Hello everyone.

I am new to this forum, and I have joined because I am interested in learning how to improve my caretaking abilities for amphibians. Or ‘husbandry’, as I’ve learned a lot of people like to say. I find that funny, because it sounds like husband. I guess that means I’ve been a polygamist

I’m making plans, and I would love any advice from someone who’s taken on a project of its scale, because it’s BIGGER than anything I’ve done before. If I were to keep 10 adult Cane toads as pets, and in a common enclosure, what would be the appropriate size for the terrarium? Obviously, there is no amount of confinement that is of benefit to them, and I’m sure that I can easily accommodate the minimum, but how large ‘should’ it be? In other words, how small could it be, before any further decrease in its size would be of, at least some, meaningful compromise to them? And, how big would it be, before any increase in size would confer no meaningful benefit?

Also how high can this species jump when fully grown? It’s very important to me, just in case one of them is an incessant jumper (who isn’t dissuaded by self-inflicted injury), that they can’t reach the ceiling. With ten of these rather large toads I’ll clearly be going through a sizeable amount of food, so to cut down on cost I intend to culture prey animals at home. Here is a list of the food items that I’m aware are sometimes given to frogs:

1. Butterworms.
2. Calcium dust.
3. Chicks.
4. Crickets
5. Earthworms.
6. Guppies.
7. Gut load preparations (for prey).
8. Mealworms.
9. Mice.
10. Monkey chow.
11. Other frogs!
12. Silkworms.
13. Vitamin powder (including D3).
14. Waxworms.

I haven’t used all of these things in my own experience. The closest anuran to the Cane Toad that I’ve cared for, in terms of size, is an Argentine Horned Frog (I’ve recently found out that their common name is Pac-Man frogs). That’s pretty humorous This was more than a decade ago. In order of amount, what I gave my black hole of a pet was crickets, full grown mice, and gold fish. I didn’t use gut load, cause I didn’t breed my own, nor calcium powder, but the mice and crickets were dusted with herp vitamins every time (about twice a week).
After reading some of the threads on this forum, I see that some people would disagree with some of the ways I did that. I’ll feed them whatever is ideal, but I don’t know which of these items are good staples, and which should be occasional, or are unnecessary, or even inappropriate (although, I have my doubts about the Monkey Chow). I’ve yet to hear any admonishments about not overfeeding a frog earthworms. If this could be a staple, that would be convenient. They are the least labor intensive animal to farm, and I could feed them for free. I like the idea of having a large tank, swarming with guppies, almost for its own sake. I can do mice, roaches, mealworms; I’m game for anything but the chickens! If that’s a must I’ll just order them frozen through the mail. Which animals should I be producing, and what population sizes will they have to have, in order that they don’t deplete?

Cheers!

David.