I’ve never been big into amphibians. Having always been a snake guy at my core I never had much interest in many other herps aside from a handful of random lizards. Dart frogs, however, always piqued my interest and for many years I had always wanted some but never took the plunge into the colorful world of these living jewels.
I got my first tank a year ago (November of 2018) and started with a group of three juvenile Phyllobates vittatus. In no time I was hooked, eventually ending up with a few more tanks with a few more species. As I started to build the first tank I came to an interesting conclusion about all of this dendro madness. There’s a lot to be learned about keeping these frogs and a few things in life that it reminded me. Here’s 5 things I learned after getting into dart frogs.You Have to Take Your Time
1) You Have to Take Your Time
If you ask anyone in the dart frog hobby, they will tell you that if you start a new tank you need to wait at least a month after is has been set up, planted, and seeded with the clean up crew (isopods, springtails, etc.) This gives the plants and microfauna time to cycle, grow, and get established in the tank. This means that you have plenty of time to figure out what species you want to put in the tank if you haven’t already put thought into it and planted it accordingly. This all taught me to slow down, take my time, and enjoy the process of things.
2) Patience
After everything was planted it was then a waiting game for the tank to fill out a bit. I added my frogs and was then wondering how long it would be before I started to hear a male calling or to find tadpoles in a dish. Once again it made me focus on enjoying the ride with these animals. In no time the tank had filled out more, male the started filling the house with his calls and eventually the tadpoles had shown up in droves. This taught me that in time, you get to where you want things to be. You just have to be patient.
3) Take a Minute to Enjoy It
I love my vittatus, but sadly, don’t see them much aside from the usual brief second as they disappear under a hide. It wasn’t until I got my group of D. leucomelas that I really stopped on a regular basis (even if it’s only for a few seconds) to stop and appreciate just how cool it is to be able to keep these creatures. The leucs are the opposite of the vittatus and are out and about constantly! When I would be cleaning cages or just working around the house I found myself stopping as I passed the tank to watch them roam and hunt for spare flies that managed to survive past the first 10 minutes in the tank. This taught me to stop and appreciate my collection, even the snakes. In the usual day to day grind it is easy to forget how lucky we are to be able to keep all these cool, interesting, and gorgeous herps.
4) I Pay More Attention To Plants
Before dart frogs I never paid much attention to plants. I think anyone would agree with me that when you get the dart frog “bug” you naturally start paying more attention to plants no matter where you are. You could be in a gardening section at a store, the doctor’s office, even out on a walk and find yourself seeing a plant and thinking “Man I wonder how well that would do in a viv…” Plants are everywhere, it wasn’t until I started building vivaria that I realized I took them for granted. This taught me to appreciate more of the natural world outside of fauna even if it’s in an unnatural setting. Life can be found anywhere if you look close enough.
5) Music Is Great, But Frogs Are Better
Music is a huge part of my life so it is rare that I don’t have something playing in the background when I’m cleaning cages or feeding the collection. Over time I came to prefer having a silent house with loud frogs. It is so cool to have a quiet house and hear the regular calls of different species. Some people may find this annoying but for me it’s very relaxing. Your home suddenly feels like a rainforest and it’s nice to be able to pause for a bit and just listen to the male frogs do their thing. This taught me that sometimes silence is better than noise even when there’s a chirp or a buzz in the background.
Darts are insanely addicting so it doesn’t take long to go from one tank to five like I did. It isn’t just the frogs that leaving one wanting more but the whole process of it all. The building, the finding plants, the cycling. You quickly learn with vivaria, that the animals are simply the accent to the thriving box of life that we keep in our homes. A lot can be learned from something so simple.
