Changing my Fantasy Pacman frog from a staple diet of crickets to nightcrawlers

[TeeRiddle]

Prince Charming II is currently eating about 6 - 14 crickets a day - He is a very good eater! No problems with that! Ain't he the cutest little Fantasy frog you've ever seen? I adore him . I believe he is around 4 - 5 months old.

But crickets are extremely annoying. They are:
+ Hopping everywhere and easily escape my grasp - I have a few running around my room and I am very upset about this.
+ When they get older they make a lot of noise.
+ They die very easily in my container I have for them and they stink very badly. Feces and urine everywhere on there food.
+ Incredibly hard to clean the crickets cage without one or two escaping me. VERY annoying.
+ He eats a hold bunch of them now - it is probably easier to use bigger victims!
+ My dad is actually very upset they are in the house. I tried to explain to him that they are not cockroaches but he is stubborn to his ways.

I have a few questions about nightcrawlers. I heard they are great staple diet. By the way - The ones that I have access to are undyed, no pesticides added and no additives of any sort. I spritzed there containers with de-chlorinated water to be extra sure they are not in chlorinated water.

Questions:
1) Petco tells me they make a terrible staple diet. But on this forum people rave about nightcrawlers. Anyone out there have a frog that is healthy and eating nightcrawlers?
2) How do you feed your lovely froggie a nightcrawler without the nightcrawler ducking for cover in the dirt? ( see first picture of worm hiding)
3) What is the best way of changing a staple diet from crickets to nightcrawlers?
4) Do you think my frog is too small to eat the night crawlers I picked up? (see picture of frog the size of two quarters and nightcrawler)
5)What do you think about adding calcium to the bath instead of coating the food? .


Thank you for viewing and your input! Just a tip - might help organization wise to copy paste my questions and answer after them!

Heyya,

Great looking Fantasy frog!

1) Petco tells me they make a terrible staple diet. But on this forum people rave about nightcrawlers. Anyone out there have a frog that is healthy and eating nightcrawlers?

- Nightcrawlers are a very good staple food item. I feed my Fantasy nightcrawlers and horn worms with the very occasional wax worm.

2) How do you feed your lovely froggie a nightcrawler without the nightcrawler ducking for cover in the dirt? ( see first picture of worm hiding)

- The previous posts have mentioned some good tactics for feeding the nightcrawlers to your frog, such as tong feeding or taking him out of the enclosure into a "feeding" tank.

I have used a playing card as a plate while feeding too. Just place the card in front of the frog then put the worm on the card. He will snatch it up once it wiggles around some. This helps keep the worm from picking up substrate, and keeps the dusted, slimy worm from making a mess as well.

This method works well for my Fantasy, but he is kind of shy and a bit of a lazy eater. If you have an agressive eater then it might not work so great because he may lunge after the card when you place it in and such. You want to avoid having the frog snap at the card.

3) What is the best way of changing a staple diet from crickets to nightcrawlers?

- I would offer an appropriate size piece of nightcrawler for the next feeding. Once it wiggles some he should take it pretty easily. Most seem to love the taste of the worms and once they get something they like there's no problem with them eating them. As a matter of fact, when I switched Orion over to nightcrawlers he wouldn't even touch crickets.

4) Do you think my frog is too small to eat the night crawlers I picked up? (see picture of frog the size of two quarters and nightcrawler)

- You should cut the nightcrawlers into smaller pieces. The general rule is the food item shouldn't be bigger than the distance between the frog's eyes - so maybe about an inch long or so (judging by your pictures).

5)What do you think about adding calcium to the bath instead of coating the food?

- I recommend dusting the food items with calcium every other feeding and with a multi-vitamin once a week, but not on the same day as a calcium dusting. You could use Repashy Calcium Plus which has calcium, vitamin D3, and other essential nutrients. Rep-Cal and Herptivite are good sources too. I'm not familiar with calcium baths. Maybe someone with more knowledge can answer that.


Also, I'm not sure what type of substrate you are using, it looks like coco fiber possibly, but it appears to be way too soggy. It should be moist but not swampy.

Hope this helps!

[Lija]

nice looking frog you've got here!

rule number one - never listen to petco or other pet store people do your own research that you're doing right now! and you've been given a very good info already.
if your frog is a good eater you should have no problems training him eating from tongs, and then you can get pacman food or nightcrawlers and feed whatever you like. since he is eating crickets i would start feeding crickets from tongs holding it to the leg so the frog will see clearly that it is a cricket and when he is comfortable with tongs offer piece of nightcrawler. When they're tong trained they don't care whatever it is in there, they see tongs = food

dusting - you should dust with Ca and multivitamins alternating them as TeeRiddle has already pointed out and also you should change the substrate- yours is too soggy.

good luck!

[Ra]

My Fantasy Frog refuses just about every other kind of food item I offer, except nightcrawlers. He gets very, very excited and aggressive in the presence of a nightcrawler. On a nightcrawler diet, he grew very very fast. I have noted rapid growth in frogs fed nightcrawlers.
I would suggest you cut the nightcrawlers in half for this little guy. WHen he is about 2.5 inches or so, start feeding whole ones (he may want more than one even).
Crickets, it would seem, can be a terrible food item if not properly gut loaded. I have to ask, as you seem to believe your frog is 3-4 months old, do you gut load your crickets? Gut loading crickets is very important, so is supplementing them with calcium and vitamin D3. Pacman frogs require alot of calcium, and crickets have a very poor calcium to posphorus ratio.

Offer the nightcrawlers with a feeding tong. Giggle it in front of the frogs face and chomp. Another option is to put the frog and nightcrawler in an empty plastic container like a critter keeper and watch him go at it.

Switching from crickets to nightcrawlers is easy, just start offering nightcrawlers. No problem. Most amphibians are crazy for nightcrawlers for some reason.

There is a possibility that calcium in their water could irritate them, possibly. Just dip the nightcrawler in the powdered supplements. Nightcrawlers themselves are a good source of calcium.

[Misschievou2]

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for all the wonderful advice! I am so glad everyone contributed a little of there knowledge and I feel like I have a better understanding of what I am doing.

Today I fed Prince Charming II a few crickets and purchased a whole bunch of nightcrawlers in hopes of catching his interest. To no eval my froggie did not nibble. I took time to rest the nightcrawler on his leg or between his eyes but he was as cool as a cucumber. After a while he just decided to hop away. I do not want to by accident stress him out so I stopped after I noticed his pattern of hopping away.

Prince Charming II is a shy eater. Also he is a very big pooper. He left a huge poop in the water dish a few minutes ago. Maybe he is going to free up some room for this worm!

A lot of pacman frogs are very good eaters, mine is one of them but he isn't a random biter so unless he is very hungry he is not going to lounge at this whopper of a nightcrawler. What usually happens is I drop about 7 crickets in the tank and I go study or whatever activities I do throughout the day and within a few hours not a cricket in sight. I'll just find him in his little water dish acting innocent like nothing happened.

My plan is whatever side he bites at first - I plan on cutting it mid-way so he has 1/2 of the size. I would pre-cut them but I would rather have the whole worm moving around him than half the worm moving and the other side being still.

Please leave any clever ideas to persuade Prince Charming II, (the shy eater and the pool side pooper)to have a bite at this tastey nightcrawler! Maybe some good methods of catching crickets that strayed out of there cage... I just was plugging in my phone and I spotted one so I slammed it with my hand. God I hate crickets.... Thanks again!

[Lija]

be patient with him and starve him a little, he ate a few crickets that day so he might not be hungry enough to grab something he doesn't know, wait a few days and offer nigthcrawler only

[Misschievou2]

be patient with him and starve him a little, he ate a few crickets that day so he might not be hungry enough to grab something he doesn't know, wait a few days and offer nigthcrawler only

Very good plan! I will do this! Thanks! He hasn't eaten anything today but I am sure he will chew on anything i give him tomorrow!

[Misschievou2]

He ate a earth worm today but the weird thing is he keeps chewing at it after he swallows and makes this foamy noise and a little bit of foamy clear bubbly substance comes out. Is this normal? Doesn't sound appetizing to me.

[Namio]

He ate a earth worm today but the weird thing is he keeps chewing at it after he swallows and makes this foamy noise and a little bit of foamy clear bubbly substance comes out. Is this normal? Doesn't sound appetizing to me.

Haha yea this is normal. The "snot bubble" is from the mucus secreted by the earthworm. I laugh whenever that happens.

[WorldClassFrogCoddler]

be patient with him and starve him a little, he ate a few crickets that day so he might not be hungry enough to grab something he doesn't know, wait a few days and offer nigthcrawler only

Starving him a little sounds like bad advice but it worked for me too. I got worried he wouldn't eat but I read to just wait a couple days and let him get hungry, sure enough, when he was hungry he reappeared and wandered around looking for food. I find he hates tong feeding but the first bit of worm, he puts up very little fight. The fuller he gets, the more he refuses to bite, and when he's full he does the 180 degree turn to show he isn't interested, or hops away.

[Namio]

Offer the nightcrawlers with a feeding tong. Giggle it in front of the frogs face and chomp.

Ra has a special talent that can make the nightcrawlers laugh. Lol!