New Fringed Leaf Frogs! Jungle Paludarium Setup + Tad Update

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]This is my fringe leaf frog, Tad. And he's special because I raised him from a tadpole.

[00:00:07]A few years ago, I raised Tad and several of his siblings. Watching them grow was incredible until everything went wrong. The froglets began prolapsing. We tried vets, tests, meds.

[00:00:21]Nothing worked. And one by one, I lost them all except for Tad. So, I put the breeding dream on hold, but I never stopped looking. And today, I finally got the chance to revive this project.

[00:00:37]Look what I got today. What's up, guys?

[00:00:40]So, I just met up with my good buddy Mark Pepper from Understory Enterprises.

[00:00:43]I've been keeping Cruz Highrossopus for about 4 years now. I have my one little dude, and I've been looking for a female everywhere since then, and I haven't had any success in finding one in all this time. Friends, I would like you to meet my new female cruisio craspidopus and my new second male. Look at them.

[00:01:07]They're perfect. I'm so excited about this project. The fringe leaf frogs are one of the things that people keep asking me about. Hey man, are you breeding yours? Because they've seen the original video and they know that I had several that I've been asking over and over and over for honestly the better part of a few years. I even asked Mark if he might be able to import some for me. All just to say I'm so excited to finally have a female cruisio highraspidopus. And the reason I got the second male is because for the purpose of breeding sometimes having multiple males adds a bit of healthy competition.

[00:01:37]And I've heard that that adds a lot of success to your efforts in the rain chamber. Let's go ahead bring these guys home into their sort of quarantine/basic setup to start if you will give you a closer look at these gorgeous animals.

[00:01:51]Okay, so prior to their arrival, I set up this quarantine 12x 12 x 18 in Exoterra with a sort of sterile quarantine setup in mind. Sprayed the paper towel down in place with some reverse osmosis water. That should do it. Perfect. And then I wanted to add a small Indian almond leaf bath to the frogs decided soap. From here, I want to get the frogs off the ground with some nice plastic large leaf foliage. I much prefer this material cuz it harbors way less bacteria than the fabric alternatives. And I'm simply going to fix that to the background using a hot glue gun. A little bit of extra glue added here. And perfect. And then lastly, I found this plastic matting at IKEA that I cut to fit part of the screen top to hold in more humidity. All right, guys. So, now that everything is set up, I'm going to go ahead and move my new Crafted Opus. pooped on the paper towel there into the new setup. Again, very basic. This is just for now. So, let's have a look at these animals. This is the male. One of the interesting thing about these frogs is when you gently touch them, you'll notice that if I touch him here, he's going to go blue in that spot.

[00:03:03]See that? We gently coax him here. Come on, buddy. I need you to cooperate a bit with me.

[00:03:12]Hello.

[00:03:15]How are we doing today?

[00:03:18]Take a look, guys. This is my new male, Cruzia Craspidopus.

[00:03:23]It's funny. He is not that big.

[00:03:26]Like, if I compare him to Tad, my male, not that large, which has me wondering, is Tad a girl? I'm not actually sure.

[00:03:37]Oh, hang on now. you. Let's not fall.

[00:03:43]Oh man, I'll never get over their faces.

[00:03:45]Okay, now I feel kind of bad cuz he just doesn't want to come off. Excuse me, buddy. I'm going to have to move you off now. Is that okay? Can you go on the glass for me? There you go, bud.

[00:03:56]All right, so let's get the female out now. My lady, this girl is quite large.

[00:04:03]I can't get over how big this frog is compared to even my male Tad. Look at her. Oh my gosh, what a beautiful frog.

[00:04:12]And uh Lindsay tells me that her name is Walnut. So although the male doesn't have a name, this little lady does.

[00:04:20]Well, she didn't say little. Look at her. She is hopefully holding eggs.

[00:04:23]She's quite beefy. So we're going to go ahead and put her in the setup. I mean, you can see she's just huge compared to the male. And then lastly, just to kind of help with the nitrogen cycle in that tadpole tea/almon leaf pool, I added a few paos cutings and just had some root nodes go in to make sure that roots would start growing just to help absorb some of the nutrients if the frog's past stool in there, but naturally regular water changes will still be needed. And there's walnut already situated on some of the plastic plants. And there's the male, who you can see is quite a bit smaller. Now, I'm going to go ahead and move these guys up on the rack in their sterile setup, and we'll check on them again at night because they are nocturnal. All right, everyone. So, it's late at night.

[00:05:11]This is the first night that the new Crosby's, as I like to call them, are in their quarantine setup, and lo and behold, both frogs are hanging out in their little pool. So, they do like the water. For whatever reason, they both decided they needed to lay in here and soak. So, that's hopefully a good sign.

[00:05:29]I turn the light up a little bit so you can get a better look. The reason I place the Indian almond leaves in their pool is that they slowly release tannins and other compounds that can slightly soften or acidify the water and they also help suppress fungal microbial growth. This is another reason why fish keepers or dart frog breeders use them in their tadpole water and it's often referred to as tadpole tea. Now, I know this guy looks like he's in pain, but what's happening here is post soak, he decided to shed his skin. That's right.

[00:06:02]Just like reptiles, amphibians also shed their skin. And most frogs will eat it.

[00:06:08]And look, walnut is also shedding it.

[00:06:11]And you can see there that she's consuming some of it, too. The way they bloat themselves with air and yawn stretches the skin off of their body.

[00:06:20]What's also fascinating is frogs shed quite regularly. Some species even shed daily, whereas cruio hilocraspidopus most likely sheds about once a week or so. Wow, looking pretty fresh, my guy.

[00:06:33]As weird as this sounds, I had to consider that their stomachs were probably full of shed skin at that point. So, I decided to try feeding them a meal the following night. Feeding attempt one, calcium dusted discoid roach. And look, he went right for it.

[00:06:50]He took it. I was really hoping that the frogs would accept other forms of prey than just crickets, but for now, I'm happy that they are taking them.

[00:06:59]Obviously, the male did also eat a cockroach, but every time I offered a hornworm, they just spat them out, which is so weird because Tad loves horn worms. Buddy, yo, what are you doing, man? What in the heck is that? Are we Are we for real right now? The weirdest pose you could be making to try and poop. You do you, my guy. All right, so the new leaf frogs have been doing really well. Their quarantine setup, as you've seen, they visit their little pool of Indian almond leaves and paos pretty regularly at night. But I think it's time to switch things up in here.

[00:07:38]There's the female.

[00:07:40]The male is here. I'm going to do the same kind of setup as Tad has got over here. All the PAOS and wood before we go and do the very large or much larger uh 18x8x 36 tall that'll be here for all three of them. Uh, I want to set this up the same way with some spring water in the bottom with almond leaves, few branches coming out of it, and a larger potted paos in sort of like a aquatic plant basket if that makes sense. All right, so to escape the new build, I have a few deciduous branches here, as well as a thin cork round. Next up, we're putting together one of the most important parts of this setup, a net pot packed with paos. Not only will this give the fringe frogs plenty of places to perch, sleep, and climb, but it'll also help them feel far more secure in their new home. To get the plants ready, I first remove all of the soil from the pot and gently rinse off the roots. I also use a tiny bit of dish soap to help strip away any leftover fertilizers or pesticides that could be harmful if introduced to the enclosure.

[00:08:47]After letting it soak for a few minutes, I rinse everything thoroughly until the plants are completely clean and safe to use. Next, I line the net pot with dried spagnum moss, creating a soft, supportive layer for the roots to rest in. Then, I nestle the paos into place and fill the surrounding space with aquatic plant substrate. In this case, Exotera Substratum. The stuff is fantastic because it contains nitrifying bacteria that help support plant growth, making it the perfect choice for a setup like this. Finally, I give the whole pot a generous soak with arro and spring water. And just like that, it's ready to go. Once grown submerged, this paos won't just look great. It'll play a major role in keeping the frogs comfortable and their water cleaner. As the roots grow out through the net pot and into the water, they'll absorb nitrates produced by frog waste, uneaten food, and other organic buildup. So, in addition to making the enclosure feel more natural and secure, this plant is also going to function as a living filter. All right, we're ready to set this up. Here's some natural spring water, and our frogs are ready for their new home. So, to start, all we have to do is remove everything from that sterile setup we had made. Take away all that paper towel and find a nice layout for the branches in our pot of paos.

[00:10:09]It's going to go in a corner here. And we'll try and angle the branches in such a way that we can have lots of climbing space and also guide that paos. Going to take some of the old Indian almond leaves and place them into the tank and sort of inoculate the water just a little bit and fill it with spring water. I prefer to avoid demineralized water as I don't want there to be any sort of osmosis effect. Lastly, a little spray down to boost that humidity. And now my frogs are ready to be introduced into their new setup. Can never get over how pretty these guys are. There you go, buddy. And now for the female. Perfect.

[00:10:48]Wow.

[00:10:50]Okay, so it's officially been almost 6 months since I brought home my fringe leaf frogs. They're doing exceptionally well. We have walnut in this tank along with male who I've decided to name pistachio. Kind of going with that nut theme, right? I wanted to give you guys a small update on Tad that I find very interesting. Up until recently, I was confident that Tad is male. That's why at the start of the video, I expressed how I was trying to have a second male to breed with walnut so that there'd be a little bit of, you know, competition to get things going and hopefully instigate Amplexus. Well, here's the thing. Pistachio over here has been calling quite a bit lately.

[00:11:40]Honestly, he's been calling off and on since I got him. And it had me realizing firstly, I have never once heard Tad call. Not once. Secondly, Tad is huge compared to Pistachio. Now, I know that you can have varying sized males, and I was told by Mark that pistachio is one of the smaller males that Lindsay owned.

[00:12:03]I still think that Tad is really close to the size of Walnut. And where I'm going with this is I think that Tad might actually be female, which means that I have one male, Pistachio, and two females, Walnut and Tad. Let me know what you guys think, but I have a hunch that it's going to be pistachio in there having a little too much fun with the ladies. So, I've already started to execute plans to set up a large aroreal setup for them. Let's have a quick look at that now.

[00:12:36]Okay, guys. So, this here is a 18x 18x 36 tall Exotera terrarium. And as I previously mentioned, the goal here is to hopefully reproduce and raise more of these frogs. So hobbyists like yourselves can also enjoy this remarkably beautiful species. So to do this, I'm going to try my very best to replicate their natural habitat within the confinements of this terrarium.

[00:13:02]We're going to emulate or stimulate them to reproduce using a sort of rain chamber effect. I have all these ideas of how I'm going to set this up. That'll be in the part two of this video, so stay tuned. For today's question of the day, I'd like to ask you all, if you could keep any species of frog as a pet, what would you choose to keep and why?

[00:13:23]It's truly impressive to see how many species of amphibian are successfully bred many generations and kept and enjoyed by hobbyists and herbiculture.

[00:13:32]I'm eager to hear what you think are the best options for you. Let me know in the comment section down below. And as always, I'll give your comment a heart and we can engage in a little bit of a conversation. Thanks. Well everybody, there you have it. I sincerely hope you enjoyed watching the part one of my new cruisio craspid opus scooping kind of series, if you will. We're going to be doing our best here to document and reproduce these incredible frogs. Get ready for part two. It's going to be coming out in the next few months. And I want to take a moment to sincerely thank my patrons over on the Patreon platform for continuing to support the channel over all these years. Your support means so much to me. And I hope you've been enjoying the little updates I'm giving there. you know that there's a big one coming because I shared it recently.

[00:14:15]Thank you so much for your support.

[00:14:16]There's a link down below in the video description and in the comments if you want to learn more about how you can support the channel on Patreon. If you want to see more videos pretending to keeping Cruz Ohio, check out the playlist up above here and I'll see you guys in another video again soon. Bye.