How to feed Wingless Fruit Flies

[DonLisk]

Hi Everyone,
I Have brought home a Dendrobates Leucomelas Bumblebee Dart and want to make sure he finds the feeders. I am just wondering how you put the wingless fruit flies into the viv so your Dart Frog will eat them.

My 1st thought was to use a smooth sided bowl until I watched the flies in the jar walking up the glass.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[RikoAustria]

Tap some FFs in the viv and the frog will either come up to eat them or wait until you leave and hunt them down on its own.

[wesleybrouwer]

Yep, just set them free

I usually tap them in another jar with some supplements in it,
shake them for a while and throw them in.
This makes them climb some less, until the powder is gone
Only make sure not to get to many of the supplement in the viv with the flies.

You also remove a great deal of mites this way,
before setting up a new fly culture throw them in a cheap supplement like gistocal and throw them in a fine mesh sifter to remove the powder and mites from the flies.
This will improve youre cultures rade of reproduction since mites can literally destroy your fly culture.
With this method, you immobilize the mites, that will lose their grip of the flies and the mites won't be booming on you're medium before you're flies do.

The leucomelas also love small things like springtails, small tropical woodlice, aphids,
flour beetle larvaes, milkweedbugs stage 3-4, wheat weevils, bean beatles and so on.
A wide variaty of foods is essential to them and makes the need for supplements minimal.

[DonLisk]

Thanks for the replies Wesley and Riko. I'll have to check out Josh's Frogs and Black Jungle for some supplements since the only thing I have on hand is calcium.

Is it common for the cultures to have mites? I picked up a culture from Petco tonight and its booming with flies, larva, and activity.

[DonLisk]

I tapped about ten of the tiny fruit flies into the viv and soon after I saw the dart out and about.

What are you all using for a sifter with the vitamins and calcium?
It will be a few days before I have the supplements.

[wesleybrouwer]

Around here, you just have to wait before the mites will come to the medium.
I suppose the mites occur all over the world and everywhere they will come to the fruit fly cultures, i may be wrong ofcourse
I always try to give the flies a head start by removing as much mite as possible,
eventually they will miraculously appear again on the medium, so completely free of mites is not possible.
But don't worry, a healthy frog also like to eat them, as long as it isn't to much.
It's more because you're fruitfly larvaes will be attacked as well, causing your'e culture to stagnate or even stop.

What i use for the sifting, is just a plastic jar i also start my cultures in.
The top is provided with a plastic mesh.

Just add youre supplement in, tap flies into it, shake them to get them covered,
this will make them slower and climbing the walls less due to the powder attached to them.
Eventually i keep the jar upside down and shake to get the surplus powder and mites out of it.
Now you can throw in the dizzy flies, without them crawling all over the place before you manage to close the doors of the viv

I'll add a picture to make it clear.
I also use a kitchen sifter sometimes.

You can also make yourself some sifters for other feeder insects, like the beanweevil for example.
Find yourself a mesh with a diameter letting the bugs trough, but keeping the beans in the sifter.
Works so much easier with the feeding of such sort of insects.
Otherwise you have to put in the entire tray in, this way you can somewhat dosage how much you put in there

Good luck with your first poison dart frog btw.

[DonLisk]

I'll have to order some cups then :-)

I have the vitamins coming this week and I used a little Repti Calcium with D3 this morning after watching some videos on Black Jungles Website. After I watch my little dart eat I realized 10 fruit flies was just a snack. I put barely a pinch of the calcium in a cup., dropped in a small amount of flies and swirled them around like in the video. It worked pretty good but the cup seems so much easier.

Dumb flies run to the water so I had to save a few but the frog is now a little chubby and looks pretty happy.

I also found a piece of glass from a picture frame so I covered the top more to bring up humidity since it was running around 70 percent. Hoping to hit at least te 80 prcent mark or more.
Temps are 85 right now and at night drop to 70 - 72 which I hpe is also ok.

Thanks for the help Wesley.

[DonLisk]

Man I love this little Dart. He has explored the viv and has found some cool places to hide.

I see the fruit flies like to congregate in the water dish. I still see many fruit flies walking around the viv so should I put more in every day or other day?

He is usually up by the time I get up at 6am and makes his way to the water dish by 8am.
Humidity in the day is now around 85 percent and temps around 85 degrees.
Night temp was 75 and humidity rose to 95 percent.

Hopefully I'm on the right track here. I do have one cricket in there that is bigger than a pinhead but not quite a 1/4 yet so I'm going to try and remove it.

[DonLisk]

I see the fruit flies like to congregate in the water dish. I still see many fruit flies walking around the viv so should I put more in every day or other day? Wait til there are only a few seen?
It really does look like there are plenty in the viv.... anyone have any comments on this?

[RikoAustria]

Hmm... 85 is a bit on the high side for darts. Is there any way you can drop it down to maybe high 70s? Or put lots of shaded areas that they can hide under.

Also, the FF kit(s) on joshsfrogs.com are awesome to start off with.

Keep us posted on the progress

[DonLisk]

Thanks Riko, I lifted the viv this morning to allow for some air to flow under the bottom in hope to reduce the temps created by the under-tank heater. I also replaced the 40 watt lamp with a 25 to see if I can drop temps some.

Thanks again for the reply.

[RikoAustria]

Oh, I didn't know you had a UTH... I would get rid of it... darts are unlike reptiles and dont need heat underneath them, in fact, most darts escape overhead heat under leaf litter, foliage, etc. Hope that helps out too. Welcome to the DART SIDE!

[DonLisk]

Oh, I didn't know you had a UTH... I would get rid of it... darts are unlike reptiles and dont need heat underneath them, in fact, most darts escape overhead heat under leaf litter, foliage, etc. Hope that helps out too. Welcome to the DART SIDE!

Thanks Riko,
I didn't know that for the darts. The place I bought them recommended the UHT to keep humidity up. I do keep good humidity. I unplugged it today and watch to see what changes in Humidity and temps.
My room is usually the warmest room in the house so it averages 70 and up most of the time.

[Woodsman]

Hi Don,

If the ffs are getting into the water dish, you can put a small piece of banana in the tank and the ffs will congregate on it. This sets up a feeding station that the frog will go to to wait for his/her feeding.

Leucs were my first frogs many years ago and still a favorite!

Take care, Richard.

[RikoAustria]

Hi Don,

If the ffs are getting into the water dish, you can put a small piece of banana in the tank and the ffs will congregate on it. This sets up a feeding station that the frog will go to to wait for his/her feeding.

Leucs were my first frogs many years ago and still a favorite!

Take care, Richard.

Hey there Richard... I see you're posting here more
Don, he's right on with the banana... Rich gave me the same piece of advice a couple years ago and I still do it to this day

[Woodsman]

Hi Riko,

Yeah, I am broadening my horizons past Dendroboard. I have even made a visit over to Canadart.org (I guess even Eskimos need a hobby!)

Take care, Richard

Hey there Richard... I see you're posting here more
Don, he's right on with the banana... Rich gave me the same piece of advice a couple years ago and I still do it to this day

[clownonfire]

Hi Riko,

Yeah, I am broadening my horizons past Dendroboard. I have even made a visit over to Canadart.org (I guess even Eskimos need a hobby!)

Take care, Richard

Eskimos... tsk tsk... And by Eskimos do you mean Inuit? And by Inuit, do you mean Canadian? Speaking of Canadart.org, we just launched our Facebook page yesterday... Still at it's first steps, though... Canadart - Community | Facebook.

PS: Please don't shoot me...

[Woodsman]

Hi Eric,

I "like" your facebook page and I hope you know I was pulling an "Archie Bunker" (I wonder if that reference even has relevence these days) about the "Eskimos".

Thanks for the link, Richard.

Eskimos... tsk tsk... And by Eskimos do you mean Inuit? And by Inuit, do you mean Canadian? Speaking of Canadart.org, we just launched our Facebook page yesterday... Still at it's first steps, though... Canadart - Community | Facebook.

PS: Please don't shoot me...

[clownonfire]

Hi Eric,

I "like" your facebook page and I hope you know I was pulling an "Archie Bunker" (I wonder if that reference even has relevence these days) about the "Eskimos".

Thanks for the link, Richard.

There's something to be said about Archie's humo(u)r alright!