Hi everyone,
I am rather excited to find that my White Lipped Tree Frog (litoria infrafrenata) tadpoles have sprouted legs - they look like they are wearing tiny little leopard print bike shorts!
I have 7 altogether and there are 2 different-looking sorts:
- 4 spotty ones -- dark and speckly, 3 big 1 small. Big ones about 1cm body length, crinkly tail, back legs. Small one about 0.75cm body length with limb bud.
- 3 milky ones -- pale colour at intermediate size. Only 1 has a limb bud.
I've had them for over 4 weeks and apart from getting bigger, nothing has happened till now. 2 days ago, some of them had limb buds. I was starting to wonder if maybe White Lips stay tadpoles for a long time, like months maybe. I found something written by a Geelong pet shop owner who get things moving along by heating the water to 30C (
http://www.reefandriver.com.au/raising_infrafrenata_tadpoles.htm).
However, advice from "meshe" got me thinking that maybe force-growing might cause the smaller ones not to make it. Also "tadpoles" cautions that White Lips have a higher than usual mortality rate. So I was going to play it slow and steady and continue with room temp water (21C).
Now that they are starting to morph, fingers crossed!