Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Tadpole day!

Sorry, I forgot to take my camera with me to work yesterday. Some of the toads were still in their feeding tanks (even though I know I fed them yesterday...), so here's a pic of them:


These are three male fire-bellied toads. The little guy in the middle is albino. He didn't seem to be feeling well yesterday (wouldn't eat or swim), so my guess is that they're staying in the feeding trays as a temporary quarantine until they get a tank set up.

Anyway, to the tadpoles. The set I've got here are juvenile Bombina orientalis, which are probably used in the animal development lab. Their tank's a mess, so they'll be staying in these feeding trays until the cleaning crew is done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlftorI9TSw

That's what their water looked like before I got there. Yuck! The whole tank was like that...
Amphibians are very sensitive to ion content in water, which is why they're often considered measures of a watershed's health-- any change in the water will visibly affect amphibian populations. As such, we're very careful about the water we use in the lab. All tanks are cleaned with deionized water. The tadpoles also live in a solution of 90% deionized water and 10% Holtfreter's solution.

Here are the tadpoles in their new, clean trays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlvxAxsRO0U

I also gave them enough lettuce to tie them over until next time.

Delicious!

38 comments:

  1. My old house had a creek with tons of toads.

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  2. You guys wanna lick toad? Everybody's doin it.

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  3. That's a lot of frogs.

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  4. I FUCKING LOVE AMPHIBIANS

    Following you now.

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  5. you ever lick their backs to get high?

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  6. @Bicycle
    They aren't that sort of toad. I doubt my boss would be too happy to walk in on my trippin' bawls, anyway...

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  7. How long until you dissect them?

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  8. this is one of my more favorite blog posts from you :)

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  9. I'm not huge into frogs, but I admire your dedication. Still worth reading.

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  10. @Joe
    I'm not authorized to kill them; you need to be federally licensed in order to euthanize lab animals. I've dissected some already, but not from this set. Different university classes have access to different toads.

    Since these are for the animal development lab, I don't think that they'll get euthanized, but they might die anyway. The professor of that class usually offers to let the students keep any animals that survive by the end of the semester.

    @Vickie
    Thanks, I know that not everyone likes them.

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  11. FUCKING FINALLY A SERIOUS BLOG ABOUT FROGS

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  12. I LOVE frogs! Back when I was a kid I would catch em and put them in this little cage. They all died pretty fast..

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  13. Should have called it, "The Frog Blog".

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  14. i never knew tadpoles ate letuce, i always thought they ate algae or something, another random fact in my bag of tricks

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  15. Had no idea that tadpoles at lettuce, cool. That albino guy looks pretty neat.

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  16. I used to have a pond full of frogs and tadpoles. Herons used to come eat them.

    I loved that house. Wild deer would come into the garden. Literally a herd of wild deer.

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  17. Great post Frog Guy. I love frogs and toads to bits. At work we have fire bellies. Only one left now though. I think he is going to die soon, I wanted to take him home so I could tend to it before it died. Although it would be interesting to see what's inside once he dies...yes that is a little morbid but I'm a scientist so what can you expect. :P Keep up the good work.

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  18. Supportin :D
    Cool post bro!

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  19. i had a pet frog when i was a kid, i think i'll go try to find another

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  20. This is pretty educational and entertaining, keep it up.

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  21. You seem to know a lot about frogs... I got a frog about 8 years ago but I forgot what kind she is and I have no idea how to even begin to find out. Do you have any advice?

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  22. I've never seen an albino toad before.

    Quite interesting! Followed.

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  23. this made me hungry for frogs legs.

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  24. They are defiantly the new canary in the coal mine.

    http://fishbowl165-cafeconleche.blogspot.com/

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  25. Hey i am very interested in Firebelly toad Albinos please message me on: JulianNemec1991@outlook.de i need further informations!

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