Food Culturing/breeding ???????

[Meefloaf]

well, by the end of the week i should have the tank background done and the plants/substrate/micro-fauna will be going in i think next payday, and shall sit there and be monitored and nurtured until i get back from a wedding at the end of june, thats when i plan to get my frogs so i can give them attention and not be away.

Thought this would be a good time to start thinking about food and springtails.

Springtails - I'm looking at buying a culture kit so i can learn how to raise them, now once i've got them up and going and lets hope they thrive in their new home, will their culture sustain itself or will i need to add some every X amount of time ? i'm also looking at putting in some isopods, tropical as their are tails of the european ones getting large and getting aggressive

FOOD - I'm going for amazonian milk frogs, and i want to look after them, so i've been thinking about doing my own food. now at the moment i will only be keeping the one setup, is it worth doing or do the critters not survive long enough to supply one setup ? i live in cornwall in the uk and it is VERY remote and i can imagine struggling to get food locally and would prob have to run the risk of mail order food, and this will add to expense etc.

[demon amphibians]

culturing your frogs food is the best option. that way you know what is getting passed to your frogs unlike store bought insects which have been know to carry parasites at times.
Isopods may be a good route to go as well. You should have great success.It does not take much time out of your day. I have a very large colony of roaches and even the size i have it takes me 5 minutes a day to care for them. they do all the rest. you can even check up on them once every couple of days to a week or two. I leave town all the time for weeks at a time. My girlfriend takes care of the frogs but wont go near the roaches but there is no need for her to do so if i supply enough dry food. other Insects may differ in care but from what i have read Isopods are even easier to culture then roaches and trust me roaches are very very easy. I don't believe you will have any difficulty.

[Meefloaf]

are crickets hard to keep a culture going ?

[demon amphibians]

are crickets hard to keep a culture going ?

they are on the harder side to culture not to mention they are escape artists. compared to isopods and roaches i would say they are much harder and breed much less. but then again breeding roaches and isopods are not difficult what so ever.

[Meefloaf]

so maybe i should buy into crickets and keep them in a lil enclosure, but culture some roaches and isopods ?

i'm looking at getting 2-3 milkies (got a 60x45x60) so i dont want to be culturing something that will because i dont need them etc

[demon amphibians]

Isopods would be more along the lines of what would be useful to you concerning milkfrogs. But dubia's would also work quite nice because they come in all different sizes. But in your case you could only use the small ones. If you go with dubia's you will only need a small colony. with isopods I would get a somewhat larger colony to start with. Going with either of these or both i think you would be quite satisfied with the results. I personnally avoid crickets and meal worms. Crickets stink, eat each other, die fast and make noise whilst having much less nutritional value as isopods and roaches. Meal worms have a poor nutritional value and a hard exosekeltion that may cause digestive complications with your frogs. Don't get me wrong crickets would work just fine for your frogs. I am just saying that roaches and Isopods are better. And just stay away from mealworms completely.

[Meefloaf]

trust me, loving the idea of avoiding crickets, remember as a child them living under the floorboards aha. cheers for the info man, think that is the road i'll go down

[Meefloaf]

found these

Pallid Cockroach
(Phoetalia pallida)
A small, soft-bodied species from Central/South America. Adults grow to around 15mm, . Theya re livebearers and the nymphs are very small 3mm and taken by medium to large dartfrogs. The adults are devoured by many amphibians and larger day geckos.

[JeffreH]

Pallids are a great feeder species - and you won't run into any problems with adults being too large to feed to your frogs that you may otherwise encounter with other common feeder cockroach species (Blaberus, B. dubia, etc.) I would highly recommend taking the plunge and picking up a culture of them for your frogs... but keep in mind the adults and nymphs can climb smooth surfaces like plastic and glass so you will need to keep a thin layer of petroleum jelly or teflon to keep them from climbing up and out of their bin.

[Meefloaf]

i was going to get them there own little enclosure, can usually pick up tanks people are getting rid of, also got myself a fish tank laying around somewhere

[JeffreH]

You might find this useful - most all of the information you should need to culture roaches successfully:
http://www.frogforum.net/food-feeder...r-roaches.html

I would recommend an opaque, plastic bin personally. These offer more security to the roaches, are lightweight, evenly distribute heat and humidity (unlike aquaria), etc. But rearing them in glass aquariums is certainly do-able, and several people on this forum have had success doing so.

[demon amphibians]

Excellent info Jeff. I do agree this smaller species would work best. I actually wanna get some of these guys going as well.

[Meefloaf]

I'm also thinking of dubia after reading that thread. Would they be okay for milk frogs, obviously smaller when frogs are young. have a reptile loving friend so can palm off my overflow onto him and at the same time gives me chance to culture them without pressure of supplying my frogs so quick

[JeffreH]

I'm supplied some dubia to a friend with milk frogs and had decent feeding response to them. They aren't the most exciting food item for visually stimulated herps, so you'll probably want to grab a small batch to start with and see if your frogs take to them readily. Some geckos and frogs will outright ignore them, others eat them like candy. The frogs I mentioned earlier had a preference for faster moving species like Blatta lateralis and lobster roaches, but still readily accepted B. dubia when offered. If your frogs like em, go for it =)

[Meefloaf]

cheers man, very hard to find a decent amount of Pallid's in the UK, one place does them, but as food so tubs of 20 small nymphs or ten adults. and unsure if they'd send females, just incase they would lose out on custom by someone culturing etc.