Leos and fire bellies

Question
Hello, recently, one of my leos passed away. It never would eat! Do you know why it would do that?? And, my toads are always breeding! I have 2, so they are obviously male and female. Why have they not produced eggs?? I'm curious but hopes they don't (it's fine if they do though :)T"hey are in a 10 gasllon that is semi-aquatic. THANKS!!!!

Answer
Hi Nicholas, Sorry about your leo. It sounds like you have others and I assume they are doing fine so it should not be related to how you are keeping them. Lack of feeding is a symptom of so many conditions that it would impossible to speculate what could have been wrong with that one. Parasites and impaction are two of many possibilities. Was it a good weight when you acquired it which would obviously indicate that it had been feeding well at some point or was it a baby that just never thrived? If they were housed together could there have been domination issues in the tank that intimidated that one?

Fire bellies, like a lot of frogs, have much better breeding success if they went through a cooling period over the winter. If they are in the mating position with one grabbing the other from above then you can be certain you have a male. Males can get overly excited in the spring and sometimes grasp other males as well though. If you have heard two separate frogs calling that would indicate two males. Does the "female" act receptive to the mating or does she (he) squirm away from it? Your set-up sounds fine, they do need a semi-aquatic situation with plants in the water for egg-laying. It could happen still, your female may just not be at the egg-laying stage yet. Breeding them is fun but it can be quite labour intensive to look after the tapoles and froglets. There is also the issue of finding homes or buyers for them afterwards.

This is my favourite site about fire bellies:

http://www.amphibian.co.uk/bombina.html