Pacific Chorus Frog enclosure and feeding questions

[Andie]

Hi Everone. Last Spring, for the first time, I constructed a water feature in my back yard. Much to my surprise, on April 1 and again on April 7 Pacific Chorus Frogs laid eggs. 100s of them. As the tadpoles grew I could see that they needed a larger enclosure, so we bought them a 5' hard plastic kiddy pool and there they grew and grew and morphed and all left the "pond" by mid-September. I watched them all summer long and as I would sit there enjoying their company, adult frogs would come for a dip in my "pond". When the last of the froglets had gone for good, we emptied the pond. I'm thinking of doing the same again this year-- if the frogs will cooperate. But this year, I'm thinking of keeping some of the last froglets to morph as pets. I would like to set-up their vivarium within the next couple of months so it will be ready when they are. After trolling the Frog Forum and other boards for info I have a fairly good idea of what it will take... but I do have some uncertainties and questions.

To fit the available space in my home, I've pretty much decided on an Exo Terra 24 x 18 x 24 with a John Clare-style hydroton false bottom to provide biological filtration for a water feature. I know from experience they will like some water. Paul Rust also recommends it in his PCF care sheet. Not quite sure how to provide access to the pump with this set-up. Any ideas? Also, how many PCFs would be happy in this size enclosure?

My vertical space is limited and to accomodate the 24" tall enclosure, I have found a couple of very low profile lighting fixtures. One is a sleek T5HO fixture here: Odyssea T5 Aquarium Lighting Not looking for a tropical set-up, so is T5HO overkill? The other is a sleek, energy efficient LED fixture... LED Freshwater Bright Will the LEDs provide enough light for moss and plants? I would really like to go with LEDs if they would be suitable in this situation. Do PCFs have any special lighting requirements?

And thinking about a primary food source for my captive PCFs... Are petstore crickets with gutloading and dusting the only good option? It seems as if the soldierfly grub is nutritionally superior without having to gutload or dust? I haven't been able to find the nutritional analysis on silkworms-- how do they compare?

Any guidace would be greatly appreciated before I take the plunge and order the enclosure & lighting!!! :-)

[shane]

Hey , Pcfs are beautiful little things, but sadly, they are illegal to own as pets in A LOT of the west coast. Granted i cant see the cops breaking your door down for a spring peeper, its just a piece of information i thought you might like to know. Now on a more positive note, gutloaded crickets are PCFs favorite and they are so much more abundant and cheap than soldierfly grub. however, if you have the funds and a pet store with a constant supply, get them used to the grubs little by little. start with just crickets, its a comfortable food for them. tong feed them at first. after u feed a few times with crickets on the tongs and they are used to it, do a cricket, and a soldierfly grub. eventually you should be able to drop nearly anything that moves in front of them and they will eat it, even your fingers if they are hungry. I suggest feeding ONLY insects. i know some people believe that because their frog can eat a pinky mouse, that it should. way wrong. i forget what it is called but it can make their intestines come out. try flightless fruitflies, HEADLESS mealworms, and even chunks of store bought nightcrawlers. use the night crawlers only every once in a while to act as a digestive aid and for a little extra nutrition. overall pcfs can be very easy to raise, breed, and come across. so the reason its against the law to own them is somethig i just will never know. Always remember, they have extremely fragile bones that can be broken very easily. if you try to move them to clean the vivarium, use a fish net or "frog scooper" to move them to prenevnt pinching their fragile legs. good luck and have fun!

[KingCam]

From what I understand, newly morphed chorus frogs are so small that springtails are a good food. They are cheap to buy from josh's frogs and easy to culture. I highly recommend culturing your own roaches as a constant food supply. Red runners would be a good size roach for them, but could theoretically result in infestation if they escaped. Young lobster roaches would be good. You could just keep enough adults for reproduction and cull the rest (or feed them to some other pet). If you wanted lobster roaches PM me, I'll hook you up. Roaches are cleaner, hardier, healthier for your animal, easier to culture, and way less smelly than crickets.

I don't know anything about soldierfly larvae or silk worms.