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Frog Hatchery Kit

The type of frog you receive will depend on your location and the time of year. From November through April, the common leopard frog is usually available and will be used on most redemptions. However, because of their breeding habits, they are not available from May through October. During this period, you will receive African water frog embryos. Due to individual state restrictions, the African water frog cannot be shipped to Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, Virginia, or Washington, limiting redemption in those states to the availability of the Leopard frog (November through April). If you live in one of the above mentioned states, please do not send in your coupon until the redemption season.

How to Set Up and Maintain your Frog Hatchery
The day that you mail in your coupon for your live embryos is a good day to begin preparing your hatchery aquarium for their arrival. The water you need for your embryos should be the same as you would for raising fish. 90% of the problems with raising tadpoles result from water quality! Make sure that you use water that will keep your babies healthy.
Do not use tap water for your hatchery aquarium because some types of chlorine compounds no longer dissipate from municipal water sources. Using bottled drinking water or bottled spring water is best. You can find both of these at grocery stores, in gallon jugs.
Do not use distilled water; it's too pure and will cause an osmotic imbalance that will harm your tadpoles.
Collecting pond water is acceptable if you are confident that the water is of good quality - be sure that it doesn't contain excessive chemicals, heavy metals, or bring microscopic parasites into your hatchery aquarium.

A Note about the Success or Failure of your Frog Hatchery Kit
Your frog hatching kit is designed to be an educational kit about nature. You'll be watching an animal's interaction with its fragile environment. You will be maintaining a mini-ecosystem and must carefully monitor:

1. The availability of food.
2. The possibility of pollution by using poor quality water, overfeeding, or less than weekly water changes.
3. The stability of the water temperature (ideally between 60-68 degrees).

The success or failure of this frog hatchery kit should not be measured by how many of the tadpoles turn into frogs, but rather by what you've learned about nature and frog development. Mortality is a part of the life cycle of all animals, whether they are reared in captivity or in the wild.

For best results in the survival and development of your frog embryos and tadpoles, follow the instructions which will be sent with your shipment of embryos. You may also want to visit your library for more information on frogs and frog development.

Please be careful in raising your tadpoles! They are living creatures and must be taken care of properly if they are to survive.

Insect Lore Note: if you have questions, you can get frog-hatchery specific information from Nasco at info@enasco.com, or by calling 800-558-9595.