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Yellow-banded Poison Dart Frog
Dendrobates leucomelas
Bumblebee poison dart frog. An excellent choice for beginners, famous for its bright yellow and black bands, active diurnal behavior, and loud canary-like trill.
Class:Amphibia
Order:Anura
Family:Dendrobatidae
Genus:Dendrobates
Species:Dendrobates leucomelas
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Environment
Terrestrial
Humidity
70 - 90 %
Day temperature
23 - 27 °C
Night temperature
18 - 21 °C
Ambient temperature
25 °C
Minimum enclosure
>= 50 L
UVB
Low
Species description
Geographical Origin and Habitat: Native to northern South America, including southern Venezuela, Guyana, northern Brazil, and eastern Colombia. They inhabit humid rainforest floors but are highly resilient to drier forest margins and gallery forests, often climbing low trees.
Taxonomy and Genetics: Reach a size of 3.5–4.0 cm. Features a striking warning (aposematic) coloration of bright yellow or orange and jet-black bands. As they age, the black bands often break into small spots.
Behavior and Habits: Active, bold, and highly visible. They actively climb plants and glass surfaces. Males are famous for their loud, musical, canary-like mating trill, which is often stimulated by misting or rain.
Morphology: Sexual dimorphism is subtle: adult females are typically larger and rounder, while adult males have a darker vocal sac under the chin that becomes wrinkled during calling.
Care, breeding and tankmates
Terrarium Setup: Provide a vertically-oriented terrarium of at least 45x45x60 cm for a small group. Furnish with climbing branches, 3D backgrounds, elevated cork bark tubes, and broad-leafed plants (bromeliads). Maintain a bioactive base of leaf litter at the bottom.
Lighting and Heating: Prefer slightly warmer conditions than other dart frogs. Maintain a daytime range of 24–27°C. Do not exceed 28°C. Provide low-level UVB lighting to mimic sunlit forest patches and support active diurnal foraging. Keep night temperatures around 20–22°C.
Humidity and Hydration: Maintain target humidity of 75–85%. Drier periods during winter simulate their natural seasonal cycle; increasing misting in spring acts as a strong breeding trigger. Never keep the substrate soggy.
Feeding and Supplementation: Voracious diurnal hunters. Feed daily with Drosophila fruit flies, aphids, and small pinhead crickets. Dust all prey with high-quality calcium powder at each feeding, and add a multivitamin with D3 once a week.
Compatibility: Excellent choice for social colonies. They can easily coexist in groups of 4–6 individuals in a spacious terrarium. Both males and females show minimal intraspecific aggression.
Health and Common Diseases: Very robust, but monitor for obesity as dominant females may overeat. Distribute food across different spots in the terrarium to ensure equal access. Avoid handling to prevent stress and toxic absorption through the skin.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Native to northern South America, including southern Venezuela, Guyana, northern Brazil, and eastern Colombia. They inhabit humid rainforest floors but are highly resilient to drier forest margins and gallery forests, often climbing low trees.
Origin
Selective breeding and cultivarsAmazon, Orinoco, and Guianas
Amphibian profile
- Diet
- No verified data available
- Life expectancy
- No verified data available
- Adult size
- 3.75 cm
- Lifestyle/Microhabitat
- No verified data available
- Activity cycle
- No verified data available
- Sociality
- No verified data available
- Reproduction
- No verified data available
- Toxicity
- No verified data available
- Life stage
- No verified data available
- Handling tolerance
- No verified data available
- Brumation
- No verified data available
- Molting
- No verified data available
The catalog's scalar value is 3.75 cm. The AmphiBIO v1 source reports a maximum adult measurement of 3.75 cm for this species, recorded as snout–vent length (SVL). These figures are not interchangeable: the first is the profile's editorial reference, whereas the second is a published maximum under a specific measurement convention; differences among sources can reflect sex, population, life stage and measuring method.
Image gallery
Licensed images linked to the species or, when marked, to the closest representative taxon.
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