Hi, we have two California toads, which I guess are sub-species of Western toads.

  • They are about a year old now. We've been raising them in a 10 gallon terrarium, and change the water every 1-2 days, temps ~72-75, humidity around 50%.
  • We started out feeding them flightless fruit flies when they were toadlets, then switched to mostly mealworms.
  • Admittedly, they got little sun, though we did try to dust food calcium powder now and then (it's ReptoCal Calcium +D3)
  • Both developed what we now know is MBD, though we didn't know soon enough probably. The female is much worse than the male, with a pronounced hump on her back and difficulty moving around. The male also has a hump, though it's smaller and he gets around pretty well.
  • They both have trouble catching meal worms on their own, the worms pretty much need to be right under their mouths for them to successfully eat.
  • They don't seem to like the worms when there is calcium powder on them, but we keep doing it the best we can.
  • We feed them ~2-4 worms each every 2-3 days, dusting the worms when we can. If they aren't very hungry and don't eat much, we just give up and put them back and try to feed the next day. Most times, the next day they eat just fine.
  • We bought UV lights about 3-4 weeks ago, which we've now been trying to use daily.
  • We tried these, but the toads don't seem to like the heat: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0..._title_o00_s00
  • These are LED, which we are mostly using now since they don't get hot: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VS5TWW5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00
  • After feeding, we usually put them in the water dish, which they seem to like...almost like a bath after the meal.


Questions:

1). Should we be switching up their diet to other than just mealworms? We've heard crickets are not very nutritious and they would not be able to catch them anyway. Any other recommendations?
2). There is almost no information on proper use of UV lights. How much UV? for how long? for how many days? How do we know how much is too much/too little?? Any good LED lights to recommend? We keep the LED light on for 15 to 45 minutes at a time, 1-2x per day). It's fairly low UV power at a distance of ~12 inches, stronger at ~6-10 inches.
3). How do we know if the MBD is reversible? Can it at least be stabilized? It doesn't seem like it's working as the hump on the male's back seems worse. Some days the female is better, some days she seems worse.
4). Has anyone tried or tested stirring some of the calcium powder in the water? Would that work/be absorbed?
5). Any other suggestions for us??

Thanks much!