My red eye treefrog eggs

As a kid, we used to catch tadpoles from a nearby pond and "grow" them into frogs to release back into the pond. It is such a cool transformation to watch. I'm still just as mesmerized as an adult!!
 
Hi everybody!

My brother got married, so we packed the kids up into the van and went on a 5500 mile white knuckle driving, whirlwind road trip across the US and back for a couple of weeks to go to the wedding and to see the sites along the way, such as the st louis arch (3am- wake up kids! Look at that!), lava hot springs idaho (veeery relaxing), some singing cowboys (boy can they serve dinner- should work for public school lunchrooms- serving 2 lines with 2 hands), a rodeo, mt rushmore, mt crazyhorse, reptile gardens (highly recommended), wall drug (not so highly- should have gone to lokota museum and culture center that day instead but wasted too much time at wall so it was closed), etc, etc, etc. We drove through lots of states along the way, as we took a different more northerly route home compared to our straight shot across route there- maybe we drove right past you and didn't know!

My sister in law kindly watched the animals for us, including the tadpoles.

While we were away, she split them into 2 equal groups at my request. She counted 75 into the new tub and the old tub has about the same number by rough estimate, so we are looking at around 150 tadpoles right now.

We have counted 7 lost prior to the split. 1 prior to our leaving home (yes they do eat the dead- several were munching on the dead one before we sorted him out) and 6 one morning when we were on the road and sister in law called asking if that was normal. She had misunderstood and had only been changing the water 1x per day for a couple of days after we left home. No more losses after that was sorted out and 2x per day water changes resumed.

On our return home, we were surprised to find a number of the tadpoles now sporting attractive looking back legs! 1 or 2 have tiny bumps where the front legs are starting to develop as well.

The growth has been incredible! Tiny hatchling tadpoles about 1/4" or so long to start with have now reached over 2 and 1/4" long maybe even nearly 2 1/2 inches long in a couple of cases. Most are around 2" long.

Mosquito larvae- thought about it, but can't find enough to go around to 150 hungry mouths. They are doing great on the fish food though.

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Last night a few of the tadpoles turned green instead of pinkish for the night.

One of the tadpoles "popped" an arm. And then the other arm "popped" today.

Don't know how else to describe it. You can see the arms developing inside the tadpole's chest and then they suddenly pop out. This afternoon the boys and I looked in the tubs at the 1 armed frog, and then looked again about 5 minutes later and he suddenly had 2 arms! A closer look at a couple of the others revealed the arms actually developing in the chest. Pretty wild!

Here's a pic of the first frog with arms this evening. In person we can see little sticky pads already developing on the toes. He is still fully aquatic- haven't seen him go up for air. Kind of funny looking in the tub- sort of floating around like an astronaut in space, his constantly wriggling tail keeping his position stable. He did sit froglike on the bottom for a few minutes this evening.

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They are absolutely adorable!! it's fun living vicariously through you and watching them grow hehe!

gpmo (her)
 
It must be so fascinating to watch them grow! What a difference in that last pic though! Looking more like ickle froglets now!:D How strange that the arms develop in their chests then pop out - totally wierd, lol!:D
 
Here is a quick update for today.

We took the ones with 4 legs and put them in a jar so they couldn't escape (jar has air holes and plants to climb out on).

First frog has crawled out of the water and is resting like an adult with legs folded under it on the wall of the jar. Still has a lot of tail.

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A couple of others still in the water:

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it's fun living vicariously through you and watching them grow hehe!

It's been fun sharing the experience here on the forums!
 
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Another quick update today.

Sorry for all the updates- I'm putting them up when there is a change and the changes are coming faster and faster now. Hopefully you guys aren't getting bored.

Today, the first ones out of the water have tails shrinking fast- about 50% of the tail that was there yesterday is gone. They also have changes in their eyes going on. The round tadpole pupils are being replaced by the eliptical pupils the frogs have. Also they are starting to grow eyelids. When we went to bed last night they still were unable to close their eyes. They now have green color during the day as well as the night. Prior to today, they would turn green at night but brown in the day. The feet are also becoming more orange.

They are pretty much just hanging out quietly absorbing their tails and changing into frogs.

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Thanks for posting this! I absolutely adore frogs, but am not confident enough to believe I can care for them the way they need. I am living vicariously through you, so keep those updates coming! Absolutely cool!
 
The first 4 froglets are moving into their new larger terrarium this evening. They have been absorbing tails for the past several days and looks like they are done now.

They are so small and have a lot of growth ahead of them. Eyes are beginning to turn red now, feet are turning more orange and some blue is beginning to appear. They are getting larger in body as the tails dissappeared as well. Which is kind of odd because we offered them some fruit flies to get started on, but I don't think they were interested in them while they were absorbing their tails, so new growth must all be coming from the tail.

We have another 8 out of the water absorbing their tails. And a few more in the transformation jars waiting to come out of the water, and then many many many more tadpoles to come still in various stages of transformation (some still have no rear legs yet, some have rear legs and some have rear legs plus lumps where front legs are forming.

Here are a couple of pics of the new froglets before we move them into their new home this evening.

They are quite good at jumping now- they jumped off my finger once and covered over a foot distance from the leap during this quick photoshoot.

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