Feeling Discouraged...

[Chelspaz]

So as some of you already know, I've been raising gray tree frogs from tadpoles. They've been froglets for a little over a month now. I guess just to get straight to it, basically my frogs won't get to eat tonight because my cultures barely have enough flies right now to even reproduce. That has been the story of my life for the past month or so. Ever since the beginning of them eating I've been stressed every evening about how much they're going to eat that night and if they're getting enough, and then when I ordered the cultures I have now I had a huge stressful time doing that with the vendor I used, whom I will not use ever again, and I just hate feeling like I'm doing wrong by these innocent creatures because I feel completely unprepared.


They soon will be graduating to pinhead crickets and I'm worried about that too because of how fast pinhead crickets can grow, and there is NOWHERE close to me who sells pinhead crickets where I could just go get a few at a time as needed every other day or so. And from what I've seen, ordering online you mostly order things in bulk and that will definitely not be a good thing if I have hundreds of oversized crickets that I can't feed to my frogs. Ordering online is one of the most frustrating things with paying the hefty shipping costs and making sure that I order things in time to keep a good supply. I keep telling myself that I can get through this small froglet stage and once they get to regular sized crickets, I can FINALLY have the convenience to just run to Petsmart whenever I need to and be done with it...but that could be months down the road and I just don't know if I can deal with the stress of it all on top of the stresses of my daily life. Just worrying if my frogs will survive while I'm stressing about having enough food all the time is not fun for me or for them.


If I were to consider setting my guys free, after a little over a month of being in captivity as froglets...would that be okay? I feel so sad, and even coming to tears, just considering this because I DO love my little froglets SO much, but I'm just trying to think of what's best for them and for me right now.

[DigitalPunk]

Chelsea,

Sorry you have been struggling with food for your frogs. Short answer is - No it is not to long.

but I would encourage you to not give up if you feel like you can succeed. Take a deep breath and lets think this through.

How many flies do your frogs eat a night? Then try to guesstimate how many cultures a week they will consume. Without knowing much of anything I would guess your frogs probably consume 1 - 2 cultures a week between the 3 of them. Maybe more like 1.5 cultures.

So I would first start buy ordering 3 or 4 fruit fly cultures... maybe even 5. Also order some supplies for culturing your own fruit flies. If you order from NeHerp you can choose that you want a mix of freshly started cultures and producing ones.

When they come in take the producing ones and separate them from the others. Write on them with a sharpie to show you the 2 you are feeding from. Set the other 2 - 3 aside and let them produce. If they are fresh cultures it could take up to 2 weeks from the date they were setup to hatch the first round of flies. NeHerp writes on the labels the day they made them. Use these to help guess when you can expect them to produce.

Once you are 7 days out (7 days from the setup date for the cultures) from the 2 or 3 you have producing setup 3 - 4 more (you always want to have aroubd twice as many flies on hand to feed than you actually need. this will help ease the stress. Then every 7 days make another 4 cultures. Let your frogs grow a bit more so that maybe small crickets would work. Then order 500 - 1000 pinheads. Keep the flies going on the side and make a not when you got the crickets and then see how long they last before they get to big. (I bet they last 3 - 5 weeks)


Another thing to be watching for with the fruit flies is not adding so many in the tank at once that more of them escape than are eaten. It is better to add a few and watch them die then add some more. This will help control your FF loses.

[ColleenT]

Petco sells melanogaster FF. the jars are $10 but it's good in an emergency. i had to get a jar, and the ff are very active and there are a ton in there. my baby Grays were onto small crix pretty fast. i tried to find pinheads, but it's not easy to get them here. so they started on xsmall crix and they did great. they are still doing very well. all i can say is try it but supervise for a while.

[deranged chipmunk]

Don't give up, you can do this. And we're here to help. I know Paul swears by neherp, but I have gotten cultures from genesisexotics.com and they were awesome! Josh even sells his cultures at different rates of completion. You can buy a booming culture and I mean BOOMING to get your froggies satisfied for quite a while. And josh is a hobbyist like us, so i don't hesitate referring people to him for stuff.


Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world ~ Nelson Mandela

[awelcome]

I second PetCo to get you started... I bought a total of 3 cultures before I had my own successful set up going. I fed from the first two when I ordered my supplies from NEHERP and then used some of those to get them started. I didn't quite make it to a booming culture before those died so I bought one more to get me through. Now I am feeding from the two I made, and as soon as I switched over I started the next two and those are just about ready now. You'll get it. I relax, knowing that I can go to petco in a pinch to get a culture at any time even if it is 10 bucks. They sell crickets of varying size I think too, but I don't know what sizes.

[ColleenT]

they have xsmall crix if you get to the store on delivery day. bigger than pinheads but my little grays will eat them.

[Chelspaz]

Gosh. The influx of support that is given on this forum is so amazing. I thank you all for the encouragement and the time you seem to put into the detailed posts that can really help me big time.

Unfortunately the only Petco close to me at all is an hour away. I guess it could be a lot worse though. I will go to that store tomorrow to have a browse. In the mean time, I'm still worried if I'll have enough flies at the moment to feed my guys.

I know this might be such a horrible question, but I have to face this as a possibility. Will my guys survive another night without food?

[deranged chipmunk]

They should be ok another night. Think about it this way, in the wild, there's not somebody there to offer them fruit flies on a daily basis.


Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world ~ Nelson Mandela

[Chelspaz]

That is what I keep trying to tell myself too. Thank you for the reassurance.

[Chelspaz]

Chelsea,

Sorry you have been struggling with food for your frogs. Short answer is - No it is not to long.

but I would encourage you to not give up if you feel like you can succeed. Take a deep breath and lets think this through.

How many flies do your frogs eat a night? Then try to guesstimate how many cultures a week they will consume. Without knowing much of anything I would guess your frogs probably consume 1 - 2 cultures a week between the 3 of them. Maybe more like 1.5 cultures.

So I would first start buy ordering 3 or 4 fruit fly cultures... maybe even 5. Also order some supplies for culturing your own fruit flies. If you order from NeHerp you can choose that you want a mix of freshly started cultures and producing ones.

When they come in take the producing ones and separate them from the others. Write on them with a sharpie to show you the 2 you are feeding from. Set the other 2 - 3 aside and let them produce. If they are fresh cultures it could take up to 2 weeks from the date they were setup to hatch the first round of flies. NeHerp writes on the labels the day they made them. Use these to help guess when you can expect them to produce.

Once you are 7 days out (7 days from the setup date for the cultures) from the 2 or 3 you have producing setup 3 - 4 more (you always want to have aroubd twice as many flies on hand to feed than you actually need. this will help ease the stress. Then every 7 days make another 4 cultures. Let your frogs grow a bit more so that maybe small crickets would work. Then order 500 - 1000 pinheads. Keep the flies going on the side and make a not when you got the crickets and then see how long they last before they get to big. (I bet they last 3 - 5 weeks)


Another thing to be watching for with the fruit flies is not adding so many in the tank at once that more of them escape than are eaten. It is better to add a few and watch them die then add some more. This will help control your FF loses.

I've copied down some notes from your instructions to an app on my phone. Here is a screen shot just to make sure I've transcribed right. Lol.



I REALLY appreciate your post, Paul, because since I haven't ever done this before, I pretty much do need these things spelled out for me. So thank you very much for your time and lending me your knowledge.

[LilyPad]

I was in your position with my spring peepers the first couple of months I had them. I HATED culturing fruit flies and they always seemed to fail or I used too many out of them, etc. It was extremely frustrating. Luckily, your frogs will outgrow the need for fruit flies and you will find their care to be very simple! Hang in there!

[Chelspaz]

Drove an hour to Petco and they had SO many cultures in stock. I did call before I left but I was still surprised there were so many jars on the shelf. I bought 3. Lol.

When I got home, I cleaned my guys' house out, dusted their flies and dropped them in there...needless to say, they devoured those flies in the blink of an eye!

I really can't express how appreciative I am of everyone on this forum. I would not have been able to keep going if it wasn't for all of the encouragement and useful advice! Thanks so much!!

Here are a few pics of each of my 3 guys I took yesterday.







And I took this pic today. I thought they were cute on their plant.

[awelcome]

glad you were able to get some, and have some stress uloaded.