# Frogs & Toads > Fire Belly Toads (Bombina) >  Trying a "Natural Selection" Breeding Method

## Jen

Most of you are familiar with me and my breeding experiences of the past - I have raised numerous spawns of African Clawed Frogs  and Axolotls with little trouble.  I have always removed the eggs to their own set up away from the parents and have had healthy offspring.  For some reason, I can not get my Fire Belly Toad spawns to live more than a few weeks  in their own tank.



From my reading and chatting with other FBT owners/breeders, the tads do best in well established, "old" systems with a large supply of algae to feed off of.   So I am trying a new method.   My 72 gallon bow front FBT paludarium has about 25 gallons of water about 8-10 inches deep depending on which area you look at. I have a few 3 week old guppy fry and 5 neon tetras in here (had more but these survived the quarantine, the others didn't and I haven't replaced them yet.) I have the water area "heavily" planted, or should I say thickly planted with a very low tech system.  Numerous bunches of amazon sword, floating water wisteria and cambomba plants fill most of the water area. It makes it look pond-ish which seems to make the guppy fry, neons, and FBTs happy.   



The FBTs mate nearly every day due to the fact that there are quite a few of them - I find new eggs constantly.  Rather than moving the eggs I am leaving them in the tank to see which ones survive.  I have tadpoles and eggs of all ages and stages of development now. Some are nearly three weeks old, some are about 3 hours old from this mornings mating that I saw on my way out the door.  I am going to try leaving the tadpoles to fend for themselves amongst the plants and so far it seems to be working. The older tadpoles I have seen are larger than any tadpoles I have tried raising in their own tank.  I will remove the larger tadpoles if I see any get to the point where they are close to completing their morphing/absorbing their tails because at this point they will be mostly land dependent for a few months.



Let's see if this works!

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## Ajuki

Good luck!  Your tank sounds awesome! I hope to see the little guys that make it!

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## Jen

Pictures of the tank, full tank shot. 


Oldest tadpoles - about 2.5-3 weeks old


About 1.5-2 weeks old


About 4 days old


About 1-2 day old eggs

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## Carlos

Very nice tank Jen!  Like the tads pics, you can see great detail of their bodies  :Cool: .   Think this idea could work better for you. 

When you moved your tads to their tank in the past, was that tank water all from the breeding tank or different?  Thank you  :Smile:  !

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## Jen

I've done fresh /new water, parents water, and mixtures lol.

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## Ajuki

Such great detail in the photos!! Thanks for sharing!

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## demon amphibians

keep us posted on your success i as well am trying to breed FBTs however I believe mine wont start breeding until november. They are still too young.

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## Jen

So far so good. Everyday I get excited to find the "big" tads in the tank.  These are the largest I have raised to date so here's hoping!

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## demon amphibians

The friend who gave me my FBT's, Bred 4 FBTs. 2 males 2 females in a 60 gal tank 1/2 dry 1/2 water. he does have tons of plants in with them. He does not move the tads to different tanks either and his numbers are exploding out of control. He has so many he is giving them away along with selling in bulk to pet stores.  with this said i totally believe you will have a lot of success with this method, seeing is that you are doing the exact same thing he did, and he reports that he has not seen any cannibalism going on in his tank. when mine start breeding i had originally planed to remove the tadpoles and place them in a bigger tank. Looks like you may have saved me much grief. Thanks for this post Jen.

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## Jen

No problem!  Reason I was willing to try by leaving the tads behind is the toads don't hunt below the waterline - when they go under the water they have another eyelid that covers their eye and it seems to severely diminish their seeing/hunting capabilities.   When I first added guppies/neons to the set up, for the first hour there was enthusiastic belly flops as they tried to chase them, but they quickly realized their limitations and I have not lost a fish to the frogs to date. 

Mine do seem to enjoy the depth - they will dive below to perch in the plants or on the sand bed, sit a few seconds then go back up for a breath. I am really glad this tank is in our living room  - I watch them more than the tv!

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## Carlos

> I've done fresh /new water, parents water, and mixtures lol.


Haven't bred frogs yet; but my experience with fish is never to move eggs, unless you keep them covered in water and the water in new tank is moved 100% from the tank they were in.  Because of that it's a lot easier to move parents or raise fry with parents.

If you still have the guppies and tetras in tank and the tads fit in their mouths, you will loose tads to fish too  :Frown:  .

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## demon amphibians

so with all of this said how much water in the tank should be sufficent for one clutch of FBT eggs as well as when they turn into tads? I think my overall water volume is close to two gallons. I need to know this because when my FBT start breeding i will have between 20-25 breeders. I already know i will have to use something much larger or use multiple tanks i just need to know  roughly how much water volume to use per breeding pair. i would hate to have over crowding and not be able to move them after its to late.

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## Jen

> Haven't bred frogs yet; but my experience with fish is never to move eggs, unless you keep them covered in water and the water in new tank is moved 100% from the tank they were in.  Because of that it's a lot easier to move parents or raise fry with parents.
> 
> If you still have the guppies and tetras in tank and the tads fit in their mouths, you will loose tads to fish too  .


With all my batches in the past - aside from maybe my first attempt at breeding Xenopus Laevis, I found it best to always move the eggs.  
I always have breeding, planned breeding, in tanks that have a heavy planting especially floating plants such as water wisteria as it aids in easy transferal. 

Even when they are just in the clinging stage, about 1 day from hatching from the eggs, they are WAY too big to be eaten by a neon or guppy. They are nearly 2-2.5 times the size of guppy newborn fry when they leave the egg.  Even if there is some tadpoles that manage to be eaten or killed, it's part of the "natural selection" method I am trying. 

The largest tads that are about 3 weeks old are nearly the size of my adult neons and are larger than the guppy fry who are even older than them. 

When I say I have my water area densely planted, I mean I can visualize only about 20-30% of the space in the area between the Amazon swords, the many many many cambombas and wisterias.   Only in one spot in the front of my tank, if you duck down to the substrate level and look under a piece of driftwood can you see to the back wall of the tank below the water level.  :Smile:    The depth is about 8-10 inches depending on substrate. 

Seeing how they are, up to this point, thriving by presumably feeding off of plant matter, algae, etc, I believe that the other batches failed in the "sterile", newly set up tanks as they lacked natural organisms to feed the tadpoles.

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## Jen

My camera is charging but tomorrow I will try and take a video of the tank. It will have to be really early (if I wake up early enough) or later after the sun sets. My livingroom has a large bow front window and it faces the south - any and all sunlight will cause a slight glare.

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## fish4all

I really like the idea and I love you tank! I agree that the health and size of the tads is likely due to a massive amount of natural easy to find food. I can only imagine how many little creatures you would find in a sample under microscope. When I kept a lot of fish I always loved to examine the water to see how well the micro environment was doing. It could be a matter of there being a lot of small animal life that they have been eating and growing better than an all algae or other diet. 

Do you dose fertilizers for the plants? I wonder if this is also helping their health and size because they may be getting minerals and such from the water.

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## Jen

No fertilizers or C02 - I found that the FBTs seem to mostly poo while sitting in the water so that combined with fish waste and any left over fish food or the random drowned decomposing cricket feed the plants.  I run two Fluval 405 filters on the tank so I figure I am loosing tadpoles there also but again, survival of the fittest method.

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## Jen

Ok, not the best quality as it came out darker than I would have liked but oh well. I had plugged the camera into the charger but never double checked that the charger was plugged in so I was racing the battery light. 

Next time I will fiddle with the settings a bit better. 

The dark blob at the beginning near the substrate is one of the large tadpoles, you can see how it is bigger than a neon at this point. 


Fire Belly Toad Paludarium - YouTube

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## Jen



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## Jen

Another episode of "Cat TV" -  Piglet, my 5 year old special needs cat LOVES the Fire belly toad tank.   She is very tiny, so we put an ottoman stool at the base of the tank so she can stand on it and see into the tank.

She gets a little over excited sometimes....see the end. I had to stop recording right after because I couldn't hold in my laughter. 

Cat and Fire Belly Toads - YouTube

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## Jen

A few of the larger tadpoles decided to give a special appearance today so I had a blast going photo crazy - most of the pictures came out awful but I thought a few came out great.


There are also new eggs developing and my toads decided to lay more this morning.  So far, this set up is really making me happy. 
The pictures add a great size comparison between 3/3.5 weeks old and new eggs - They are all on the same type of plant, Cambomba, you can really see the growth in such a short time.

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## Carlos

Great pics Jen, love the third one with tadpole looking straight at lens  :Smile:  !

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## Jen

WE'VE GOT FEET!  

Sorry, beyond thrilled that I have found tadpoles beginning to develop their hind legs. This is the furthest stage of development I have been able to get my Fire Belly tads to so I am doing backflips over here.

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## demon amphibians

> WE'VE GOT FEET!  
> 
> Sorry, beyond thrilled that I have found tadpoles beginning to develop their hind legs. This is the furthest stage of development I have been able to get my Fire Belly tads to so I am doing backflips over here.


congrats. that must be very exciting. i cant wait till i have some tads. I am still waiting patiently.

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## Jen

We are nearly there!  

So so excited - this is my most developed tadpole - full front arms, condensing body going from tadpole to toadlet shaped, tail shrinking. 

Another tadpole of mine is developing arms and a few others are in various stages of hind leg development.

I am going to be trying to feed them live blackworms - fingers crossed. 

Here is the one at the lead of the pack...  Has been moved to it's own tank, shallow water with a bunch of water wisteria to climb over. Has been climbing the walls of the tank like crazy - he is going to keep me on my toes!

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## Carlos

Congrats Jen  :Big Applause:  !  Nice thing is these guys are good swimmers, so there is little chance of them drowning.

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## demon amphibians

looks like you have found the formula for breeding these guys. thank you for starting this thread you have given me a large amount of valuable information. it is cooling down here so i think i will let them get used to the colder weather then i will bring up the heat 20 degrees and see if they start breeding. what is your water temp when they started breeding?

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## Jen

Update on my two forerunners - - 
One is nearly a toadlet and the other is on it's way!!

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## Jen

Update on Toadlets

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## Jen

Frustrated...the first few toadlets I had are dead. Found the little guys just now when I came home as I went to clean their tank.  Had a very busy day yesterday and I forgot to mist their tank/clean their tank. Their papertowel dried up and so did they.  I had a small lid like container for water that had also dried up.  

Lesson definitely learned.  For the next batch I am going to have a much larger water container and not skip the tank cleanout even if it means doing so at 2 am when I finally get home.   So heartbroken - cried as I cleaned up the dried up little bodies. I have a lot more tadpoles swimming around the tank and new eggs laid yesterday. I will get another chance but I hate that these three died on my account.

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## Carlos

Sorry for dead toadlets Jen  :Frown:  !

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