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What to start? Poison darts/aquarium...

  • Thread starter dustin
  • Start date
Hey everyone!!! Long time no see, hope everyone's doing well.

After cleaning my room, i now have a 20gallon long tank and a 30 gallon tank and i'm wondering what i should put in them??? I also have a 55gallon downstairs.

Here's some of the things i was thinking of in no particular order...

1. Cherry shrimp, etc
2. Blue lobster red etc.
4. pufferfish
6. cichlids, always wanted to try breeding them since they are mouthbrooders i have a 55gallon downstairs that needs something too.
7. poison dart frogs, i'm really interested in these now, any tips?
8. mantids i know there are some people on here who love these, i like the ones in my yard haha but maybe i could expand, i will probably buy a 10 gallon for it though i'm not sure...
11. anything else you can think of?

Personally i'd love to have one of the tanks in my room to be poison dart frogs. but i have to decide the other tank so i can determine which one to use.

Happy to be back on the forum,
can't wait to hear from you all.

dustin
 
Last edited:
Hey Dustin I keep darts and they're great. I would join www.dendroboard.com and take a look at the beginner section and all the stickies. Also like on here the search function yields many great answers for questions.

Andrew
 
Hey thanks andrew will do, i think i'm definitely going to get some. thanks for the link
 
take oscars out of the list....a 55 is too small for them.
 
ok :D moving closer to the frogs, starting to think i might do a couple tanks of dart frogs
 
take oscars out of the list....a 55 is too small for them.

Ahh, but he said cichlids, not specifcally oscars. There plenty of smaller ones that will do nicely in any of the three tanks.
 
Ahh, but he said cichlids, not specifcally oscars. There plenty of smaller ones that will do nicely in any of the three tanks.

haha i did, then i took it off the list :p, i was thinking more of a cichild though, my dad used to have oscars. So the new list....

1. Definitely Poison dart frogs will get 1-2 of the tanks
2. cichilds
3. mantids
4. shrimp/lobster

haha i keep dropping it down

remember tank sizes....

20 gallon long, 30 gallon, 55 gallon.
 
I don't remember the species now..but I once had a successful breeding of small cichlids in a 20 gallon tank. My son has green terrors in a 55 gallon
 
It will be cool to have a dart frog tank with cherry shrimp in the pond. Be aware, however, that you need around 10 gallons to sustain a population of shrimp and that some species of dart frogs don't like ponds.
 
  • #10
10 gallons? i've sustained populations in 2.5...
 
  • #11
haha i might buy a small 10 gallon set up if i do the shrimp now that i think about it...i'm starting to wonder if i can get the 55 up to my room too but i doubt my mom will let me do that.

30 gallon: dart frogs
20 gallon long: darts (or shrimp if i get the 55 upstairs haha)
55 gallon: Cichlids (darts if upstairs)

i think i'm going to start gathering supplies for the 30 gallon dart tank haha, tomorrows my bday so let's see how things go :p
 
  • #12
10 gallons? i've sustained populations in 2.5...

Are you talking about breeding populations?

If so can you tell me how, I'm still learning about these shrimps.
 
  • #13
@raymond: yes i am. small shrimp in general such as neocardina, paracardina, etc etc have almost a negligible amount of biomass, producing very little waste and depending on species, spend most of their time eating detritus and left over fish food. very few species get larger than an inch. just make sure the tank is heavily planted so the babies have plenty of places to hide.
 
  • #14
I myself want to Dart Frogs sometime in the future.

55 gallon: Cichlids (darts if upstairs)

I liked Discus when I had them..... hope to in the future again.

discus.jpg
 
  • #15
ive kept darts and ive bred mantellas.......keeping the frogs is easy.....infact if your used to growing tropical CP's its pretty easy to jump to darts cause your already used to paying attention to what the environment is doing, just got to keep in mind the smaller frogs are escape artists and escape means death unless your right there when it happens.....

that said, raising food for them is a PITA, infact i gave them up cause i ran into a couple headaches with the food raising i was having trouble getting past.....this can be less of a big deal if yah live somewhere where there are alot of other dart keepers and can buy fruit flies and such off them in an emergency but given i am in BFE and have nightly lows below -40 in the winter making shipping near impossible for several months, all i had on was myself to rely on.....

---------- Post added at 09:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:27 PM ----------

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some are called "thumbnails" for a reason
IMG_0484.jpg
 
  • #16
that said, raising food for them is a PITA
I like the Dendrobates azureus which are a little bigger and I've had an idea for an alternate food source for them since I agree raising FF is a PITA. I never search to see if anyone has tried this or not.
My idea is Turkistan Roach (Blatta lateralis). They drop there eggs sacks. They do not climb glass. So it would be very easy to place the eggs sacks in a dish in the dart frog cage. Baby roaches hatch which are very small and could be potential food Dendrobates azureus.
 
  • #17
Azureus is a morph of dendrobates tinctorius, which is known for only taking small prey items. I've heard story's of baby roaches being fed and then one or two getting away and 5 months later you find a adult roach in the terrarium. Not something I'd want.

Raising ff's is the easiest food item I've ever raised. (mealworms, kingworms, crickets, roaches). Only requires 5 minutes of time once a week or so, and after 4 weeks you throw a culture out. They really aren't hard.

If you do want to avoid ff's pinhead crickets are an alternative but really ff should be the main meal. If you still won't use ff take a look at the phylobates. They are known for taking larger items, especially the terribilis being that they are so big. Phylobates vittatus will also take large items for it's size.
 
  • #18
on sizes of food, i concur with Drew.....

on the ease of fruit flies, he is right it is simple and not time consuming if everything goes right.....however if your like me and seem to have some sort of fungus spore floating around that destroys the food used to raise fruit flies on faster than the flies can produce than you run into one hell of a problem.....

so as i said in my first post the food is the major pain with darts, the closer you are to other froggers the easier it is....cultures will crash and you will sometimes run into problems like my issue with fungus contamination.....other froggers close by and cash on hand to buy cultures off them go a long way to piece of mind.....
 
  • #19
haha yes, When i had my leopard geckos i had to raise crickets and meal worms :p Which weren't all that fun. haha but my geckos when i did feed them a big cricket ever now and then both got ahold of one cricket and ripped it apart...pretty gruesome haha

i've also raised microworms too which were probably the easiest.

I think i can handle it reading on the PDFF that you also have live cultures of food inside your vivarium...springtails and isopods. They told me i should seed it 2 weeks before i add the frogs and those will become another food source for them. I was wondering if they would overpopulate but i planned to have 3-4 d. azureus in a 30 gallon tank, and i've heard they eat readily.

I'm also interested in the larger species at least to start with although i do like the coloring on your thumbnail frog :D

Roaches are foreign to me but they sound like an option, if i do decide to raise and feed them to my frogs i might pick them out a couple at a time to make sure they get eaten.
 
  • #20
yeah you can throw in cultures in the tanks.....i always put isopods and springtails in my tanks.....however its an on going thing in most tanks cause the frogs are actually really good hunters....it helps and is a good thing but several azurus in a 30 will decimate the population in short order.....also be aware your not really supposed to keep groups of tinc group dendros.....a pair is ok but sometimes you can keep 3 adults in a tank but alot of the time they will fight or intimidate one until it dies.....
 
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