something exciting and meal worms.

[yoshimi]

The exciting thing is that i decided to capitalize more. No, that's only part of it. What I'm happy about is that I just tong-fed my toad for the very first time. I could only find one white meal worm today but it was a lively one and I kept dropping it. So I held it near Banjo's face, he saw it wiggling, and snapped it up. It was pretty awesome, cuz I'd never tried it before.

Are there advantages to tong-feeding, besides how cute it is? I guess it's one of the only ways I can interact with him. Even tho he doesn't know it's me on the other end of tongs, it still counts. And I have those yellow plastic Zoo Med tongs. I don't think he hurt himself but I could see him darting forward and smashing his face on it. Still, I'm thinking this might open up a whole new world for us. Earthworms!!!

Oh yeah and meal worms.. so yesterday I found a couple shrimp-like things in meal worm cup. I looked up what they were (but not before Banjo had eaten one, oops), and today I found 2 more and put all 3 in new cup with wheat bran and sat it on top of dubia breeding bin. It's just a small experiment to see if they will turn into bugs or not. I have other bins to put bugs into for mating, and another for shrimp things, and another for the meal worms. I could feasibly make this happen. Any tips? Warnings?

[JeffreH]

Tong feeding can be useful to prevent substrate ingestion, which happens pretty easily when feeding earthworms or insects like mealworms who burrow. To be honest, I completely mis-interpreted your post and thought you said you were "tongue-feeding." lmao...the mental image of a mealworm on the tip of someone's tongue being fed to a frog...

The shrimp things I assume are pupae. Frankly, mealworms are one of the most effortless feeder insects to breed. You don't necessarily need to separate pupae from larvae (worms) or from adult beetles. They will all thrive in a single container, couple inches of bran, some salad items from time to time, and kept at room temp. There are certainly ways to increase production, but this is the bare minimum and works just fine. I've allowed mealworm cultures to go for over a year without any feeding or watering and STILL had babies popping out.

[yoshimi]

My tongue would stick to his and he'd try to swallow it and wind up in my mouth. Total mess. I was hoping capitalizing would make my posts easier to read.. Oh well.

I feed him as much as possible from a food dish. Crickets will sometimes jump out, and I do hate the dirt he ingests with them. The meal worms have their own special dish but I'm betting I could put them in salsa bowl (food dish) with no problem. I tried worms from outside when I first got him and he didn't even glance at them. He was super picky back then, so he might go for them now, but tong-feeding would take care of them climbing out of dish before he gets to them, which is why I've been hesitating.

I thought of removing the bugs because I don't have many meal worms left, maybe 100, not sure. I read the adults will sometimes eat the shrimps and that would be an issue for me. Altho that's likely why your colony survived so long without food. I actually put the remaining worms back into fridge, but some of them are starting to curl up, and I don't know if that's a sign they're about to become pupa or not. It looks like it. I could only find that one white worm today, so I'm hoping letting them go dormant then taking them out again will cause some to molt. Unless they're all done molting. Whatever. Watching meal worm youtube videos.

[JeffreH]

Curling is an indication that they will be pupating soon - you'll actually have the best result keeping them warm and out of the fridge if you are trying to encourage them to pupate and molt. Insect growth rate is partly a function of temperature... the higher the temperature to some point, the faster they grow. Keeping them in the fridge will actually decrease the speed at which they molt into new instars and the rate at which they pupate. It'll keep larval worms available to feed longer, but it growth rate will slow substantially.

[yoshimi]

I just wrote a response but I must have clicked "go advanced" cuz it disappeared into the internet ether.

Shortly after putting them in, I took them out of fridge. Figured they're probably all about the same age so if some are pupating, them most are about to. I did want to keep feeding from them, and I was finding lots of newly molted ones yesterday and the day before but only one today. So, when sifting through looking for pupa shrimps, maybe I'll find more white ones, maybe not, but you're correct, nothing will happen in the fridge.

Found a thorough how-to sheet listing temps and humidity levels and time frames. If I keep them on roach bin, I *might* see bugs next week. Maybe. The meal worms are back up on shelf next to crickets. It's warm but not too warm, and they seemed to be doing fine there. As I said before, in my erased comment (which was the very best comment ever), this is kind of exciting.

[yoshimi]

Found two more white meal worms and one more pupa shrimp. Tong-fed again but he had trouble with the 1st of the two. He went for the shadow, for the tongs themselves, and I may have been holding it too tightly. He finally got it, and took the other without issue, but that's enough for now. I'd prefer he got his food on his own, even if it's crawling around in a bowl. I'm definitely still encouraged to try earthworms tho. When I told my bf, he thought I said/meant tongue feeding, too.
I guess I thought it was so cool cuz it was the 1st time I got his attention in a positive way. Or did something that got his attention. Anything else I do, even if I'm delivering food, he hides or at least ducks down. So, it was fun but we'll save it for earthworms.