Trip to the Tesoros de Colombia SAS breeding facilities!

As promised I finally made it to the Tesoros de Colombia breeding facilities. One should know that they are not open to the public. Still, as I am friends with Ivan Lozano and he wanted to know what I think about all of what he is doing there, I was invited to go.

So early in the morning, just after the peak of the rush hour, we left Bogotá after just one hour of driving. The city is huge, the streets are narrow and there are too many cars, motorcycles and trucks everywhere.

Typical view from a colombian highway. Cattle pastures as far as one can see. Luckily there is some forest left on the top of the hills

And a traffic jam, also typical for traveling in Colombia

With no cars and speedbumps in front of us we managed to reach almost WARP 9! Well, in Colombia that is about 50 km/h...

Back to the frogs. After we finally arrived at the Finca, I could not sit still for another second. I mean I knew there would be my favourite frogs just right around the corner! Nobody can sit still in that case.

Not only did Ivan get a property and built the facilities for the frogs, instead he put his effort in turning it into the original forest it was once so many years ago. This property stands out inbetween all of the surrounding sugar cane plantations and local wildlife readily accepts the new patch of forest. Imagine they counted over 100 bird species passing through or even settling permanently in those roughly 6 acres of restored forest. Snakes, birds, butterflies, spiders, small and endangered mammals even…

It is a great sight and a great contrast to the rest of the area!

Now some pictures of the frog facilities:

It was warm, humid and I am an aspiring biologist, don`t expect me to look good :-D
 Ivan on the other hand is a professional

Breeding setups on the left, boxes for the juveniles on the right 

Regular breeding tanks,  dimensions about 50cm long, 70cm deep and 50cm high

More boxes with all kinds of offspring inside

Basically lots of the smaller tanks will be replaced by almost one cubic meter tanks in the near future

The two Ivans, Ivan Lozano and Ivan Ramos

The look when you give a guided tour and the other person can not walk 20 cm without taking 50 pictures :D

Along with the frogs Ivan breeds different kinds of butterflies for Zoos, Botanical gardens and other educational exhibits

The butterfly hut will be turned into a frog facility with tanks and breeders aswell

More butterfly food

And even moooore butterfly food :D

Ok now some frogs. The frogs there are in a great condition, really look good and call all the time. 

Most of them come from Zoos, others from other institutions who gave up working with them. It is not that the people at tesoros can go to wherever in the rainforest they want to collect frogs. The breeders have to come from a preexisting livestock of selected institutions working with them.

And this is why it took some time getting things going. Mainly breeding. Those of you who tried to obtain some nice frogs and get them to breed know, that it is a time consuming process. Now imagine doing that with a couple hundred of frogs. On top of that colombian bureaucracy is not the easiest to deal with. 

The breeders:

Stunning Phyllobates bicolor

 Phyllobates bicolor

 Phyllobates terribilis

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

A nice new blueish morph of Auratus from Colombia

Oophaga lehmanni red

Oophaga lehmanni red

Oophaga histrionica "Anchicaya"

Oophaga histrionica bullseye

Oophaga histrionica blue

Oophaga histrionica blue

Oophaga histrionica "Anchicaya"

Oophaga histrionica "Anchicaya"

Oophaga histrionica "Large red heads"

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

Phyllobates terribilis

Phyllobates terribilis

Phyllobates aurotaenia

Oophaga lehmanni red

Phyllobates aurotaenia green

Phyllobates terribilis

Oophaga lehmanni red

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

Dendrobates auratus "blueish colombian"

Oophaga histrionica blue

Oophaga lehmanni red

Phyllobates bicolor. Just amazing, probably the most beautiful I have ever seen!

In the beginning I was a bit doubtful they would be getting those large eggfeeders to breed. Phyllobates and Dendrobates are easy to breed, Oophaga on the other hand…

But check this out, offspring:

Eggs eggs eggs...

tadpoles tadpoles tadpoles...

And some perfectly healthy baby Oophaga (histrionica "bullseye")

And another one

Then there are some baby O. lehmanni

and some more

Many many baby lehmanni happily hopping around in their boxes

(mixed containers, not all Oophaga)

Breeding the frogs and the feeder insects in this scale is incredibly labour intensive and therefore expensive. This is one of the reasons behind the need of donations at the moment. Ivan is putting all the money he earns from his approx. eight jobs into the project! Still, dealing with thousands of dollars in overheads is extremely difficult for one single person. Moreover, for every little change in paperwork and everything dealing with the bureaucracy Ivan needs a lawyer at his side. And lawyers never have been the cheap kind of attendence. 

Having seen all of the effort and money put in the project, my conclusion is that Ivan and the frog keepers at Tesoros are doing an incredible job trying to offer the most beautiful frogs on this planet to us hobbyists. So lets support him with buying the frogs offered. Every single Phyllobates, every single Dendrobates gets us a step closer to getting legal Oophaga from Colombia. 

With CITES paperwork and certificates showing they are of captive origin. 

The frogs are there, the first shipment of large Eggfeeders is close to being sent!

Prices will be fair! Fair concerning what is being done here, fair concerning what the market situation is like at the moment and fair, because this is the only chance to get legal high quality colombian frogs.

The dartfrog community is not getting closer than this to finally obtain those great colombian frogs.