Priscilla's Eggs

I met a wonderful lady, Becky H. when I put out a request for left-over aquarium equipment on a list serve I am a part of. She responded with an invite to check out her basement full of aquarium stuff and take what I wanted. There was a condition though, that I would check out her frogs. I thought that I would Brendan along for this. I wasn't sure what we would find. Then I met Becky and her frogs. She was right, I fell in love with these critters.
Short story: I ended up coming home with 6 eggs. They're in a plastic container with abit of paper towel that is soaked in spring water. the date on the post-it is 7/6. These are, what Becky calls, Priscillas.

I made a mistake at the beginning of the journey in the first two days. I put the frog eggs on the front porch. I was worried that the house was too cold and that they would die. Later that day, I could tell that 4 of the 6 eggs were dead. (They had a white/gray nodule on them. Becky had warned me that this was an indication that the frog eggs had died.) I used a wooden skewer to separate them from the live eggs and removed them from the container. Needless to say, the eggs came back inside and as I checked them, nothing else was turning white!

I looked at them every day. Every day they looked like little black dots in jelly. I hadn't looked at them in a day or two and yesterday (7/14) when I  peered at them, I was surprised and excited. The eggs have turned into tadpoles. They're very tiny tadpoles, but they have a tail and a big yolk (that's what I'll call it).

I'm ready for the next stage of education. How to care for developing poison dart tadpoles.

The first thing I learned from watching this video was that I could have left the "bad eggs" with the "good eggs". Surprisingly, these eggs, even though they looked "bad", may have actually been viable. In addition, the good and bed eggs would not have cross-contaminated each other. Interesting. I wonder why?

According to the videos from Black Jungle, I will be watching for the tadpoles to use up their egg sac and escaping their jelly sacs. I will need to put them into a container with water, that is either reverse osmosis or distilled. They suggest that I put in a black water supplement that adds tanins to the water to minimize fungal infections. I am ready to get their new home prepared. The tadpoles were noticed on July 14, 2011. I wonder how fast the rest of their progression will occur?!