Asian Floating frogs.. any info ?

These are Occidozyga lima, [not sure I spelled it right]. Spend 99% of their time floating, as the name suggests. Very rarely will sit on a leaf for a short time. They have a 6500 K lamp for light and heat, a very small power filter to keep the water clean between changes. Not a lot of current.

I started with quite young ones that were very skinny. One died days later, but the remainder ate plenty and are now quite fat, very healthy looking. All now full grown.

Does anyone know of a way to sex them ? I have seen a bit of mating behaviour, one frog clasping another from behind, under the front legs, but no sign of egg laying. Of the two I saw mating, or appearing to mate, the one I thought was female did die, for no reason I can determine. Had some stark white patches on the body, almost as if they were bleached, but no wounds, no redness, no fungal patches. It was eating well just a day or so before I found it dead. Not sure of the sexes of the remaining frogs.

They are picky eaters. They like crickets, and nothing else. I gutload the crickets and dust them, and they appear to thrive on them. Most other feeders usually drown long before the frogs notice they are even present. It seems erratic movement is very necessary to elicit a feeding response.

Once it's warm enough I may try to see if they'll take earthworms pieces from tongs, assuming I can move them in a suitable way. The frogs take crickets either by sneak attack from under their floating plant cover, or a super fast scramble/crawl over the floating plants, grabbing one as they dive down on it. Though since they have reached full size, I don't see them doing the surface scramble hunting any more.

Wondering if anyone knows of an alternate food that would work, for some variety from just crickets ? Has to be something that both moves fairly fast and won't drown the instant it gets wet.

Also curious to know if they will breed in captivity, and if they did, how I might raise the tadpoles ? There just isn't much information on them I can find. One page online has some info, and there are one or two abstracts from field researcher's in Asia, which are not a lot of help. Also like to know if anyone has a clue about lifespan for these guys ?

They have an aquarium with a sliding glass cover. About 8 inches of water, heavy floating plant cover, a cork raft I made for them that they never use and quite a bit of planted vegetation too. The more plants there are, the better they seem to like it. Have some tiny fish and dwarf shrimp in with them too, which they ignore. Near as I can tell they never feed under water, only from the surface.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

I´ve kept five or six of them several years ago. I bought them at my local fish shop and have never seen them in the trade again. They were wildcought and I was planning to breed them. I kept them together with African Dwarf Clawed Frogs, wich didn´t cause problems. The ADCF´s bred in the tank and both had a complete different ´zone´, bottomdwellers and floaters. I Kept them around 25 degrees celcius.

I mainly fed the Lima´s crickets and fruitflies. They also ate dragonflies wich I cought in the yard, it was great to see them jumping out of the water to catch them (wich made less dragonflielarvae to harras the amphibia larvae in my pond :happy: ). If I remember correctly they didn´t eat redworms but they did love handfed tubifex. I Can´t remember if I tried to give them earthworms...

Unforunatly they didn´t last very long. Within three months all but one suddenly died, and that one lasted for about six months. I never found out why they passed. Maybe because they were WC and weakened, had been fed a portion of bad tubifex, didn´t get enough food diversity or got sick from somehting carried by the ADCF´s. Even though the Lima´s died, the ADCF´s were doing fine. I later found out ADCF´s can be diseasecarriers, even those who are captive bred and sold by shops and show no signs of disease could harm other amphibians.

I also couldn´t tell male from female, usually female frogs are bigger than males, but my Lima´s were all about the same size. Maybe I had just male or female frogs..?

Maybe not exactly the answer you are looking for, but i hope it helped.

Hi Fishfur, they are quite eager to accept damp Reptomin dangled on a broomstraw in my experience. I'm sure you could use any number of the commercial pellets available today, but that's what worked for me. Good luck! JVK

Not an expert on these guys, but I did work in a research lab caring for various amphibians for a couple years. I can second what was said about sexual size dimorphism - females are almost always larger than males when it comes to frogs.

Also, we had a few mystery deaths in the lab that turned out to be the result of one of the reseachers over-supplementing with calcium. They got so much calcium it was interfering with muscle functioning, or at least that was our theory and it stopped happening after a couple days of no calcium powder followed by reduced powder.

I don't know how much you use on your crickets, but if it's more than a light coating it could be too much.

As to lifespan, most frogs live longer in captivity than in the wild, but 5 years seems to be the upper limit for most species.

Thanks for the info. My frogs were very small when I got them. Body length not much over 3/4". I've had them about 10 months. I'd guess they must be near a year of age now.

I don't actually dust their crickets every time. More like every third feeding. I use the Repashy dust. I often have problems keeping the wretched crickets alive long enough to feed them to the frogs, they seem to have a pretty short life span once I get them home. Not sure if it's something I do wrong keeping the crickets or just not great quality crickets.

I give the crickets Repashy's Gutload diet and water from crystals in a small keeper for at least a couple of days before the frogs get them, and I feed them about twice a week. If I feed them more often, too many crickets will be left uneaten and drown, making a mess to clean up and fouling the water.

Based on the colour and growth of the frogs, I think they must be getting a reasonable amount of nutrition. They don't have bright colours like some frogs, but they have a variable colour mix of dark earth tones on top, with or without a back stripe, and many little bumps and dots, rows of them,on the belly, sides and legs, with glowing white undersides. Many of the bumps almost seem to glitter like mica in granite. Makes taking pics tough, too much flash back from these reflective areas. Their bodies blend very well against their cork raft and some of the rocks in their tank. It's pretty major camouflage from above and with their eyes right on top of their heads, only their eyes show above water while they're hanging out.

They have some interesting vocalizations too. First time I heard one, I was sure it was coming from the TV. One sounds like squeaky sneakers on a shiny floors, one sounds like a baby duck, among a few other sounds they make.They don't make a lot of noise, just every now and then, day or night.

I'll have to try catching some dragonflies this summer, if at all possible. Maybe there will be some around the creek at the local park.

I can probably get live California blackworms.. do you think they might appeal ? I don't know of a source for live tubifex, but I really would like to offer some variety in diet, it's better for most critters, so it should be better for them too. I have tried offering a few pellets on tongs but even when I move them around the frogs pay no attention at all. They really do seem to need the stimulation of live prey moving around where they can watch them before they pounce, and once a prey item sinks below the surface it is ignored entirely. The little fish in their tank have nibbled at a few drowned crickets though. And I can for sure get them fruit flies. I have a wingless culture starting just now and I can get the Turkish gliders too.

First time I have kept any type of frog, so it's been interesting. I do hope they will reproduce at some point. If they do, might have to remove the fish, I'm guessing they'd eat young tadpoles. Being from south Asia, they might have a breeding season affected by the monsoons.

Not sure when monsoon season is, but likely not the same time as our summers. Maybe they will find lengthening days as summer approaches puts them in the mood, if indeed I have both sexes.

As nearly as I can tell, they are healthy. I've only lost two; the one with the white patches on it, and one shortly after purchase. It was very, very tiny and would not eat anything. It died a few days later, poor thing. But the rest, though they were very thin and bony when I got them, ate like pigs from the first day and quickly put on weight. I wish I'd realized how thin they were when I got them, it's hard to believe they are the same frogs I started with, they appear so robust now.

I would like to to get a couple more, if the shop I got them from has more stock later this year. They had them several times last year, so I hope they'll do the same this summer. I will know better if I get more of them, what to look for in terms of body condition.