Instead of spending money by buying a tree frog, many frog-owners love to breed tree frogs on their own. These can allow you to earn money by trading your newly-bred tree frogs or their tadpoles. Hence, many frog lovers want to know how to breed tree frogs.
The most popular way to breed tree frogs is by making two tree frogs mate in captivity, where a rain chamber is required. Besides, you can breed tree frogs by hatching their tadpoles. Another breeding process is frog farming. But, tree frog farming is not much appreciable.
In this article, I’ll describe preparatory works and essential steps for breeding tree frogs. If you want to know in detail, I urge you to go through this article.
Are Tree Frogs Easy To Breed?
It is a complex question to answer whether tree frogs are easy to breed or not. As tree frogs are low-maintenance frogs, the frog owners think its breeding to be less hassling too.
Tree frogs are not the easiest frogs to breed. Besides, people find it additional trouble to create a rain chamber for breeding tree frogs.
However, if you understand all steps of creating a breeding place and other conditions well, you’ll find it relatively easy.
Preparatory Works For Breeding Tree Frogs
If you want to breed tree frogs in captivity, you’ll have to prepare the frogs, their habitat, etc. These preparatory works help stimulate the entire breeding process.
Let’s take a quick look at these preparations.
1. Get Some Matured And Healthy Tree Frogs
No wonder you will require some female and male tree frogs for making them bred.
If you can create competition among male frogs, the breeding process will be smoother. Hence, you can keep the number of male to female ratio 2:1.
However, the more male tree frogs you can get, the more their competition for winning female frogs gets higher. Besides, you should ensure that both male and female tree frogs are healthy and matured to breed.
2. Increase The Food Intake
When you set the potential timing of the breeding attempt, you should increase the food intake before at least one month. It will be appropriate if you enhance the amount of food by a minimum of 25%.
Before feeding the regular insects to your tree frogs, you have to feed those insects first. It may sound a bit complex to you. But, firstly, you’ve to make these insects enriched so that tree frogs can remain fit to breed.
So, you can feed those insects several foods like carrot, sweet potatoes, etc.
Make sure that the tree frog foods are gut-loaded well.
Also, you should dust all insects prior 24-48 hours before feeding, with supplementation of calcium, mineral, and vitamins.
3. Increase The Temperature And Humidity
Before adding tree frogs into a rain chamber, you have to keep the frogs within the breeding condition for a few weeks.
So, increase the temperature up to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Make sure that this increased temperature remains constant.
But, the most significant thing is to raise the humidity level in the terrarium. Hence, you can mist the tank more often than before. Keep in check that the humidity level should not become lower than 80%.
It will give a rainy season vibe and prepare your tree frogs to breed
4. Check If The Tree Frogs Reach Breeding Condition
When the female tree frogs bulge with eggs, they are ready to get shifted to the rain chamber. Sometimes, you can see their eggs through the bellies of some gravid tree frogs.
In this time, male tree frogs will also make frequent advertising calls. Moreover, an adult tree frog will have nuptial pads on thumbs if he is ready to breed.
So, after preparing the rain chamber, you can finally shift the tree frogs to the chamber for breeding.
Preparing Rain Chamber: What Do Tree Frogs Need To Breed?
A rain chamber is an essential tank setup for stimulating the breeding of tree frogs. This chamber will recreate the natural environment to aid breeding.
So, let’s see first what you’ll need to set up a rain chamber.
- Large glass tank (around 20 gallons)
- water
- Submersible water pump
- PVC pipes
- PVC elbows of 90 degrees
- Perforated flexible tubing
- Aquarium heater
- Thermostat
- Electrical timer
- Tropical plants with broad leaves
- Sphagnum moss
- Misting system or fogger
- Night light
- Humidity of 90%
How To Make A Rain Chamber For Tree Frogs?
After getting all the required supplies, you can start making a rain chamber for tree frogs. I’ll describe the steps of preparing a rain chamber in detail here.
Step 1: Choose A Breeding Tank
To prepare a rain chamber, the very first essential thing is a large tank. Generally, people choose a glass tank.
But, there is no specific rule for choosing tanks for rain chambers. You can use any waterproof tank, container, or aquarium.
Step 2: Adding Water Pump and Heater
Now, it is time to place the submersible water pumps in the corners of the sink. You can also attach the hose to the pump. Besides, you should place the heater setting the temperature at 76-80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Step 3: Creating The Rain Bar
In this stage, you need to make the rain bar by the PVC pipes. For this, you have to cut the PVC pipes into pieces of specific sizes. Then, set up the rain bar with PVC pipes and PVC 90 degrees elbows.
Do not forget to make holes in the pipes. These will allow the rain bar to distribute the water like rain.
Step 4: Fill The Rain Chamber With Water
Now, you can add water to the rain chamber. Make sure that the water level covers the heater and pump in the sink of the rain chamber.
Step 5: Adding Plants
Add some tropical live or artificial floating plants with broad leaves. Your tree frogs can take rest underside those leaves. Moreover, these give them some space to lay eggs too.
Step 6: Start Operating The Rain Chamber
After completing all setups, you can start operating the rain chamber. If you want an automatic process of several rain events, you can set a timer. However, you should change the water in the rain chamber regularly.
The experts suggest running the rain chamber mainly at night. You can continue raining in the rain chamber for 12 hours of the night cycle. Also, do not forget to keep breaks for a couple of hours.
Step 7: Introducing Tree Frogs To Rain Chamber
Before introducing the tree frogs, you should run the rain chamber for a few days. If the rain chamber is functioning smoothly, you can finally add the tree frogs to the rain chamber.
How To Make Tree Frogs Breed In Rain Chamber?
When all environmental condition is perfect, tree frogs will mate naturally. You can’t force your tree frogs to make love. But, you can create a suitable environment to stimulate your frogs for breeding.
- Make sure that the rain chamber has continuous spraying of water.
- Besides, you should lower the temperature to a few degrees Fahrenheit.
- In the breeding period, tree frogs tend to eat less. Hence, you don’t need to feed them. But, you must have to monitor their health.
- When your tree frogs lay eggs, you can return the adult frogs to their tank.
- If your tree frogs do not mate within a few weeks, you should pull them out. Make your frogs go through the same recondition. So, you can move the frogs to their tank and feed them heavily for a week again. Then, shift the tree frogs to the rain chamber.
- Also, you must make sure that the quality of water should not get worse. Otherwise, this will put a harsh impact on the tree frogs’ health. Hence, you should change the water frequently.
Tree Frog Tadpole Care: How To Raise Tree Frogs From Tadpoles?
Have you ever seen the metamorphosis of a tree frog from the egg? Tree frogs eggs turn into tadpoles which eventually grow up into tree frogs. Raising tree frogs from tadpoles is absolute fun.
Hence, you need to take special care of tree frog tadpoles. Otherwise, there are risks of the tree frog eggs or tadpoles getting harmed.
So, let’s see what supplies you will need to take care of tree frog tadpoles.
- A plastic tank
- Rocks
- Sponges
- Moss or ferns
- Algae
- Water plants
- Boiled lettuce
- Cabbage
- Insects and worms
Generally, it takes 14-15 days to develop visible tadpoles from eggs. But, you can’t expect all eggs to turn into tadpoles because some of them remain infertile. So, you should remove the bad or infertile eggs.
Moreover, you need to keep the tree frog eggs at the perfect temperature. The ideal temperature for tree frog eggs is 64-68 degrees Fahrenheit.
If the temperature is too low, the development of the eggs will be slower too. On the contrary, high temperatures may spoil the frog eggs increasing the risk of fungal attack.
While adding tree frog tadpoles in a tank, you should keep 100 tadpoles per tank. Besides, keep the heater at 78-80 degrees Fahrenheit. Further, you can add the algae, plants, ferns, rocks, etc to the bottom of the tank.
After hatching, put the tadpoles in the water of the tank. Otherwise, you can also put them in the rain chamber. You need to ensure that the water of the chamber is dechlorinated.
Keeping the quality of water good is a vital condition of caring tadpoles for tree frog breeding.
Tadpoles require several feeding times. So, you can feed tree frog tadpoles 4-6 times daily. Moreover, you must remove all uneaten tadpole food and wastages from the water daily.
Within 8-9 weeks, you will notice front legs growing of tadpoles. So, you have to add a screen lid over the terrarium. Also, you’ve to wait for growing the tails of froglets fully to give them baby frog foods.
Your tree frog tadpoles will become small tree frogs within one year. Finally, when the tadpoles become adult tree frogs, you must remove them from the water tank.
What Do You Feed Green Tree Frog Tadpoles?
Tadpole is a significant phase of tree frog metamorphosis. Tree frog breeding includes the maintenance of each stage of tree frog metamorphosis. Hence, feeding plays a major role to keep the tadpoles healthy.
You can feed vegetables like broccoli, lettuce, carrots, spinach to your tree frog tadpoles. But, you’ve to make these foods boiled after properly rinsing and cooling them down. Also, you can feed properly grinned fish food.
When the tree frog tadpoles become froglets, you can feed insects, larvae worms, crickets, wingless fruit flies, etc.
Hatching Tree Frog Tadpoles: Do Tree Frogs Hatch From Eggs?
Another popular way of breeding is directly hatching from eggs. To follow this breeding procedure, you need not have any tree frogs. All you need is just a cluster of tree frog eggs.
- Firstly, you need to collect tree frogs eggs for the breeding process.
- You can collect the tree frog eggs from the underside of broad leaves overhanging any water-sides. Otherwise, you can collect from several breeders or pet shops that deal with frog eggs.
- Secondly, you have to set up a breeding-friendly habitat. For this, you’ll require a tank, rocks, water, etc. Also, you must remain careful about not adding tap water.
- If you have already collected the tree frog eggs, you can add them directly into the tank.
- Generally, tree frog eggs take 2-3 weeks to hatch depending on the temperature of the water. Then, the tree frogs will turn into tadpoles.
- Further, you must feed the tadpoles regularly. Feeding twice a day will be helpful for this stage of the breeding process. Also, you can feed plants, algae to tadpoles, and supplementation.
- When the tadpoles grow hind legs, you can add rocks, barks, woods in the tank. These will help these baby tree frogs float above the water. However, you can feed the baby frogs several kinds of insects.
- Finally, the breeding process becomes complete after turning into an adult tree frog. Further, you can keep newly-bred, adult tree frogs as your pets. Otherwise, you can release the frog into its natural habitat from where you collected the eggs.
How Long Does It Take For A Green Tree Frog Tadpole To Turn Into A Frog?
It takes almost 12-16 months for a green tree frog tadpole to turn into a frog. However, the tadpoles require at least 16 weeks to turn into froglets.
Farming Tree Frogs
Another way of breeding tree frogs is farming.
But, this breeding process is less applicable. Moreover, farming is mainly applied to the extinct frogs.
Also, you must follow local zoning regulations to continue tree frogs farming. But, keep in mind that farming tree frogs may not be a profitable breeding process.
How Often Do Tree Frogs Lay Eggs?
Each species of tree frog has its breeding season. So, the numbers and duration of laying eggs vary from species to species.
Generally, tree frogs lay eggs two or more times in each breeding season.
During the breeding season, a female tree frog lays around 20-30 clusters of eggs.
In each cluster, you may find around 50 eggs. But, these frogs can lay up to 4,000 eggs.
Do Tree Frogs Breed In Water?
Because of being arboreal, you may wonder thinking whether tree frogs breed in water or not.
Tree frogs need to keep their skin wet while breeding. Hence, they remain around water areas whenever they need to breed or lay eggs. So, these frogs mate near any type of water body like ponds, swamps, puddles, pools, etc.
You may find tree frogs breeding in the water containing fish too.
Before mating, male tree frogs start breeding calls to attract female tree frogs. Eventually, these frogs come back to the water to continue breeding. But, some of the tree frogs lay eggs in the trees or leaves that contain water.
What Time Of Year Do Tree Frogs Mate?
There is a specific period for the mating of frogs. It is called a breeding season.
Late April to early August is the breeding seasons of tree frogs. So, this early spring period is the time of the year when tree frogs mate.
Also, tree frogs find the winter rain as a suitable time for mating. During these breeding seasons, you’ll hear lots of croaking or advertising calls of tree frogs.
Final Words
It’s really fun to breed tree frogs in captivity and see them growing from the eggs to matured frogs. I hope this article helped you comprehend all the processes of breeding tree frog well. So, enjoy breeding your tree frog following the described instructions!
