Wow, it’s been a long time. Since I made this post, my job has become really unstable, and I wasn’t able to go through with my plan due to financial constrains. So the GT frog population in the neighborhood expanded a bit further.
catherinemb0414- Ray Charles’s story is very touching, thank you for sharing it. I love that your Zoo did what it could to give him a good quality of life. I have to ask though, seeing as frogs largely rely on sight to recognize and catch prey, how did feeding him work?
As for your question, from my experience, the likelihood of deformity and viability of the eggs likely depends on the condition of the pool and level of chemicals present.
My pool for example was in drastically different condition last year when the eggs from which my frogs hatched from were laid and this year.
Essentially the winter before last I had properly winterized the pool, IE I had added in chemicals for keeping the water balance stable while the pool sits overwinter. To open the pool back up that spring I had to reassemble the pump/filter, remove the cover and fill the pool back up fully before adding back the chemicals, which I planned to do the next day. Of course, some froggies made babies in the pool that very night.
Much like the eggs at your zoo, of the 100-200 eggs I retrieved from the pool only about half developed and the majority of the tadpoles died within 24 hours of hatching. That left around 35 tadpoles. I strongly believe what happened here is that there were just enough chemicals left in the pool from what I added at the start of winter due to the pool having been covered during that time to make most of the eggs nonviable, and most of the ones which DID develop had defects which caused them to pass soon after hatching. Three of the surviving tadpoles had deformed tails that curled around their bodies, resulting in them moving in a sort of spiral formation when ever they tried to swim. Interestingly, they were originally amongst the biggest of the clutch, however by one to two weeks old they had fallen behind. None of them made it to metamorphoses.
In all, approximately 17 out of the 35 morphed out. To be honest, aside from the three with tail deformities, the ones that passed away very likely died do to human error on my part. When the largest of the clutch begin to morph out, I had moved the container they were in to a different location outside to better keep an eye on them, but failed to realize how hot that the area could get in the afternoon. As a result, the less mature half of the clutch died to over heating.
As far as I could tell, none of the ones who morphed out had visible deformities, though several passed within the first week or two out of the water from unclear causes. Mostly I suspected drowning, suffocating in the substrate (which I quickly replaced with paper towel) but mostly many escaped/went missing. In the end I ended up with 10 healthy and active froglets from that clutch who are all still doing great.
I also have six from a second clutch which was laid exactly two weeks later in the kiddie pool I was keeping the older clutch (I moved the older ones to a smaller container shortly after the younger ones hatched, so I could keep track of whose who). Pretty much all the eggs in the second clutch hatched, and I ended up releasing over a hundred froglets in my moms garden, where they completely decimated the aphid population.
As for this year’s brood, basically halfway through the season last year the pool started having some mechanical issues I was not able to fix until a few weeks ago. As a result, it’s been sitting without any kind of maintenance for almost a year, so when spring came along, let’s just say it had gone to the frogs (and mosquitoes). By the time I had started collecting eggs from it, nearly every single one developed and hatched.
I honestly didn’t pay as much attention to this brood once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to raise them up for selling, so I just came out every day or so to drop in some food and do an occasional water change, so I can’t really be sure how many made through metamorphoses. I also didn’t see many froglets coming out of the water. In my experience, they seem to prefer emerging for the first time at night, so what I would tend to see is one day there would be a few swimming around with all four legs, then the next day they would be gone. Sometimes if I come out early enough in the morning I could see one or two sitting on the edge of the kiddie pool.
Of the ones I did see, I only notice one who seemed deformed, really it looked normal but didn’t seem to be able to use its back legs at all. It sadly passed soon after leaving the water.
Now later this summer once I had gotten the pool up in running again the day after I had finished putting it the chemicals more eggs had been laid. I didn’t bother collecting them since I figured they be nonviable and sure enough 24 hours latter there was no sign of embryonic development and the yolk of most of them had turned white(in my experience I would expect to see some development by 24 hours as eggs usually hatch with in 48 hours. My babies hatch in around 36 hours.).