Quote Originally Posted by Kurt View Post
My success in darts is limited, so if there is anyone that is more informed, please feel to drop into the conversation and correct me if so needed.

First, for the most part you do have to raise your own food. That generally means fruit flies. Its easy enough, but the trick is to do it so you have a steady supply to feed out to your frogs. More often than not its a case of feast or famine. It has only been in the last six months that I have managed keep things going the way they should be. You have to know what species of fruit fly you are dealing with and how long it takes for that species to mature for you take make sure this happens.

Second, since you are limiting your frogs diet to foods you can readily supply like fruit flies, it will not have the proper nutrition it needs. So you will have to dust the fruit flies. Not the easiest thing to do. The one mistake I made was the supplements I was using were deficient in Vitamin A and so I lost most of my darts to this deficinecy. They would thin out and die. Since I am making sure that Vitamin A is supplied regularly to my frogs, my one surviving dart is thriving and gaining weight. I wish I knew about this problem before I lost the others.

Also dart frogs are know to drown easily and they can be very territorial. So they will need shallow water sources and lots of room. Thats why I have not run out to get my one surviving dart a buddy. Its funny the smaller the dart frog species the more territorial it seems to be. I know this to be true of Oophaga pumilio, a very expensive species.

Treefrogs seem to be much more forgiving than darts in the previous respects and I have excelled at their care. Darts I am still a little bit shakey, but I believe I am finally on track with the last of my darts, an "azureus".
Could I keep dart frogs alive with small crickets? (I have 2 ten gallons. One uses a 150 watt and the other a 100 watt. Thus I always have a supply of crickets of almost every age.)