Mantellas are a colorful and diverse genus of terrestrial frogs from Madagascar. At Fauna, we have a breeding group of golden mantellas (Mantella aurantiaca). You may have seen them hopping around in their terrarium on the front counter.
Given the right conditions, Mantella aurantiaca breed readily in groups. They breed during the wet season, which means they need high humidity (over 80%), lots of misting, and LOTS of flightless fruit flies dusted with calcium and vitamins. If everything is right, the sexually mature males will begin to call. Unlike many species of frogs, mantellas only call during the day. Their throat puffs up and they make a short clicking noise to attract a female. If a female deems him adequate, she will follow him to a secluded spot to lay her eggs – usually on the water’s edge. He then fertilizes them and they both abandon the eggs.
The small, white eggs develop into a tadpole in 2-6 days. Then the round, protective jelly encasing each egg collapses into a large blob of fluid. In the wild, rainwater would wash the tadpoles out into the water below.
We remove the eggs and place them on a rock at the water’s edge in our tadpole tank. They are misted to keep moist until they are large enough to wiggle themselves free.
The tadpole tank has a few rocks and plants for them to hide. A partially submerged piece of slate, placed at an angle, allows the hatching tadpoles to slip into the water. It is also useful for metamorphosing tadpoles to exit, emerging as froglets. It takes approximately eight weeks for the tadpoles to begin to emerge from the water and another four to eight weeks for them to completely metamorphose into a frog.
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