Care of the Malagasy Mantella (Mantella baroni)
By Devin Edmonds
The Malagasy Mantella is one of the most common Mantella frog species available to the pet trade. It is a very remarkable colored frog, usually being black with yellow, orange or green legs striped with black netting and a yellow or green visor-like stripe running across the top of the eyes and snout. It is also a very tiny frog, only reaching 32mm. at the most. Some people believe that there is a sub-species of this mantella that has been wrongly put as a separate species called Mantella "loppei." This is one of the easier species of mantella to keep in captivity as long as its needs are met. You can keep 3 or 4 Malagasy Mantellas in a ten or twenty gallon aquarium. I have tried many substrates for my mantella and have found that large gravel is the easiest to clean and most attractive. Other substrates I have used are potting soil, foam rubber and a mix of bark chippings, sphagnum moss and soil. If you use the other mentioned substrates you MUST change it at least once every 3 weeks. For the gravel all you have to do is syphon out the extra water that collects in the bottom every month or so. This frog comes from the tropical island of Madagascar and has to be heavily misted (around one or two times daily) or its environment will dry out. All mantella frogs are bad swimmers so if provied at all, the water dish should not be more than 2 inches deep. The Malagasy Mantella comes from the dense forests of the western half of Madagascar which you should try to duplicate in captivity. I like providing a centerpiece of driftwood, which usually has bromeliads planted on it. Around that, place pieces of smaller bark. Then put one main larger plant in (maybe some orchids or peace lilies). Now you can just fool around and position corkbark or other plants in the terrarium however you like. Just use your imagination. Being such a small frog, all Mantellas are a pain to feed. Luckily, though, Malagasy Mantellas aren't the pickiest of Mantellas. You should vary your frog's diet. Pinhead crickets or quarter inch crickets can can be a main diet, but fruit flies, small mealworms, small wax worms, and any small wild-caught insects should be offered regularly to balance out the diet. If the other insects aren't availible to you, make sure you dust your crickets with vitamin and mineral powder before every feeding. Feed 3 or 4 insects a day per Mantella. With this brief outline of Malagasy Mantella care, you can start the mantella- keeping hobby.
Care sheet by Devin Edmonds:Mantella Homepage