Considering froglets, please help!

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Posted by Slaytonp on May 11, 2003 at 20:41:41:

In Reply to: Considering froglets, please help! posted by Homer1 on May 11, 2003 at 08:32:00:

:Kyle's right--smaller enclosures ensure constant contact with food. If you want to be able to show them off during that time, you can buy one of those critter keepers (or pet pals, whatever) and cover up the vents (to keep the ff's in and the humidity up).

:In addition to ff's, I would strongly suggest getting a starter culture of springtails. It's good to have an alternate source of food for the frogs, and springtails are a real treat for my frogs. If you have any that are slow to eat at first, this may coax them into feeding. Confused flour beetle larvae are another good backup food source that require little care.

:Other than that, the care is identical for froglets as it is for frogs. However, I would suggest feeding twice per day. It's fun to watch, and you ensure your froglets have a constant supply of food. It's absolutely incredible how much they eat, and how fast they grow when they are sufficiently fed.

:Good luck, you're gonna love it!

:Homer

::I agree with Homer. I personally like the critter keepers with Saran Wrap over the vents better than the shoe boxes, which are more shallow, and the shoe box plastic is usually opaque rather than clear, the lid solid, so you can't see what's going on before removing the lid. I've had one of the little dime sized froglet devils leap out of a shoe box, then off the counter three feet to the floor and head for the bowels of the refrigerator when I opened the lid, so I now go for more visibility and a deeper set-up. We recovered him with no harm done, at least no physical trauma to the froglet, but it was a merry chase with three feline and four canine volunteers adding to the fox hunt. Yelling at dogs, flinging cats away, while attempting to capture a fingernail sized froglet escaping with Superman leaps over tall objects in a single bound, faster than a speeding bullet, was an exercise I don't want to repeat, giant that I am, compared to a froglet. While the froglet was fine, I suffered bleeding wounds from my rude and ruthless treatment of the royal household felinity, tossing cats out the door like prickly sacks of porcupines, tiger claws and teeth, and Ben, who had caught the froglet and replaced him in the box, was having an anxiety attack about possibly being fatally poisoned from handling the "poison-dart froglet." I told him that if he'd hesitated to capture it, his death would have been imminent, while now it was only postponed.

The critter keepers I use also have a smaller opening in the main lid through which you can funnel flies or mist without opening the main lid at all, unless your are changing their damp paper towel "diapers." I cover the vents with saran wrap, as above, to keep in fruit flies and insure humidity.

:I keep new froglets surrounded with fruit flies, springtails and gnats from the window (dusted with vitamins, of course.)
:
I dust every feeding for all of the frogs, not just every other day or so. They will capture the first few, and then the dusting wears off the flies as they find hiding places in the vivarium, and get misted, so the frogs also get some without the vitamin supplements later as they hunt these down. I dust netted field plankton only to subdue and confuse it long enough to get it into the tank. Otherwise, it is hard to feed without losing most of the leaf hoppers, gnats and bugs into the house. These wild critters probably have a better gut load diet than fruit flies or spring tails, so the supplemental vitamins aren't as necessary. The frogs love the wild stuff, however. Field plankton offerings cause a lot of excitement and activity.

While there are definitely a number of "wrong ways" to keep froglets or adult dart frogs, the "right ways" are innumerable and sometimes quite different in detail. You need to find what suits your situation among them, discover your own way.

Patty

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