Filter feeders they may be, but they do suck up food particles that have fallen to the bottom.
I still have yet to find a turkey baster to clean their jar with. Wrong time of year, I suppose.

arm buds!

All three tadpoles now have tiny bumps where their arms will be! Can you see the whitish spot in the picture?

ghost arms!

I did a partial water change today (about 1/8 of what is in the jar). Not because the water was cloudy (it's not) but because of the slimy gunk in the bottom of the jar. I think I've been overfeeding them. I need to get a turkey baster to clean the bottom with, but can't seem to find one anywhere this time of year. Two of the tadpoles have what look like ghost arms starting to grow just under their skin, with a slight bump there. I'm guessing/hoping this is where the arms will sprout in just a few more days.

A tadpole's life must be dreadfully dull.

The water is no longer the least bit stinky. Smells faintly "fishy" but not stinky. But it is also not cloudy or brown or green, like the GAF handbook says it should be. I put a few algae-covered pebbles from my fishtank into the tadpole jar and am giving them a little more sunlight (*not* direct sunlight!) to see if I can get some algae growing in there for them to filter out of the water. I figure if people feed their tadpoles spinach, algae must be really good for them. They seem to really enjoy playing in the sunlight, then hiding behind the brown paper, and back and forth like a fun game. A tadpole's life must be dreadfully dull. I also added some ground up floating reptile food stick to their GAF tadpole powder. But it really seems to me that the GAF food is made of ground up reptile food sticks mixed with a little sand or something to bulk it up.
They still have no signs of arms, and just bumps on the sides of their mouths where their whiskers should be, but their legs appear to be getting larger.

quick update

Finally, the tadpoles are starting to look a little bit different, and I can tell them apart now! The smallest one is slightly darker in color than the other two, and is much more active. The largest one is the lightest color and has the least developed hind legs. The middle one, well, is in between, but looks much more like the smallest one than the larger one.

The water is not stinking nearly as bad as it was last night, so I think I did the right thing. They are pooping, so they must be eating. I think I'll cut back on how much I feed them. The booklet says one level scoop every other day.

stinky water!

peeeyoooo! Tads' water started smelling foul yesterday, very much like a compost pile that has not been turned often enough. So I made an uneducated decision to aerate their water by gently scooping up a ladle-full of water and slowly pouring it back in a few times, twice a day. I removed the plastic dome that came with the GAF box (I'll just have to be extra vigilant that no little fingers or foreign objects get into the jar), gave them some more bottled spring water and also dribbled some water out of the "bio-wheel" from my fishtank into their jar, to get some of the good bacteria growing a little faster.

I wonder if those weird dots on their backs, right behind their heads are arm buds? I have no idea where the arms will sprout, this is getting exciting! I am also shopping around to figure out what sort of permanent home they will live in once they are froggies. I believe I'm going to go with a 29 or 30 gallon glass aquarium and glass top, with the biggest, baddest Penguin Bio-Wheel filter they sell (I think it's intended for 50-70 gallon tanks, but I've read that you need to overfilter). It's much more affordable than the Whisper filter, and I have no complaints about the little one in my fishtank. Plus, they've redesigned it, and it looks like it would be more secure and help prevent escapes. I was wanting to do a natural look, but I think I'll have to go the cheap route and use terra cotta flower pots for hidey holes at least at first, with as many soft fake plants (I read that hard plastic can tear the webbing between their toes, ouch!) as I can put in there and still be able to see my froggies.

(as always, click on any pic to see a larger image)