By Tijl of @Urban__Jungles
Foreword
First, a quick introduction! My name is Tijl and I am a frog enthusiast from Belgium. I have been keeping and breeding different species of dart frogs since 2010. Back in 2014 I decided to purchase 4 Ameerega hahneli ‘Tahuayo’ from Ruud Schouten, the owner of the company ‘Dutch Rana’. Who, in his turn, imported them from Understory Enterprises, Canada.
At the time of purchase these captive bred frogs were still young and too small to sex. Over time, the group turned out to be 3 males and 1 female. I bred with this group from 2015 to late 2020. Currently the group has been moved to a friends’ collection where breeding efforts will continue.
Since these frogs are becoming difficult to acquire in the hobby in recent years and breeders are having little to no success with them, I decided to write a report on how I’ve been able to breed this species and successfully raise them from tadpoles to adult frogs.
The frogs:
A. Hahneli are tiny poison dart frogs native to South America, the specific local morph described in this topic can be found in Tahuayo, Peru. Males measure 17–19 mm and females 19–22 mm SVL. Their back and limbs are finely granular and goldish-brown in colour, with or without black spots. The flanks are black and bordered above by narrow, white or cream coloured dorsolateral lines that extend from the tip of the snout to the groin. There is also a white or cream coloured labial stripe that does not extend onto the arm. The ventral is blue with black reticulations. There are yellow-orange-red oval spots on the ventral surfaces of the arms, inner surfaces of the shanks, and in the groin. The iris is dark brown.
A. Hahneli reach maturity and are ready to breed around the age of 1 year old after morphing out. Males produce a territorial call which consists of a long series of short “peep” notes, whereas the courtship call is similar but consists of only three notes.
Females lay 6–33 pigmented eggs on the leaf-litter or in empty film canisters that I like to use in their enclosure. Eggs hatch after 4–16 days and tadpoles are carried on the back of their father to a creek* and deposited. After this, the parental care stops. The tadpoles are brown, with a depressed body, and long tail. They metamorphose after two months depending on the water temperature.
*Only recently was it confirmed by Angel Chujutalli, who was working in situ, that creeks or puddles always had some running or flowing water. I’ll explain later why I had these suspicions.
Housing and setup:
I housed this group in a 50x50x50cm custom built vivarium with a floating bottom. I like to use setups like this to make sure the substrate is always drained properly after misting. This way the excess water flows through some pond foam into a small gutter in front of the tank. I drain this gutter from time to time with a basic aquarium siphon making sure there is never more than 0.5-1 cm of water in that area.
The misting schedule is 3 times a day for 12 seconds in this setup, the relative humidity stays around 65-90%. I always use RO water mixed with 15% tap water. During the 3-month dry season, which I recreate from December to February, misting is only done once by hand for around 10 seconds in the morning. During that time I don’t drain the enclosure so the frogs can always have access to a little water. The lighting consists of 2 T5HO lamps that are put outside of the enclosure and they are also used to heat the tank. This keeps the temperature regularly around 19°c-25°c, night-day. UV is not required.
The enclosure is decorated mostly with driftwood, a few small bromeliads and some broad leafed plants. I used Epiprenum ‘Aureum’ and ‘pinnatum’ mostly. The floor area is covered with branches, bark, seedpods and nutshells on top of a thick layer of leaf litter. For leaf litter, I always like to use a mix of Oak and Magnolia. All this is on top of some pond foam covered with aquarium gravel.
Diet:
The staple insect will always be fruit flies for dart frogs since they are very easy to breed and supplement. That is why the A. Haneli are mostly fed Drosophila melanogaster due to their size. They are able to consume them from when they reach 3-4 months old. Adults will also take Drosophila hydei, but I noticed they would often skip these if they could. My guess is they are slightly too large for them.
Aside from their main staple, I always try to give the largest variety of insects possible from the day they hit land. Their diet will always include : isopods, springtails, aphids, greenbugs and meadow plankton during the spring and summer.
I choose to supplement the flies with Repashy Calcium Plus. This is probably the best complete supplement available for dart frogs. The product is also designed to be used every feeding. This makes sure the frogs get all their necessary vitamins and minerals every time they are being fed. You also won’t experience problems with overdosing the vitamins this way.
Aside from Calcium Plus, I also use Repashy Vitamin A Plus ‘once or twice a month. This depends on the health of the clutches they produce. If the clutches are good, I only dust the flies once a month with this supplement. If they get to be less viable then it is twice monthly. Another supplement that could be used to enhance their diet would be Repashy SuperPig, but I did not find a lot of benefit in using this product for the A. Hahneli since the Calcium Plus already contains a good amount of the carotenoids found in SuperPig . Their flash marks only seem to be getting more red when using carotenoids containing high amounts of red pigment.
*It is important to know the frogs are only able to eat very tiny insects when they just morphed out of the water. Until they reach the age of +-3 months, they are fed the most tiny springtails, aphids and greenbugs as staple instead of flies.
Behaviour:
In my experience, the frogs seem to be most active in the early morning and late afternoon/evening and tend to be more shy or less active during the rest of the day. At dusk and dawn you can hear the males calling/singing almost nonstop. After dark, you can find them spending the night on a broad leafed plant in the upper parts of their enclosures and sometimes the males are nearby or on top of a clutch of eggs they are trying to protect during that time.
These frogs do well in groups unlike most common dart frogs in captivity. I have never seen any signs of aggression among the males or females in this breeding group or the other (larger) groups of A. Hahneli I have worked with.
Breeding:
Getting these frogs to breed is very easy. When the temperature, humidity and the frogs’ health are on point, the adult frogs will start to breed non-stop during a simulated ‘wet’ season from March-November and lay up to 2-3 clutches a month.
Raising tadpoles:
When it comes to raising tadpoles in captivity, I recommend pulling these eggs a few days before they are completely developed so you can raise the tadpoles by hand. Over time I learned if I left the males to do their normal rearing routine, they would never drop off the tadpoles and they always carried them on their backs until the tadpoles died. I tried to add water dishes, raise the water level in the gutter, check the bromeliads. But I had never had any success in letting the males deposit their tadpoles on their own. This was quite an interesting find.
I also noticed when I tried to raise the tadpoles in still water* the tadpoles would die within the first 2-3 days. This is probably the main reason why the males never found a suitable deposition site. There was no moving water!
So I figured out that I needed to recreate a small pond with a slow current or stream and had to start collecting the eggs to raise them myself. After collecting them, I kept them in a petri dish filled with a few drops of water until the tadpoles hatched. After that, it was simple to transfer them to water by using a spoon or a pipette.
*Most common Dendrobatidae in captivity like Tinctorius, Ranitomeya, Phyllobates,Epipedobates are easily raised in still water. Usually, I raise a single tadpole in a plastic cup filled with tap water that first sits for a day, add an oak leaf and that’s it. From there the tadpoles only need to be fed, I never even do water changes. Only adding some water if required.
Tadpole set-up and care
For the A. Hahneli tadpoles I set up a basic aquarium, added an aquarium filter/pump to create the stream and did a weekly 50% water change to keep the oxygen level up. I used a big rock as land access for the newly morphed and added some tiny gravel and oak leaves to shelter the tadpoles. An aquarium heater was not used since the room temperature is already 19°c (66F).
You want the tadpoles to grow at a normal rate so raising tadpoles in water with a higher temperature can have them grow faster, but it often leads to complications since they might grow too quickly.
Feeding them was also a bit of a search at first. I tried to give them a variety in commercial aquarium fish food and found the tadpoles only consumed the algae tablets I gave. I used algae wafers from the brand Hkari since I have had great results with their Koi Staples for raising other species’ tadpoles.
After 2 months of growth and seeing the tadpoles developed their front legs, the first ones hit land. 99.99% of the time they kept their tail when leaving the water, so it is important to keep an eye out when their front legs break through!
Raising newly morphed froglets to adulthood
Now that the froglets started to enter land, they get transferred to a plastic container with a simple minimal setup ventilated to raise them during the first month of their lives. This makes it easier to keep count and monitor their development and health. I believe they also benefit from a higher relative humidity at this stage of life at +-80-95%.
A month after they are introduced to their grow-out container, the tail has been completely absorbed and their colour and markings start to show. At this point they are also able to eat all sizes of springtails, aphids, greenbugs and a few Drosophila melanogaster.
At the age of 3 months, they are ready to move to a larger container similar to their parents’ enclosure where they can grow up to adulthood. When they reach their 6th month out of water, the frogs become more shy during the day, just like their parents. I feel that the frogs can be treated and taken care of as you would take care of any other adult A. hahneli. The first males always started calling/singing at the age of 7 months old. After this it is just a matter of waiting for the females to respond. They are able to produce their first viable clutches around one year after they set their first steps on land and continue the circle of life.
You can find me sharing daily dart frog and vivarium content on Instagram at @urban__jungles. Feel free to check out the page and come say hi!
great little frogs.