Use of ceramics or bisqueware in vivarium

[DanDrobates]

It’s kind of a **** shoot with clay. Bituminous clay is often used in vivaroum builds since it’s natural but easily disintegrates with high moisture. I’d find the exact ingredients and only use food safe clay. Glaze is another matter as some of the pigments may be toxic. Officially I wouldn’t advise it without doing a lot of research on the chemical composition.

As as far as ABG mix you should be fine but with one caveat. Instead of letting your prey items roam free I’d cup feed. Place the feeders in an appropriately sized deli cup in your vivarium. I use 16oz plastic cups. You’ll virtually eliminate any risk of impaction this way and the frogs can feed naturally.

[inkdeer]

Thanks - I'll head to the clay shop in town and ask about suitable clays there. I assume anything safe for an aquarium, clay-wise, would be safe for frogs? I'll definitely stay away from any pigmented glazes. Fired clay shouldn't be susceptible to moisture.

The problem is that the flies are their staple insect, as I can breed them myself. I can't imagine being able to contain them in a cup unless they were refrigerated, and even then it wouldn't be for very long.

[DanDrobates]

I’m interested as to whether or not you have any other feeder insects available. I know New Zealand has significant restrictions on non native animals. From what I gathered the New Zealand Blue Blowfly (Genus Calliphora) survives on decaying plant matter but some species only feed on carrion and waste. You may be at risk for exposing yourself and your frogs to disease with the wrong species. Also are you capable of collecting these year round?

[inkdeer]

In terms of cultured feeder insects, I can basically get what's available here: http://biosuppliers.nz/
They also ate fruit flies when they were smaller.

I started out catching wild flies for them, on the advice of a couple of sources (guy working at an aquarium shop who kept/bred frogs, neighbour who owns one, nzfrogs website) and then moved on to buying flies during winter, and then to breeding them myself.

I breed a large (maybe 1.5 cm long at largest?) black-blue fly without much of a sheen; I'm not 100% sure of the species, though it looks a lot like the one you mentioned. I actually didn't know it might be able to breed on plant material. I chose it for its relative 'dopiness' and ease of transfer between containers. The flies are bred on mincemeat, placed in a container of bran as maggots (once they leave the media on their own), and then hatched into a cage where they eat banana or other fruit/sugar mixture until they're fed to the frogs.

I also have a can of crickets in the freezer in case there's a lapse in my supply (the breeding method was discovered by trial and error, and I've had some issues with the flies not laying, or the pupae being parasitized by a smaller species of fly.) I remove the more chitinous bits (heads, legs, etc) and add vitamins/calcium like any other feeder. It's more an emergency or supplemental food. I also still feed them wild-caught houseflies/greenbottle flies on occasion, for the same reason as the canned crickets.

They've also had waxworms recently (as a christmas treat I guess :P), which they're very fond of, but obviously high in fat so they're not getting more than a couple a week. I was thinking of letting the extras pupate into moths, which I presume would be lower fat?

I could probably breed crickets but I've just never switched over - keeping them looks a lot more complicated and I think they're higher in chitin than the flies.

Out of interest, are there any substrates which don't pose an impaction risk?

[DanDrobates]

First off thank you. Your last post was a pleasure to read and very informative. If this method works for you than by all means continue as you seem to have it pretty well mastered. Here in the US were limited to crickets,fruitflies, roaches (restricted in some states), meal worms, horn worms etc. with very few fly species available. I’d definitely encourage you to keep good records of your methods. I fo recommend a varied diet and I wouldn’t recommend any one feeder as s constant staple but I must confess this idea intrigues me and I would love to hear how it progresses for you. Again thank you and good luck.