Nutritional Supplementation for Toads?

[SludgeMunkey]

Is it necessary to provide nutritional supplementation beyond standard gut loading practices? As in, should I dust my frog's and toad's crickets once in a while?

Searching about the web and various books, I can only find contradicting information on this topic, and most of it is in regards to Dart frogs.

[John]

No harm in doing it in case they're missing out on something but I honestly believe a cricket gut-loaded with quality food is just fine.

[Jace]

What counts as quality food? The little blocks that come in the Bug Tub with them? I've heard fish flakes are good, so I try and toss some of those in with my crickets too.

[JeffX]

I dust my crickets and worms, but not everytime I feed them. I don't see any harm in dusting them everytime you feed.

[into]

What counts as quality food?

probably a variety of vegetables. I feed mine celery, tropical fish flakes, potatoes and cricket cubes. + twice a week dusting with calcium and vitamin supplements.

[John]

A decent cricket diet with added calcium, and a water source. Right now I use Ghann's Cricket Farm :: Hi-Calcium Cricket Diet together with those green jelly cubes that are supposed to be gutload as well as a water source. I have had very good results growing baby toads this way (you wouldn't believe how good the results are).

[coltiger]

I feed my toads a good mixture...hornworms, silkworms, mealworms, earthworms, crickets and the occasional pinky(maybe once a month) I always dust the crickets with a calcium/vitamin powder. I also just started with butterworms, my Amercian toads love those.

[Herpvet]

Is it necessary to provide nutritional supplementation beyond standard gut loading practices? As in, should I dust my frog's and toad's crickets once in a while?

Searching about the web and various books, I can only find contradicting information on this topic, and most of it is in regards to Dart frogs.

Hi,

There are various papers looking at the nutritional benefits of dusting vs gut loading of crickets (mainly) (sorry don't have list available right now). They seem to come out with variable results, and the brand of any specific gut loading food makes a big difference (many of these "supplements" seem to vary wildly from their claimed benefits or even stated levels of components).

Add to that the fact that very little is really known about nutritional requirements of amphibians, and it becomes very difficult to give a reasonably scientific answer.

I tend to recommend a variety of food, preferably including some wild foods as long as freedom from contamination can be avoided, to cover bases as much as possible.

But in answer to your question, I believe gut loading with a non specific "gut loading formula" (such as flaked fishfood for example, as opposed to commercial cricket diets) will not dramatically improve the very poor calcium to phosphorous ratio in crickets, the main source (as far as we know) of nutritional problems in insectivorous pets. In that case dusting with calcium/multivitamin powder would be advisable - I'd probably go with dusting on alternate feeds for growing youngsters, to once or twice weekly for adults, but as far as I know nobody has done any scientific work to come up with a better guide. Certainly it is very variable - I've seen lots of herps that I've thought should have been ok given diet, uv exposure etc but been horribly deficient in fact, and vice versa. This may of course be due to other issues (eg kidney or hormonal problems) in specific cases, but there is also large individual components.

Hope this helps,

Bruce.

[John]

Interesting stuff Bruce, thank you. What do you think of calcium enriched gutloading diets?

[SludgeMunkey]

Outstanding information everyone, Thank you!

I utilize Rep-Cal Herptevite + ß carotene in my cricket diet. I have a habit of not dusting as my experience with reptiles, specifically old world chameleons, has led me to believe there is a link between dusting and respiratory issues. I had read of this in a book years ago, but my usual paranoia concerning my critters got me out of the habit. I use mix of Ghann's cricket diet, Herptevite and Gerber vegetable medley to feed and water my crickets.

The results with caudates and tree frogs have been stunning, but I was unsure of toads, especially adults.

[Jace]

Wow-I think I just received an F in Gutloading 101. I thought tossing in some fish flakes was sufficient, but I'm thinking I might have to boost it up a bit. Some great tips and advice.....excuse me, I hear my crickets calling......

[John]

Well, frog and toad tadpoles grow well on fish food - I use it all the time. Therefore it makes sense to me that if a cricket contains it then an adult frog will get decent nutritional benefit from it.

[Herpvet]

Interesting stuff Bruce, thank you. What do you think of calcium enriched gutloading diets?

Hi John,

If they're good, they help. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, several studies suggest that many products for pets have no data to back up their use, and make claims with no evidence whatsoever. They even often do not even contain anything like what they're supposed to - amongst others, a paper in the Journal of Herpetological Medicine and Surgery found only one out of 4 diets actually helped the calcium levels of the crickets significantly, and one specific finding was that one of the diets (tested on several batches) only had 16.7% (roughly 1/6) of the container stated "minimum guaranteed" level of calcium!

Note that this was a purely isolated study - i.e. only looking at the crickets, not any effects of feeding, which might not correlate with a "real life" situation, but if the loading diet can't even raise the calcium level in the crickets above control levels it isn't likely to do much good.

For those interested, the diets in that paper were T-rex calcium plus food (the one that helped), ESU diet gut load, Jurassi pets gut load and Fluker high calcium cricket food.

So the answer is, unfortunately, you have to research which one(s) have some evidence to support their claims (or make your own - some formulae are available). But that takes effort which many poeple won't do unfortunately, hence sales of these supplements.

I'm not by any means saying they're all useless - but there appears to be very little control of these things.

Hope this helps, even if it doesn't give a neat answer unfortunately!

Bruce.