I have 2 pots and a half wine barrel with assorted water plants – reeds, waterlily and pebbles. The water in the smaller pot will over heat in extreme temperatures and unfortunately the inhabitants tend to die.

The tadpoles are now sprouting back legs and have a voracious appetitie!

Watch them feeding!

Happy Halloween!

Yesterday, the enclosure and all fittings received a thorough clean and the “rain system” was unclogged and left running all day. I might add, it was also raining continuously outside and the little Crinia were singing merrily – and still are.

The Dainty males  called all evening and I heard them again in the early hours of the morning even though the rain had been turned off at bedtime.

We woke to find eggs everywhere! I took a few photos and about six hours later took some more. The eggs are definitely fertile and have started their miraculous development.

What long legs!

New pet frogs – 2 Red-eyed Tree Frog morphs added to my frog collection. The following pics were taken 1 week after purchase. The frogs are still yellow and translucent but are beginning to show more green colouring.

Information about Red-eyed Tree Frogs ( link to Frogs Australia Network Database)

Sick Pumpkin

Darth Pumpkin

Flash Back – Halloween 2009

On closer inspection we discovered the strange looking spider fangs were actually frogs legs. The prey is one  unfortunate Common Eastern Froglet ( Crinia signifera ).

The little frogs are quite noisy at the moment, enjoying the rain and mild Spring weather. This little fellow should have stayed away from the swimming pool. The spider shown frequents the cracks around the pool coping edge and often feeds on insects and small crickets that wander by.

The spider appears to be a Fishing or Water Spider ( Dolomedes sp ) and has often been seen around the pool edge or on the surface of the water.

Once home, I place the crickets in a larger container and offer them special cricket food as well as carrot slices and orange segments. They are usually starving and have swarmed all over the food within minutes as you can see below.

Choosing the right storage container is important. My first container for large crickets was a medium sized plastic storage box. I cut out part of the plastic lid and siliconed fly screen wire in place. Unfortunately I’d chosen soft flexible fly screen and the crickets ate through it and escaped. Whisper ( the cat) is an excellent cricket catcher… in fact I can call her, say crickets and she comes running. Yum!
I found the cricket box got rather smelly too as there was not enough air circulation and space for the large crickets.

I’ve since bought a 1 metre tall plastic garbage bin. No need for a lid and some recycled paper kitty litter in the bottom as well as lots of bits of egg carton seem to have fixed all my problems. The cricket do make a lot of noise though.

Every so often I buy woodies (cockroaches) or house flies to vary the frogs’ diet. The woodies come from the same pet store. The flies I have ordered from ARC. They sell crickets and cockroaches as well.

To ensure all the frogs have an adequate calcium intake, I dust the crickets with a pinch of calcium powder every second or third feed. I usually do this by adding calcium and crickets to a plastic bag, give a gentle shake and tip them into the enclosure. Sometimes the Green Tree Frogs are so keen on getting to the crickets they get a mouthful of plastic bag instead

Two of the plants in the current tank have done very well and not minded at all about having their roots in nothing more than water and gravel – the Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum) and the Parlour Palms (Chamaedorea elegans). The Creeping fig (Ficus pumila) on the other hand is looking very sparse and ratty. It is still alive but hasn’t done much at all. My mini bromeliad and birds nest fern did not survive all the water and sadly rotted away. Some dwarf mondo grass lasted for a while but eventually died. See the “then and now” shots above.

The New Enclosure

This tank is big! Measuring 140cm long, 55cm deep and 60cm high it is well over 3 times the size of the current tank and just fits along a free section of lounge room wall.

I wanted to create a custom background for the tank that would be planted with various epiphtyes and hopefully include some sort of watering system. I searched various aquarium stores to find suitable pieces of driftwood that were not too heavy and whose shape would create interesting spots to attach plants and allow frogs to sleep.

I laid the tank on its back and put in place all the wood bits and tubing for waterfalls then sprayed expanding foam around them. I found this stuff hard to use – it expands and expands then expands a whole lot more! By the time I’d worked from one end to the other the whole thing was a puffy foam mess with many of the bits of wood virtually hidden. Fortunately once cured, the foam can be cut back with a knife. The white foam in the picture below is after the cut back!

Next step – all the foam was sealed with 2 coats of black non-toxic pond sealer to make sure the background was completely covered and waterproof.

To achieve a natural look all the sealed foam areas were covered with silicon and coco fibre. The coco fibre was pressed into the silicon while it was still wet. I could only work on small areas at a time as the silicon skins over in just a few minutes. I ran out of silicon and dry coco fibre at this step so the picture shows the back wall only half done.

Unfortunately my watering system/waterfall did not work properly and some leakage developed in the back wall. I sealed everything up with more silicon and coco fibre, allowed everything to dry and cure properly then planted the background with a selection of epiphytic plants.

Background with mini bromeliads, tillandsias and native orchids

Driftwood and rock were used to designate the land and water areas. The land area was filled with a layer of expanded clay balls so that the coco peat bedding is lifted above the water level. A layer of flyscreen helps to stop the coco fibre from falling through to the clay balls below. The clay balls are very light so weight in the tank is kept to a minimum.

Finally the plants were added, some gravel for the water area and a heater and water filter
( hidden away towards the back left corner of the tank)

Plants include mini bromeliads, Birds Nest fern, Peace Lily, Creeping Fig, Chlorophytum, Dwarf Mondo Grass, Native Violet, Ferns, moss, Baby’s Tears, Pearlwort, Parlour Palms and begonia.

Finished Tank

I will allow a few weeks for things to settle down and take root before adding my frogs. Green tree frogs are very rough on foliage. It will be interesting to see how everything stands up to them jumping all over the place.

Damselfly Nymphs

Dragonflies and Damselflies are closely related. They both need water to breed so it is not surprising to find them hovering around the frog pond. I should be pleased… their presence is an indication of a healthy pond environment with good water quality.

Dragonflies and Damselflies are carnivorous as both adults and nymphs. The nymphs feed on aquatic insects, worms, tadpoles, sometimes small fish and can be cannibalistic. I have found many nymphs in the pond over the last few weeks and no tadpoles or eggs in sight!

Grrrr…..

These nymphs are obviously excellent predators so I am removing them when I see them to reduce the numbers.

On the positive side, mosquito larvae are non-existent in the pond so I have the nymphs to thank for that. I do not keep any fish as I found they had developed a taste for frog spawn. The evicted nymphs have been placed in a water garden pot with plenty of mozzie larvae to keep them happy.

Damselflies ( left )
(sub-order of Zygoptera)

The nymphs are long and slender compared with the dragonfly nymphs. They have 3 leaf-like caudal gills at the rear of the abdomen.
Size: up to 35 mm including gills

Movie clip of a Damselfly Larva capturing a few mini water bugs – Peron’s Treefrog calling in the background

** More than eight-tenths of their brain is devoted to analysing visual information **

Dragonflies
(sub-order of Anisoptera)

A Dragonfly nymph has a stout body compared to the Damselfly nymph. They breathe by sucking water into the abdomen over an internal gill. This gill is connected to the outside of their body by an anal pyramid. They can escape quickly from threats by squirting water out helping to propel them forwards in the water.
Size: up to 50 mm

Dragonfly Nymphs – I think the leg section was damaged during capture

Edit: 25th January 2009

Today I managed to photograph an adult Dragonfly which had been hovering around the pond.

Dragonflies are larger and have thicker bodies than damselflies. They usually spread their wings when at rest while the damselfly will hold its wings together above its body. Dragonfly eyes are close together compared to those of a damselfly. Their fore and hind wings differ in shape whereas the damsel’s are similar and narrow at the base.

Litoria verreauxii

Last weekend was spent in the garden pruning and tidying up the flax plants along the side of the pool. They were all drooping into the water making it impossible to walk along the edge to clean and attend to the filter.

We found 2 little frogs hiding amongst the foliage. The first I recognised straight away as a young Peron’s Tree Frog with it’s distinctive silver, cross shaped iris and bold yellow and black mottling on the back of the thighs.

The second little frog is a new find in my backyard – a Litoria verreauxii. I’m thrilled that he has found the garden a pleasant place to be and hope he decides to stay. In the picture below you can just see the orange-red colouring behind his thighs. His back is somewhat lighter in colour than the pictures I’ve seen in frog guides but he does have the dark patches on his sides and in the groin.

Information about Verreaux’s Tree Frog ( link to Frogs Australia Network Database)

Frog Call (mp3)

Young Peron’s Tree Frog

The Peron’s Tree Frogs who were living in the waterwell pots last year have not returned yet. I did cut back the grape vine quite severely this year and it is just starting to shoot now. Hopefully they will be back once the vine covers the pergola again. I can hear Peron’s frogs calling from the local creek only a few blocks away, so they are certainly active and in the area.