african clawed frog....question

beabroca

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Feb 25, 2009
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i have a african clawed frog in a 15 gallon tank,

the idea was to put her with friends so i bought her three males and 1 female friend...

oh and a disclaimer, i did not know about the sexes when i got them, i didnt even know that jamie was a female.

i talked quite a few times to the lfs lady about adding more frogs to the tank....she didnt tell me not to she said that the clawed frog was a community frog...and that they would be fine together

i even asked before i bought them about the age and size difference.

so the next morning after adding them , one was dead (soon to find out it was the female)

i took it as a fluke and thought maybe i had just got a "bad" frog....

so i kept them together...two days later another one was dead, and this one i seen being attacked by jamie...

and he died about 2 hours later from the attack.

so immediately i checked the bank balance, and went to get a 10 gallon tank for the two males that were left, the same day the one died...

so i put jamie in a tank alone :( and the two small males in a tank with eachother...

so anyways...this morning i noticed that jamies [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]cloaca (i think) is enlarged, and tonight even larger...she is about a year old, maybe slightly older but not by much...

she was only with the males for about 5 days...and i wasnt home much during this time, i was busy moving, was only here in late evening and night time, and during that time was lights out or winding my kids down time. so i dont know if anything happened....and i didnt think that the males were old enough..

so my question is, are my little males old enough to do something or can jamie have eggs that are nothing...i dont know...i...well i just dont know...
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oh and btw...i looked everywhere and i cant find a picture of what she would look like before laying eggs...any help would ...well....help :)
 
no-one knows?
 
I know that they can lay eggs out of normal health, despite whether they are fertilized or not. I also know that they hit sexual maturity at about 10 months old. I searched for images for you, but did not find many. Here is one site with some basic info: http://aquaticfrogs.tripod.com/id3.html
I am also going to move this to the viv section because I knjow the mod there, Vicious_fish, has more experience with these guys and hopefully he can help you more. Best of luck, they are really neat critters!
 
Well without knowing the size/age of the frogs I couldn't say for sure but most likely the frogs bred.

A 15 gallon is pretty small too for all those frogs. I use to keep a pair in a 20 gallon long. They can fight but it's odd that they died that quickly. I hope they weren't sick when you bought them. Keep us updated on the females progress.
 
well, jamie is in a 15 alone now and the two smaller ones are in the 10....i didnt realize that they had such a large bio load when the lady sold them to me.

they all seem fine now, and even more so that i filled the tank with water to the top..

the lady at the lfs told me they would be happier in a smaller amount of water...proved to be wrong, luckily i didnt keep them like that for long

anyways..seems that she is doing better, she is bulgey, and larger..but shes a fatty anyways...i dont know how long it would take her to lay eggs if she were bearing...
 
I think typically the male "squeezes" the eggs out of the female to fertilize them. I am not sure either how long it would be until she lays eggs.

I would check out www.pipidae.net and see if you can find more specific answers to your questions.
 
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