Albino African Clawed Frogs
The curse of a thousand frogs
by Charles Drew
From the Monthly Bulletin of the Hamilton and District Aquarium Society, May
1999
Aquarticles
I was first introduced to African Clawed Frogs (Xenopus laevis) over ten years
ago. I bought what I thought were a couple of dwarf underwater frogs. They grew and grew
until they were as big as my fist. These were the natural green coloured frogs and it soon
became obvious that they were a pair. So what do pairs do? They spawn! The large, plump
female and the smaller, thin male were set up in a fifteen gallon tank with some yarn
spawning mops. They soon went about the job of laying eggs in the usual froggy style - the
male riding on the back of the female. During this procedure anywhere from a few hundred
to a thousand or more eggs can be laid. They hatch in two or three days at 70ºF and
become free-swimming in another two or three. Then the fun begins!
Unlike our native frog tadpoles which feed on decaying plant material and algae along
with the occasional feed of dead minnow or drowned mouse thrown in for extra protein, the
African tadpoles beg to be different. They are filter feeders. A Zebra Mussel filters a
litre a day; they do too. Now that makes things difficult! Feeding dirty tank water,
microworms and baby brine shrimp to this first spawning, I raised only a few dozen.
Even having this much success triggered me into buying some of the Albino variety, for
which there is more demand. My half a dozen little frogs grew until they started to show
their sex. The slimmer males develop black skin on the inside of their forearms; this skin
enables them to grasp and hold the slippery females during spawning. I usually keep the
sexes separate until spawning time. In early spring, sometimes as early as February, the
males start calling softly. If the female is fat and the little quarter inch tail (which
she never loses), is pink, then they are "hot to trot". Set up in a spawning
tank, they often join up in but a few minutes. When I spawned the Albino frogs for the
first time, I had obtained a then new product called APR, which is short for artificial
plankton rotifers. A spoonful or two, mixed with water each feeding enabled me to raise
several hundred tadpoles to young frogs. The only drawback was the cost of the APR -
twenty dollars a pound US, plus shipping, handling and duty.
I soon got so that I would wait and put my tadpoles outside in tubs and raise them
out-of-doors in the summer; but waiting until May to spawn them was sometimes too late.
Out-of-doors had its problems too. I would put the batch of tadpoles in a tub of pea-soup
green water. Three days later it was so clear I had to scramble to find more. Floating
them in a screen box in a fish pond helps to make a natural filter but when they become
frogs and escape into the pond they are sure fun to catch!
How well do they adapt to temperatures outside? Well, I had survivors one fall even
after a thin skimming of ice on the pond.
Early in February of this year I got three calls in one week regarding the care and
keeping of Clawed Frogs. The next week I received an order for several dozen but I had to
say it would be unlikely that I would have them before fall. A few days later, while
working in the basement, I heard a male frog call. Since I had an empty flat thirty gallon
tank, I said what the heck. In went some old yarn spawning mops and in went a pair of
frogs. A day later there was a good number of creamy white eggs. Out came the frogs. On
the third day the eggs hatched. Three more days and they became free-swimming, hungry
tadpoles.
The yarn mops were taken out carefully so that no tadpoles were trapped in them. Now
came the challenge - how to feed these tiny creatures. The solution I began with was
cooked, blended spinach, frozen into ice cube trays. This made it easy to thaw a cube or
two for feeding each morning and evening. The cubes were simply thawed in some warm water
and poured into the tank along with a spoon full of finely powdered fish food. If the
water is not so cloudy that you hardly can see the tadpoles, you are not feeding heavily
enough. A few hours later the water will be clear and the tadpoles' bellies full. All this
heavy feeding and tadpole waste creates ammonia which can stunt growth and cause deaths.
This is where my wife Janet stepped in. Because I'm such a busy person and she has
compassion for little frogs, she took over the fifty percent water change they required
each night. The water had to come from my aged water barrel that is filtered with a carbon
filter and aerated to remove chlorine.
In two weeks they were split into two tanks and at four weeks they were split into
three tanks. At six weeks of age some had already become frogs. At eight weeks, 90% of
them are frogs about an inch long. They are eating the same frozen beef heart formula that
I feed their parents. They also get frozen blood worms and they really enjoy "pigging
out" on these. As adults I feed them beef heart, garden and dew worms, and a few
culled fish. Janet's getting tired of this "tender loving care" and wonders if a
thousand frogs is a blessing or a curse.
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