Mantella aurantiaca

Nick Townsend

I purchased 6 Mantella aurantiaca from a shop in Portsmouth over two years ago as a gift to my partner Lara. It was our first purchase of ground dwelling frogs rather than European or Red eyed tree frogs. We had kept fire-bellied toads before but these Mantellas were a real treat. We had researched the correct environment for them by asking the dealers and by reading books. As keen conservationists we did not want to add to the wild depletion problems and, though we had asked for captive bred frogs, we were sold wild caught specimens. Once we had taken them home and settled them in, we decided that the only solution was to do everything we could to breed them successfully and to return high quality captive bred frogs into the hobby whilst enjoying them as pets.

The frogs were probably under a year old when we bought them judging by their size. They grew relatively unnoticed until we found ourselves woken in the night by a noise like crickets cheeping... The males were calling and we sprayed them with rainwater to bring them on to spawn. They were kept in our bedroom as this was warm but not too hot and the tank was placed so it got the late days sun. The ambient temperature during the summer was between 20-27°C and 17-20°C during the winter.

A couple of weeks went by and I decided that the frogs needed a clean as they had only been cleaned twice since we got them. I took the frogs out and removed all the decor and substrate and, after popping some food into the holding tank, I took the water bowl out. This was set in the substrate of moss-covered foam, with a gap of about 5mm underneath. To my astonishment there were three clutches of spawn underneath in various stages of development, one completely dead, one with little movement and one lovely shiny mass of tadpoles moving around in their spawn.

Each was made up of around 30 eggs with one clutch far bigger in egg size than the rest. Since then and up to about August last year they have produced between 8-10 clutches of 30-40 eggs. We had simply been caught by surprise by their behaviour, in light of their youth and the speed in which they could, with regular frequency, lay so many eggs. With very little experience with these animals we seemed to have been very successful in "making them feel at home". The frogs called continuously for around 3 months from May with the calling reaching a crescendo at around midnight each night.

We set up a tank with a bubble filter with gravel and weeds and popped the tadpoles in there. We did just that, using our expertise from fish breeding to create the perfect environment with clean water etc, as all the books suggested! That killed them! We were very distraught but as the frogs were calling so much we didn't worry too much as there would soon be some more eggs. The bubble filter was removed and replaced with a brand new external filter, which didn't work with the next batch either. We could get the tadpoles to break free from the spawn and swim freely in a Tupperware container without problem, but could not get them to last any longer in the tank.

We had always disagreed with the textbooks saying that only filtered pre-boiled rainwater should be used. So we ripped out the tank filter and all decor etc, boiled the gravel in case of infection and gave the tank a good clean. I re-assembled the tank and filled it up with rainwater fresh from the water butt in the garden. The water contained all sorts of bugs and algae and we added some Canadian pond weed (Elodea densa).

This did the trick, the next first batch that was put in there survived. They were no more than 7 millimetres long when we put them in and we did not see them for ages. Another batch, which was to be the last of the year, went in with the first lot and we left them alone. The tadpoles seemed to eat detritus and the algae in the tank along with the weed. After while we started feeding them with fish pellets and some fish flake along with occasional pieces of bacon. Their metamorphosis took around 110 days, with many casualties along the way from bad water and natural selection.

The froglets were fed all manner of bugs, hatchling crickets and small spiders shaken from moss. We now have 11 young frogs eating loads of fruit flies and hatchling crickets and some very fat looking adult frogs, eating the same, that will hopefully soon start calling again.

We are hoping for the male to female ratio to be more biased to the male side after our loss, so we can swap a male for a female to get some new blood in. This year we will concentrate on food and water quality, feeding Spirulina and fish flake to the tadpoles and having a drip-feed filtration system. We are constantly on the lookout for some other species of Mantella, as we would love to apply our experience to some other colour forms. We went to Hamm for the Terraristika show in March to buy some Poison dart frogs and managed to get 10 back alive, after losing two through drying out in the hotel room over night. We will be trying our hand at these D. auratus and D. leucomelas.

A little tip for those buying frogs this way always check first with the Channel transport company if they will allow you to travel with the animals. Eurotunnel have a policy, and some very bored customs staff - but that's another story for another day!!