# Frogs & Toads > Dart Frogs (Dendrobatidae) > Breeding, Eggs, Tadpoles, etc >  Dendrobates imitator - first egg!

## John Clare

One of my Imitating Dart Frog pairs (_Dendrobates_ or _Ranitomeya imitator_) laid their first egg, just one in January.  Here it is, and as you can see it is developing.  Sorry for the quality of the photo - they laid it at the base of recessed bromeliad leaf and I couldn't actually look at it directly, had to hold the camera inside the terrarium!  Oh, my imitators are the Tarapoto race (as in Tarapoto, Peru).

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## John Clare

I think that's algae growing on the egg.  Anyhow, here's the egg 2 weeks later, before it hatched:



I really like how you can see the yolk in the belly.

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## John Clare

A couple of days later I spotted him in a central bromeliad pool.  Father must have dropped him off but I missed it.

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## John Clare

Here he is a few weeks later.  Notice how the white yolk in the gut is gone - that's real food now!

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## 1beataway

Those photos are fantastic. And that must be something amazing to see.

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## John Clare

Thanks Elaine.  I'm really getting a kick out of watching this pair do their thing - they lay a clutch a week, between 2 and 4 eggs each time, and the eggs hatch in 2 weeks, so things are getting hectic!

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