I sort of came up with stuff myself. I haven't been able to find clear step by step instructions anywhere. I did get enough to understand that they should be kept cooler and with less humidity and less food to cycle, and then warm up and feed more and then put them in a rain chamber for breeding.
I tried to use nature to our advantage- we have cooler ambient temps in home during the winter and warmer in the spring/summer. I was a little worried though- we had warmer temperatures for a while this year before we had rain. The frogs are sensitive to barometric pressure from rain storms, so the best time to put in the rain chamber is when it is actually raining outside. I was a little worried that we didn't go very fast from cool and dry to warm and rainy, and it took a few rainstorms before the frogs finally started breeding (several rainy days over 2 weeks time).
The other thing I have learned- can't remember where- is that these frogs should not be kept very humid outside of breeding- it can kill them if you follow most of the care sheets on the net and keep them at 80-100% humidity all the time. They will use a water dish to rehydrate no problem and do not require misting and such outside of breeding attempts. At least not where I live- maybe if you live in a desert area you might need more humidity.
The tubs were my idea- not one of my best. The blobs on the middle tub sides are bits of modeling clay we had to use to plug some of the ventilation holes we used over the winter because water was leaking out of them when it rained. The dark stuff in the middle is a cut up plastic table cloth - we taped it to the outside of the upper tub, and tucked it into the lower tub so water would not leak out between the tubs but drain into the lower tub. The skirt works, but we will have to come up with something simpler next year. Getting in to remove the frogs when it isn't a rainy day is a 2 man job with the skirt and kind of a pain. Ideally a tub slightly smaller for the top so it sits inside the rim of the bottom tub would be perfect, but don't know if we will find perfection or have to come up with something else.
Same for the incubator- the upper tub is completely unnecessary except for the need for ventilation and the air holes made nice places to tie our string to so we could hang the egg covered leaf above the water. Needs some tweaking.
But yeah- it worked this time for us.
Today we have the first few tadpoles dropped into the water. I actually saw one a few minutes ago drop into the water- took off wiggling like crazy!
My son had a little scare- some of the tads lie on their sides when they first drop in, and we thought maybe they were dead. We took an aquarium net to try and poke one and see but when the net got close up he got and took off. I guess they just need a little rest after dropping in. There was a lot of happy cheering when they took off at the approaching net.
Sorry today's pic is blurry- hard to get the camera to focus through the plastic.
