After the cricket no-go, happily I was able to find some fruit flies in the area as well as ordering one producing and one fresh culture from Josh's Frogs. (I need to keep things simple for a short while since I'll be gone next week and husband will be dealing with frogs.) After dusting I tried shaking out some in front of each frog, but this was both awkward and left me unsure as to how much each frog got, although each one definitely did eat. I'm planning to feed twice a day until I get the hang of how much they eat, but I'm wondering whether it's better to get them used to a feeding station, or just continue sort of scattering the flies around the viv?
(I see people talking about numbers, but I have NO idea how to count how many FFs I have in my dusting bag.)
These are youngish but not teensy froglets; please see my other thread for pictures. Thanks!
Scattering is good practice, but you can also set a small slice of banana in the viv to ensure that tiny froglets find more flies to eat. Not a problem doing both, actually.
Aslo...your husband can skip a weeks worth of supplements, if it makes things easier, the frogs will be ok with missing one weeks worth of powdered vits and calcs.
Feeding twice a day is a bit much even for small froglets. Daily feeding is fine and soon you can transition to every other day feeding as well.
It's impossible to accurately gauge when they have had enough food. The best thing to do, is judge by however many 'leftover' flies are left crawling around the viv or the feeding station. If you see a whole bunch, then you know you have overfed. This is another reason why you should not feed twice a day, IMO.
Thanks Phil -- "both" in this case is an answer I love to hear. Currently I can't see any flies at all from this morning's feeding, and I underfed at least a bit, so I'll probably feed a little again tonight and then set things up as you describe for tomorrow.
Man I'm glad this forum is here...!
I hand mist just before feeding. This usually gets the left over flies moving around. That should help you judge how many are in there.
That technique worked well tonight! I'm not sure whether all three frogs got fed, but someone was eating up the ones sprinkled around the terrarium, and then Splotch found the little piece of banana and those flies are history. I can't see any left right now but I'm trying not to look too hard. And even if she didn't eat, Three came out from her hidey-hole for the first time all day, which was nice to see. (It actually wasn't much of a hidey-hole, being right at the front of the vivarium and looking straight out at me on the bed, so I figure she can't be too freaked.)
I started using Phil's "tap tap tap" method before I even read his post about it, and I agree, it's a great way to feed. You can be precise about location, the extra powder stays in the container, and the bugs stay too stunned to move around much at all. So far so good!
So...if Splotch keeps hanging out at the food station looking for flies, is that a sign that it's feeding time? Or is she just always going to do that now that she knows where it is? There are definitely no flies in the viv this morning but I had been planning to wait until afternoon to feed.
I have a 2 year old pair of azureus and the female always hangs around the area where I dump the most flies waiting for a meal while the male wanders around the upper shelves of the viv. I think she would eat until she resembled a ping pong ball with legs if I let her. Not sure if that translates to auratus behavior, but you can get a frog that is an aggressive feeder. I gauge my feeding rate based on how they look. Snap a pic of splotch and post if you want opinions on how plump he/she is.
Cool, that's very helpful to know. Here's a picture of Splotch and now Four-spot hoping for noms. As far as I can tell, which isn't far, they don't look overly starved, and all three are definitely active and showing no signs of listlessness. If nothing else the banana is excellent viewing as they seem to be treating it as a sort of watercooler-type meetup place. (Although of course I also sprinkle in less open areas.)
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