wild animals vs pet store feeders, are they both safe for pixies to eat?

[mattfish]

Just fed Mr. Pickles a fish and put it on youtube "African bullfrog eats a fish" this fish was bought and i guarantee it came from the wild or some outside lake. You can see how fast he nails it even though i had just taken him out of his cage. a healthy pixie dont care if he is handled before he eats he just wants to eat. AWESOME!!!

[NialR35]

Just fed Mr. Pickles a fish and put it on youtube "African bullfrog eats a fish" this fish was bought and i guarantee it came from the wild or some outside lake. You can see how fast he nails it even though i had just taken him out of his cage. a healthy pixie dont care if he is handled before he eats he just wants to eat. AWESOME!!!

Reading your answers from your other post it says that you use fish as a staple diet for your pyxie and you only dust supplements every couple of months whenever you feed crickets? Oh god....

These frogs can live up to 15-20 years in captivity with the proper care and you only had your frog for a little over a year...Are you sure you want to keep doing these things?

[GrifTheGreat]

I'm glad Jeff replied to this because quite frankly I'm tired of repeating myself.

I've stated the risks of feeding WC prey to members frogs so many times that you can actually do a search on the forum and find not only my posts, but a few other's as well.

There is a small benefit to WC prey, but the fact of the matter is that the benefit does not outweigh the risks plain and simple.

[mattfish]

You said "Oh god" are you impressed? (:
I think Mr. Pickels will redeffine age limits. 20 years is nothing for well ballanced dieted animals. Fish in a frogs diet is esential for optimum Health. everyone knows that! The oils in fish are even used for almost every living animals diet. ever take fish oil pills? It does make a difference.

[NialR35]

You said "Oh god" are you impressed? (:
I think Mr. Pickels will redeffine age limits. 20 years is nothing for well ballanced dieted animals. Fish in a frogs diet is esential for optimum Health. everyone knows that! The oils in fish are even used for almost every living animals diet. ever take fish oil pills? It does make a difference.

[Truffs1178]

Nial where did your posts go? I saw you wrote a lot of info and now it's not showing up. Just a horse being hit.

[NialR35]

Nial where did your posts go? I saw you wrote a lot of info and now it's not showing up. Just a horse being hit.

I deleted one but I think I might have deleted another one by mistake, I think the "beating the dead horse" says enough already because I think we are getting trolled lol.

[Truffs1178]

I deleted one but I think I might have deleted another one by mistake, I think the "beating the dead horse" says enough already because I think we are getting trolled lol.

Oh ok. I get emails every time someone replies to a thread and I read the email saw your post and came to reply but it was gone and there was just the horse. And yes the horse does say enough.

[Tongue Flicker]

I've been feeding my fish freshly killed bloody mosquitoes, my newts with small moths that i catch in my bathroom, my ACF with house spiders that i personally hunt and my turtle with earthworms underneath my plant pots with no ill effects. Depends on your neighborhood and country where you're getting your wild feeders.

[JeffreH]

the only downfall might be parasites or something else that MIGHT cause a problem that any trained vet can and will fix. Big deal. Vets see pet snakes all the time with parasites and other problems that came form their food source.

Most of us try to prevent ever having to see a vet by erring on the side of caution with our feeders. And I've had a "qualified herp vet" fail to recognize the difference between a pinworm egg and a coccidea cyst, so you should not rely on a vet as a crutch. Plus, most of us do not have the privilege of having a good herp vet nearby... it is a rarity to have one in an adjacent city. We are keeping our pets in a captive environment; it out responsibility to keep them as comfortable as possible. There is no need to "build immunities" when they are never going to be subjected to anything in the outside world that will elicit problems.

For example: When I went to the Peruvian Rainforest, I wore long pants and long-sleeved shirts to prevent being bitten by mosquitoes, black flies, and sand flies; all of which vector serious human diseases. I did this because I was only staying there for two weeks, and there was no need for me to go through the pain and suffering of building immunity to their bites as I will never be encountering these diseases again back in my home in Ohio.

Our guide on the other hand, who lived in the forest for 8 years, had to take a different approach. The Matsiguanka tribe encouraged him to be tied to a tree at night, naked, allowing him to be bitten by everything in the forest. He suffered a severe fever, hallucinations, seizures, and extreme discomfort for two weeks. But now, he can walk in the forest barefoot, with shorts and no shirt and he no longer reacts to the bites of these insects.

My point is - you do not need to play antibody-building experimentation with a captive pet who should never be encountering the pathogens in the first place. You are the only one introducing them to him.

Fish in a frogs diet is esential for optimum Health. everyone knows that! The oils in fish are even used for almost every living animals diet.

Would you like to cite the literature form which you obtained this information? Because both of these statements are wildly inaccurate (especially considering most frogs are insectivore). You should not state your own opinions as fact... I thought you said something about having an actual scientific debate earlier?

There is one thing I can agree with you on, and that is that a varied diet is key to the well-being of most any organism (aside from specialists). We should all aim to provide as must variety in our pet's diet as possible, but this can be accomplished with the variety of food items available in the captive-feeder trade as well: silkworms, captive-reared hornworms, waxworms, earthworms, mealworms, Zophobas, solider fly larvae, crickets, locusts, springtails, cultured flies, and numerous different species of cockroach are all commonly cultured in the pet trade and provide us with opportunities to provide out pet's with a varied diet. I am even okay with feeding certain arthopods collected from "safe" areas that are known to have no been sprayed with chemicals... but one should be selective and cautious about this. Feeding gastropods, fish and birds from the wild is just downright risky... these species are all notorious carriers of pathogens. Fish often carry fluke worms and specific protozoans, and gastropods are known to vector parasites that specifically attack amphibians. I typically only collect a very specific set of insects from a very specific location if I ever feel so inclined.

[mattfish]

Jeff,
Thank you for giving a detailed response. About frogs eating fish, it is common sense and as a kid we used to go critter hunting and i saw frogs eat fish. In fact if we caught a frog and wanted to keep it a while we would catch small fish for it to eat, and they always did. If they would eat them while in a container with kids picking them up all the time than they probably eat a ton of them in the wild. and why wouldnt they, all these insects everyone feeds dont have bones. bones are a great form of natural calcium, suppliments are great but they can never duplicate the real things.
I have never said that wild animals are not risky i have said that petstore feeders are just as risky.
My frog has to build immunities because he is going to come into contact with many things in his long life. If i start feeding him everything i can think of now, then as he gets older the risk of him falling prey to a disease becomes less and less, kind of like your Guide.
But i do appreciate all the info, your peruvian rainforest trip sounds awesome!!!