White's Tree Frog is usually brown...not green and some other questions

[Lindsaylee1229]

My son adopted a white's tree frog (spiderman) from petco two months ago. we thought it was neat how he turned purplish brown when he ate and then turned back to green. For the past few days though he has rarely been green and stays purple/brown. He eats one or two large dusted crickets a day. I’m still unsure how much I should be feeding him. I don’t want to over feed him. As soon as I put the crickets in there he gobbles them up. After reading on here, I now know I should add variety to his diet so I will be doing that in the future. I just worried about the little guy.
This is my first frog. Humidity is usually around 70 during the day. Any tricks on how to retain the humidity in there though? Sometimes I’ll walk in and it will be at 10! I mist the cage with a spray bottle everytime I walk past the cage throughout the day. I even bought the waterfall kit from zoo med but that didn’t help a thing. He is in the terrarium setup we purchased from petco.
His little blue light bulb on the top of his terrarium is on a timer. Light comes on at 10am and goes of at 10pm. should I be turning his light off at 8pm? I read somewhere they need 10 hours of daytime and 14 hours of night. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
1-size of enclosure terrarium bought at petco.
2-# on inhabitants – only 1
3-humidity 70 during day
4-temp 80/70
5-water - type - for both misting and soaking dish tape water treated with Reptisafe drops
6-materials used for substrate paper towels. Tried the coconut stuff but didn’t like it. Couldn’t tell where frog poop was.
7-enclosure set up i.e. plants fake plant and fake vine from petco. Rocks.
8-main food source dusted crickets. I will be adding variety to his diet now that I know I should.
9-vitamins and calcium ? ( how often ) I feed the crickets the yellow jello looking calcium fortied stuff and dust the crickets with vitamins
10-lighting 60 watt blue light. On for 12 hours off for 12 hours.
11-what is, specifically, being used to maintain the temperature of the enclosure. light set on timer.
12-when is the last time he ate yesterday night
13-have you found poop lately yes
14-a pic would be great ( including the frog ) any little cell phone pic is fine
15- how old is the frog no idea.
16-how long have you owned him We adopted him from petco in July 2012
17- is the frog wild caught or captive bred captive bred
18- frog food- how often and if its diverse what other feeders are used as treats 1-2 crickets everyday
19- about how often the frog is handled never
20-is the enclosure is kept in a high or low traffic area low

[Lindsaylee1229]

So I found (I think) the answer to one of my questions. Spiderman changes color based on his surroundings. This makes sense because when it was around the time when I added the cork background tree bark thing that he started staying brown all the time. This makes sense because I changed his green plant sheet of background to brown bark. I was happy to see had turned green two days ago and thinking back it was because he was on his fake plant.

Still curious if anyone has any humidity tips though. His terrarium doesn't seem to like to stay humid. I have some of the hydroball things on the bottom of his cage below the papertowel but they don't seem to do a thing. I mist the cage every time I come upstairs which can be quite often. I'll peek in and sometimes it will stay at 60 adn other times I'll check and it will be at 10!

[BeckyM]

Aww. Spiderman is cute.


Yeah, frogs are silly like that. I kept a gray on a drab background and he was always gray. My current frog has a varying color background so sometimes she's gray, sometimes she's vivid green and sometimes she's black. :P


Do you know how humid your house runs? My house is so humid sometimes we have to run a dehumidifier for days to get condensation off the windows.

And there's also a slight chance your hydromoter (humidity meter. ...is hydrometer the right word?) needs calibration. To drop from 60 to 10 is rather intense.

[CamilleElise]

I find with my frogs they just are what color they care to be when they care to be it. Temperature, mood, location, time of day, can all change a frog's color. Your frog, Spiderman (super cute name!) appears to have a good color for a frog. You'll know pretty quickly if the color is "off" and indicated illness. This is how I caught illness in one of my Whites, he was just pasty, not a strong shade of a color. No matter whether green or brown, they are usually a strong shade of that color, strong doesn't mean dark, it just means strong, if that makes sense. When they look pasty, that's bad.