Feeding a Pacman frog in winter

[Yuri352]

Hi Yury! Be careful feeding large prey or food amounts. If it starts rotting in digestive system can kill frog. Throwing up for frogs is dangerous too. Good luck !

Thank you!
Summer - aft frog - a 1/2 length Pasman (no more), and digested in 1.5 weeks (before the appearance of feces).
Winter - Seafood much longer, so less excrement (no "waste" because protein foods at 100%).

Sometimes I add meat and bone meal (white).

[DVirginiana]

If it's working, then I guess it's working... But nightcrawlers and insects such as crickets or dubia roaches are definitely easier to digest. These frogs would never get seafood in the wild, and it's a completely unnatural food source, and with feeding frogs in the summer you run a huge risk of parasites.
My honest opinion of this is that you might have a healthy frog for a year or two, but that it's not a good long-term diet. There's a difference between what's best for the frog and something that just isn't bad enough to kill it.

Also, I know they eat frogs in the wild, but like my vet said when he was talking about letting dogs chew bones "Coyotes chew bones all the time in the wild, but no one hears about it when the coyote has a perforated intestine because of it". I see feeding pacs wild-caught frogs as about the same way.

[Lija]

Okay lemme me remember some russian here lol my russian is pretty rusty, sorry, I tried and it is translit... So.... Hope you get it.

juri, Pacmanu nuzhno nemnogo druguju dietu, pojmanije liagushki = parasiti i vizmozhnije bolezni, moreprodukti soderzhat mnogo soli. Ja neponiala eto ti exsperiment delaesh ili chto?

oh gosh... Autocorrect is killing me... I just tried to say wild caught frogs are all full of parasites and will infect your frog. They are also possible carriers of all sorts of diseases, including chytrid and ranavirus, both of them will kill your frog if infected.
i would never dream of getting wild caught frog anywhere near my collection without 2-4-6 months quarantine, testing for rana and chytrid, treated and getting full bill of heath.
seafood has high salt content, feeding a prey that is too large will lead to all sorts of digestive problems and can subsequently kill your frog as well. Having said that I wish you and your frog all the best

[Yuri352]

Thank you friends for an interesting discussion!
Reading the forum, I assumed a similar view.
I will allow say my opinion.

1. Feeding of live frogs.
a) Parasites are known, they are very specific and are harmful particular species of frogs.
b) Infestation victims virtually impossible. Frogs can be intermediate hosts of the parasites to other animals (eg: mammals), but this does not apply to others frogs.
c) Any predator has a strong immunity to viral and other diseases of the victims. Pacman - a real predator.
d) All feed frog caught in ecologically clean place.

2. Winter feeding seafood.
a.) Use molluscs that contain protein and micronutrient elements easy.
b) I do not understand why in marine molluscs should be a lot of salt (what kind of salt?).

For example, I also do not understand how Pacman feed crickets and cockroaches, if you look at the structure of Pacman.
picture №1

Image source Reptipedia, the Reptile and Amphibian Wiki

picture №2

Image source Wikimedia Commons

picture №3
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/70...0/703/9vnv.jpg
Image source Skeleton of the week 26

The presence of strong skull, teeth and jaw strength indicates strong predator.
Cockroaches and crickets - is fodder for the weak frogs.

I said my opinion and it is good that you have other rules feeding Pacman, may be compared.
Thank you.

[GrifTheGreat]

Thank you friends for an interesting discussion!
Reading the forum, I assumed a similar view.
I will allow say my opinion.

1. Feeding of live frogs.
a) Parasites are known, they are very specific and are harmful particular species of frogs.
b) Infestation victims virtually impossible. Frogs can be intermediate hosts of the parasites to other animals (eg: mammals), but this does not apply to others frogs.
c) Any predator has a strong immunity to viral and other diseases of the victims. Pacman - a real predator.
d) All feed frog caught in ecologically clean place.

2. Winter feeding seafood.
a.) Use molluscs that contain protein and micronutrient elements easy.
b) I do not understand why in marine molluscs should be a lot of salt (what kind of salt?).

For example, I also do not understand how Pacman feed crickets and cockroaches, if you look at the structure of Pacman.
picture №1

Image source Reptipedia, the Reptile and Amphibian Wiki

picture №2

Image source Wikimedia Commons

picture №3
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/70...0/703/9vnv.jpg
Image source Skeleton of the week 26

The presence of strong skull, teeth and jaw strength indicates strong predator.
Cockroaches and crickets - is fodder for the weak frogs.

I said my opinion and it is good that you have other rules feeding Pacman, may be compared.
Thank you.

Crickets are more for young frogs. Young frogs are weak and so need a prey that is easily overpowered. They lack nutrition as a prey item and are really not a great choice. Adult pacman frogs should be fed larger prey, but only to an extent.

The presence of a large armored skull and dorsal shield are features of a strong predator. The skin is also rigid and tough to protect from injury from prey of the frog and from a predator.

They are frog eaters and readily feed on various frogs when available. I would be more worried about disease rather than parasites.

I believe the salt content in question is from the mollusks coming from the ocean. As you know the ocean waters are high in salt, but sea creatures expell the salt from their cells through their gills. Content should be relatively low in salt, but perhaps should be checked. I believe squid expell it through their sciphon. Salt water is dangerous for land animals as it causes cells in their digestive tract to lose water and shrink causing severe illness and possible death.

I do not have knowledge of your winter food source being harmful so I cannot really say that you will have any issues. Food size is an issue though. Try not to feed overly large prey items. In the wild they have been found dead with prey that is too large stuck in their mouth. The frog sufficated because it was unable to spit out the prey. Vomitting is also bad because they have to prolapse their stomach to do so and if there are complications that do not allow the frog to place the stomach back inside, the frog will die.

Thank you for sharing. This forum relies on caution to protect the well being of member's animals.

Earthworms make a good nutritious food for your frog if you would like to add those to your frog's diet. Roaches are also nutritious. Protein is good for them, but remember nutrition is about balance. Too much of one molecule and not enough of another can be harmful.

[Lecroixe]

At first I looked at the squid/mussel idea and thought that it was a pretty neat idea for a winter based diet if all else fails; where I live I actually only have one place to really buy Nightcrawlers now that the closest Walmart only orders Crawlers once a month. I find that crickets are too much of a nuisance to keep and roaches are a no-go on my mother's wishes. $5 USD for 14 or so worms wasn't bad compared to $6 for 12 at the LFS that I have to go to.

Though with captive bred/domestic animals, it could be arguable that this sort of diet would be perfectly fine - I only imagine that you would need to thoroughly wash the squid/mussels prior to feeding. I understand that owning pets like this require you to "simulate" the wild in their habitat but out in the wild they would not be tong/dish trained, nor would they always have the perfect environment.

To me this idea is like applying the frog sausage diet I've been researching using lean ground beef/chicken/liver. That idea alone is unnatural because frogs don't find sausages out in the wild with protein in them lol. If the seafood is edible for humans and comes from a trustworthy source, that would mean that preparing the food is where you eliminate the bacteria aspect in the idea of feeding it to a pacman frog. "Yeah but it's food for humans, not food for pacman frogs" : Understandable, but someone has to have gone through trial and error to come back and share with the rest of the group.

[DVirginiana]

Yuri, all I can say is that your reasoning is kind of flawed...
You can't look at an animal's skeleton and decide that it looks like it would eat mussels and squid rather than crickets and roaches; a good look at the skeleton would show you that pacman frogs can't even really swim, so they definitely wouldn't be eating seafood. They do have the skeleton of a predator; a predator of insects.

I don't know enough to say that what you're doing is inherently harmful, but it's definitely nowhere near their natural diet. What you're doing may not be harmful to the frogs, but it raises a couple red flags for me... I don't know why, but I imagine you'll eventually have problems from feeding that diet.

Though with captive bred/domestic animals, it could be arguable that this sort of diet would be perfectly fine - I only imagine that you would need to thoroughly wash the squid/mussels prior to feeding. I understand that owning pets like this require you to "simulate" the wild in their habitat but out in the wild they would not be tong/dish trained, nor would they always have the perfect environment.

The thing is, they aren't domestic animals. They are wild animals living in captivity, so their wild diet should be simulated as closely as possible. It'd be like feeding a lion kitten chow because it's in a zoo. Just because something has worked for a year or so doesn't mean that it should be taken seriously. If someone says they have a pac that has lived for fifteen years eating a certain way, then I'll listen. But this seafood plan honestly doesn't sound good. The further you remove the diet from the natural whole foods they'd be getting in the wild, the more likely you're going to put something in there that doesn't belong or leave out something important IMO

Also: Nightcrawlers are very easy to breed. Get a tupperware container and fill it with dirt, keep it moist, put some food in, and put a couple containers of worms in it. In a month or two you'll have more nightcrawlers than you know what to do with!

[Lecroixe]

The thing is, they aren't domestic animals. They are wild animals living in captivity, so their wild diet should be simulated as closely as possible. It'd be like feeding a lion kitten chow because it's in a zoo. Just because something has worked for a year or so doesn't mean that it should be taken seriously. If someone says they have a pac that has lived for fifteen years eating a certain way, then I'll listen. But this seafood plan honestly doesn't sound good. The further you remove the diet from the natural whole foods they'd be getting in the wild, the more likely you're going to put something in there that doesn't belong or leave out something important IMO

Textbook definition of a wild animal is: "An animal which lives in nature (is not provided shelter by a human), is responsible for getting its own food and water (is not provided food or water by humans), and is not cared for by humans.

My Cranwelli might be a "Wild" caught frog, unsure, but now she's now a captive pet. My Fantasy Pacman is definitely a captive bred that I picked up from a breeder at a convention. While kitten chow might not be the best example for an alternative to feeding a Lion in a Zoo, you would probably experiment with other ideas if your primary source of feed is unavailable for any particular reason. But say that kitten chow could be embedded into slabs of beef that was prepared in such a fashion that they're disease/bacteria free, I would imagine that there isn't anything wrong to it. And I totally agree that the possibility of putting something unnatural into their diet is too high of a potential, but that really comes down to the owner and they're own discretion.

I did a lot of searching, probably put this project/idea on the back burner for a good month gathering other people's results and I've just actually fed my oldest one a sausage 2-3"; composed entirely of cooked & refrigerated ground beef, enriched food sticks (frog variant) and calcium supplement. I kept the ingredients list basic for this and while I didn't stuff it with aquatic frog chow, I asked myself "What makes this sausage similar to a nightcrawler?" Protein, Calcium, and maybe a little extra with the food sticks. Though I can imagine not every owner is responsible or knowledgeable enough to provide the proper nutrition when preparing an alternative diet.

Also: Nightcrawlers are very easy to breed. Get a tupperware container and fill it with dirt, keep it moist, put some food in, and put a couple containers of worms in it. In a month or two you'll have more nightcrawlers than you know what to do with!

Haha, I tried that on a much larger scale and I accidentally killed all of them by leaving the garage door open too long. I might have to try on a smaller scale. Have you tried worm farming before? My only issue is that food molds if they don't finish it in time.