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22 13:26:09

Question
hi,my fire belly toad...the boy one is chirping or "barking"alot ive seen them mating once a little while ago and the girl is getting fat but i wanted to know how much water and stuff to put in the tadpoles tank,if there is gonna be tadpolez,btw why has the female getting on top of the male?it happens once in a while

Answer
Hi Alexis,

You asked about the proper set up for the tadpoles but before there are tadpoles there will be eggs to look after. Your adult frogs should have around  5 or 6 inches of water in which to lay their eggs. They prefer water with vegetation so place some aquatic plants and rocks in the water area. It is best to remove the eggs to another container for hatching and 2 to 3 inches of water is sufficient. Use the water from the adult's tank and move some plants into the the egg/tadpole container as well. The eggs can be kept just at normal room temperature and should hatch in around 3 to 5 days. The tadpoles don't move around much at first and don't need to be fed for the first few days. They will continue to feed from the absorbed egg during that time. After that you can start offering flaked fish food, tadpole food and algae wafers. Raising tadpoles is similar to keeping small fish. You will need a small filter or you will need to do regular water changes with dechlorinated water to keep them healthy. I use one of the "Whisper" type filters that has gentle suction that does not hurt the tadpoles and is suitable for use in small amounts of water.

If your second frog is actually grabbing the first frog and not just sitting on him then it is possible that you might have two males. Male fire bellys get very, very excited during breeding season and will even attempt to breed with other males!

These two links have some good information on breeding:

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

http://www.anapsid.org/bombina.html