Frog Care Information
Frogs and Frog Care Information
Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor)-Though called a gray tree
frog; this animal can be many colors. Depending on where the frog is resting
it can be shades of gray, brown, green, or white. The range of the frog is
in the wooded wetlands in North America. They eat crickets and mealworms.
There are around 3,900 species of tailless amphibians, or
Anura, also called Salientia, including the frog and toad.
Frogs are members of the zoological class called Amphibia.
Amphibians are cold-blooded (or poikilothermic) vertebrate
animals. They differ from reptiles in that they lack scales and generally
return to water to breed.
They are one of three types of Amphibians. Anura, also called
Salientia, (frogs and toads), caudate (salamanders and newts) and caecilians
(worm-like amphibians).
Some records show that in captivity, many species of frogs
and toads can live for surprisingly long times. They seem generally average
somewhere between 4 and 15 years!
Pine Barrens Treefrog
(Hyla andersonii)
Status: Endangered.
Description: Long limbs and digits ending in adhesive disks
for climbing trees and twigs. Males have a vocal sac, which connects beneath
their necks and may inflate. The coloration of Pine Barrens treefrogs is
green with lavender stripes bordered in white. Considerable orange also occurs
along their legs' folds.
Size: 1.125 to 1.75 inches long. Females grow larger than
males.
Habitat: The pine barrens treefrog is a resident of the swamps,
bogs, and warm acid waters of the New Jersey pine barrens and the pocosins
(shrub bogs) of the Carolinas.
·Range: From southern New Jersey to North and South
Carolina, as far west as central Alabama, and occasionally as far south as
the Florida panhandle.
Food Source: Small insects and other invertebrates.
·Population: Development pressure has led to declines
in pine barrens treefrog populations - three distinct populations remain,
with the greatest number of remaining individuals located in New Jersey.
·Voice: A nasal quonk-quonk-quonk repeated at a rate
of about 25 times in 20 seconds (on warm nights - more slowly on colder ones).
Call is lower in pitch and carries less well than the call of most other
species of treefrogs.
·Reproduction: Breeding occurs in late spring in New
Jersey, and from April to September farther south. The singing male attracts
the female Pine Barrens treefrog, and mating takes place. Several groups
of eggs, each of which can contain over 1000 individual eggs, are places
onto plant stems and stuck a few centimeters under water. After hatching,
the juvenile treefrog passes through a phase as a tadpole before its
metamorphosis into an adult - this entire process takes about two months.
Survival Threats: Habitat loss due to expanding human population
pressure, use of pesticides such as DDT.
(Agalychnis callidryas)
One of the most beautiful frogs that are fairly easy to find
in pet shops or at herp shows it the Red-Eyed tree frog. They are easy to
take care of and easy to breed. Red-eyed tree frogs come from rain forests
of Costa Rica in South America. They have bright red eyes and an almost neon-like
shade of green with blue and yellow-stripped sides with orange toes. They
are excellent climbers. They are nocturnal and hide on the backs of leaves
during the day and come out at night to hunt for small insects such as crickets.
Males are much smaller than females. Many enthusiasts have successfully kept
this species with great success under the right conditions.
Red-Eyes like temperatures around 78-85 during the day and
about anywhere from 66 to 77at nights. The humidity should be kept around
80-100%. They can swim, so there is no worry of them drowning in any water
areas you may have in their tank, just be sure there are places where the
frog can climb out on to, if it falls in.
Cage Setup
This specie of frog does well with others together in community,
but a pair of Red-eyes can be kept in a 10-gallon aquarium. But if more than
2 individuals are desired to be kept, I recommend a larger tank such as a
20'' high. It is better to have a tall tank so that you can put tall leafy
plants in so they can climb and hide under. Once you have your aquarium picked
out and ready to be setup, Get some plants at your local nursery which are
suitable for tropical temperature and humidity, Ferns, Bromeliads and other
plants with smooth surfaces that wont scratch or irritate the frogs skin.
Take some aquarium gravel and put about one inch on the bottom of the tank
then take a piece of air conditioner filter and place that over the rocks.
Now you are ready to put some topsoil in the tank, Pour about 4 inches of
topsoil and then mold it into an interesting terrain. Find a small water
dish such as a lab dish or a lid to a container that's about an inch deep.
Stick the water dish in the soil till the soil is just before the rim of
the dish. Mow you can selectively place your plants in your terrarium, place
a large leafed plant over the water dish maybe about 6-7 inches above it.
Next take some live moss or you can buy some of that dead stuff at the store,
but I prefer live over dead because it looks much nicer. Cover the remaining
soil with moss; be careful not to let any of the moss over hang into the
water dish because it will drain the water real quickly. Now that your cage
is set up, you need to decide on what type of lid you are going to use, you
have a couple of choices. You can go with a regular all glass aquarium lid,
which does not allow much space to put your arm in to attend to the tank,
or you could make your own lid out of Plexiglas and screen. The
Plexiglas
lid is a great lid because you can change it to change to humidity. To make
the Plexiglas lid, get a piece of 1/4-inch thick Plexiglas big enough
to fit on the inside rim of your tank. Next cut the center out leaving a
2-inch border around the sides, you can take tape and attach screen for the
dry season or you can take tape and attach plastic wrap to increase the humidity
as in the wet season.
Diet
Red-Eyes eat any type of insect that will fit in their mouth,
crickets are to most easiest to get a pet stores, but you want to add a vitamin
powder with vitamin D3 to the crickets. They will eat flies, moth's grasshoppers,
and possibly other small frogs. You should try and feed you frogs every other
day, watch them and see how much they will eat a night and figure out how
much you should put in.
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