Lives in reservoirs of South Africa - from Angola to Kilimanjaro. Lives in temporary and constant reservoirs with still or slaboprotochny water, it is fed in the same place.
Length of a body is up to 11 cm. The body is dense, the head small, flat, a muzzle short, round, eyes are turned to top, under them feelers (a short tactile thread). Between long fingers of back extremities, 3 of which with claws (from here the name of a subfamily), a wide swimming membrane. Back extremities brawny, strongly developed. The anal opening at females is hidden by folds. Forepaws are short, with long fingers without membranes, paws are twisted inside. A back and sides gray with dark stains and stains. It is quite seldom possible to see a brown frog. A paunch at frogs always white or grayish. Before pairing the male has black strips of fingers and along paws to their basis on each side.
Albinos pinkish - orange with red eyes.
At tadpoles very wide head with pair of thin moustaches, about 1 cm in the diameter, a roundish little body short, and a tail, more similar on ugrevy, about 5 cm long. A body absolutely transparent, only on skin there are dotted lines of thin black points here and there, dark eyes and rather turbid paunch are visible. They move vertically - headed down.
Is a permanent water resident and without water perishes.
Eats small invertebrates, pushing them in a mouth slender free fingers of forward extremities. Worms of a frog are held with fingers when swallowing. The frog well eats usual forages for aquarian fishes (a crank, a trubochnik) and pieces of meat, fish. Frogs possess good sense of smell. In 1 - 2 min. after emergence in forage water they come to fury and begin to rush about on a reservoir. In food it is necessary to observe a strict measure as these amphibians have tendency to obesity. It is impossible to give fat beef or pork at all - it will cause diarrhea, in certain cases - death.
Feed little young frogs of 1 times in 2 - 3 days, adult frogs 2 times a week. In the presence of fat of frogs it is possible to hold on short rations 1 - 1,5 weeks. The frog of normal, average fatness looks absolutely flat if she eats too much, then at "young" age it can already have serious curvatures of a backbone, outside it is similar to a hump.
In bondage of tadpoles bring up the boiled spinach, a nettle and salad. Weight is crushed to a consistence of gruel and gradually dissolved in water. In the nature tadpoles eat the filtered microscopic seaweed. Also tadpoles are given a small Cyclops. It is necessary to feed young growth with the living water flea, gradually replacing her with a trubochnik.
It is necessary to support shportsevy frogs in aquariums with landlocked water of 20 l on couple, to fill with volume water 1/2 or 1/3. The volume of water is chosen from calculation by 3 liters on one adult individual. Couple of polovozrely frogs requires not less than 8 l of water. The aquarium should be covered with glass that frogs could not get out of it. Between a cover and a water surface there has to be an air space as frogs breathe, constantly emerging on a surface. Optimum temperature condition from 20 to 25 °C.
As soil in an aquarium it is better to use small pebble, but not sand from which water grows turbid. In an aquarium with them there should not be sharp objects, it is better to plant plants in well fixed clay pots, otherwise frogs will dig out them of soil, and freely standing pots will overturn. Thus, the aquarium for these frogs something has to remind chamber for violent mentally ill people.
It is possible to contain in usual aquariums together with quick or large fish mi. Skin allocations of shportsevy frogs affect in a clearing way aquarian water. Many aquarians successfully use frogs for treatment of infectious diseases at small fishes, starting to them for a while a frog. However you watch that with a frog there did not live together small small fishes, otherwise it can end for them sadly. These amphibians can also gobble up the caviar laid by fishes and to disorder registration of an aquarium.
To quality of water shportsevy frogs are not choosy, nevertheless, it is worth changing it in process of pollution on defended (1 - 2 days) water from under the crane. Frogs do not love only an oily film on a water surface.
Under normal conditions frogs live till 15 years.
Along a trunk of a shportsevy frog, on sides, there are well noticeable deepenings overgrown with dense small hairs. These hairs react to water current around a body of a frog, and impulses from them allow to be guided on a rapid current: usually she sits in a stream a nose against the current. The same hairs give signals of any hydrodynamic waves caused by water inhabitants. Such alarm system allows to find quickly and precisely production.
It is difficult to catch frogs because of their extraordinary slippery skin - it is almost impossible to take a frog in hand, it right there "filters" into any crack. It is promoted by an "athletic" constitution of a shportsevy frog, besides she is almost flat.
Frogs - beings quite nervous, they very much do not love when someone knocks something near an aquarium and in general reproduces loud, sharp sounds. Having heard them, frogs begin to rush about on an aquarium, knocking down and sweeping away everything on the way, all this conducts to nervous breakdowns which sharply reduce life.
In bondage shportsevy frogs breed once a year. Puberty of a frog is reached on the third year of life. For stimulation of frogs it is necessary to seat and lower temperature on 5 - 8 °C for a period of 2 - 3 weeks, and then to lift it some days before initial level (to 26 - 28os).
During a reproduction season males publish silent tick. The male during pairing clasps a female behind. In an hour the otkladka of eggs begins. Egg comes to light and is late pleated skin at back pass. The female takes hind legs a stalk of a plant and rises. At this time egg leaves folds and slides along a leathery furrow on a belly of a male. The furrow leads egg to a foul place, and the male impregnates it. Egg continues to slide along a leg of a female and sticks to a stalk. All eggs are placed one by one. Soon the external layer of a cover of eggs hardens as armor. Frogs after an otkladka of eggs fade, ridiculously vyprastyvy hind legs from a thin skin, and then eat it.
Preferably separate keeping of producers with their ssazhivaniye only for reproduction, caviar and tadpoles it is also necessary to clean from an aquarium. The beginning of postponement of caviar occurs early in the morning and lasts about days. One female postpones 200 berries, sometimes their number reaches 2000 or even 6000. In 2 - 5 days from berries there are larvae, and they begin to eat in a week. But in order that adult individuals did not begin to eat larvae, it is better to isolate them.
Aquarium volume for cultivation of larvae is defined at the rate of 1 liter of water on 3 larvae. Metamorphoses begins for the 45th days and comes to an end on the 58th.
At first tadpoles hang on plants, aquarium walls. In two hours after a vyklev of a larva begin to breathe lungs, periodically swimming up to a water surface and swallowing air. From the fourth day in corners of a mouth long thin "moustaches" - tactile threads appear. They are usually directed forward and only at the movement to a surface deviate back. In green muddy water tactile "moustaches" are necessary as eyes it is difficult to see danger. Instead of internal gills the tadpole has a tsedilny device through which there passes the water which is sucked in by a mouth. It is issued through two openings behind the head on each side (at tadpoles of other frogs one opening). From water infusorians ottsezhivatsya.
Tadpoles of a shportsevy frog (Xenopus) can filter from water of a particle with a diameter of 0.13 microns.
