Optimal ACF Weight?

[jlfrogfan]

Hello, frog gurus! This is my first post, so please let me know if something is wrong with it (i.e., if the pictures I put in don't show up). I have a quick question about my female ACF--I know this species is supposed to be chunky, but is she too large? (in the second picture, for instance, I think she almost looks bloated--even though she's not, as far as I can tell).
Until about a month ago, I had been feeding her Reptomin Baby pellets mixed with freeze-dried gammarus shrimp/krill. I took that away, but she still hasn't gotten any skinnier, from what I can tell. Am I worried about nothing, or is further dieting necessary? There should be two pictures of her, in this post. Again, please let me know if they aren't appearing!
Thank you in advance, for your insight!

[mpmistr]

Like you said, female ACF get pretty fat. Your frog looks fine to me, I have three female ACF and they're all chunky.

I would remove the freeze dried food from the diet though, it's really not good for them and can cause intestinal issues.

[jlfrogfan]

Thanks for the good news! I took out the freeze dried food, about a month ago. She didn't lose any weight, though, which I did not expect.

[mpmistr]

Thanks for the good news! I took out the freeze dried food, about a month ago. She didn't lose any weight, though, which I did not expect.

Aquatic freeze-dried food is pretty devoid of any real nutrition. It's known to cause constipation in some aquatic animals if fed too regularly, honestly it's a total waste of money and the lowest tier of quality food for your animals. Smart move on eliminating it, I made the same mistake myself when I first got these frogs and they never seemed to enjoy freeze-dried foods at all.

ACF do get very fat is overfed. Easily solved though, just cut back on feeding, either feed less per meal or feel less frequently. They can skip a meal or two, they are very efficient at living off the fat stored around their kidneys. Eventually their weight will balance out.

Here's how I feed my frogs if you are looking for an example diet:
I usually feed my frogs every other day, some times every third day, depending on the size of their last meal.

The meals consist of one whole earthworm (canadian nightcrawler) or adult reptomin sticks (mixed into clumps with wet/frozen daphnia or mysis shrimp and hand fed). My juvenile frog is fed daily, chopped earthworms or reptomin.

Treats (once or twice a month) are live crickets, these are simply dumped into the tank and I just let them go crazy with it. I used to dump a dozen or so ghost shrimp into the tank and just let them hunt them at their leisure but they stopped selling them around here. Kind of a bummer because not only did these shrimp provide a way for my frogs to hunt but they were pretty efficient scavenging for uneaten foods.

[jlfrogfan]

Thank you very much for your detailed example! I have considered the earthworms before, but am worried about them being vectors for parasites (like feeding wild snails to aquatic turtles). Is there a way to abate that risk (i.e., injecting the worm with Panacur once in a while)?

[mpmistr]

Been feeding my frogs baitshop nightcrawlers for almost 2 years now and they've never had a single health issue.

Not to say your concern is not valid, and these frogs can be fed reptomin or a similar pellet exclusively and be fine but in my experience I've had zero problems.

I mean when you think about it though, frogs, newts, salamanders and even pet reptiles all feed primarily on live inverts so I think the risk here is minimal. I do not know of any specific parasite that could be passed from an earthworm to a clawed frog and I've never heard of any pet frog on this forum becoming infected from eating an earthworm.

Is it possible? Probably. Likely? Doubt it.