Getting Started with Darts

[Firebelly love]

Wow! I've heard keeping darts is a lot of fun and hard work!! I don't have the resources to keep them, but would love to someday. Can't wait to see pics!!!

[guppygal]

Wow! I've heard keeping darts is a lot of fun and hard work!! I don't have the resources to keep them, but would love to someday. Can't wait to see pics!!!

But WAIT !! There are TWO parts to owning poison dart frogs. The first part is to create the most beautiful rain-forest environment possible for them in a fairly small area. The Cobalts will do well in a 20+ gal tank, IMO. Could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.

The other part to keeping the frogs is culturing their food. Once you have your fruitfly cultures producing and reproducing, you're good to go. Unlike a lot of critters, you don't have to feed your frogs everyday. It's always a good thing to seed the tank with springtails so they'll have a snack and they like to hunt, and if you're going away for a week, place a culture with holes large enuf for fruitflies to escape and the frogs are self feeding.

I personally dust at every feeding, but it's not necessary. The dusting is necessary, but not at every feeding. I haven't seen any ill effects from dusting the flies each time I feed.

Also, another great food source, especially in East Texas, is termites. You can actually setup a homemade termite trap using very damp pieces of cardboard pressed tightly together between a couple of cheap plastic organizers ( the ones with the holes or slots on the sides). Bury it near a rotten log and check it a few weeks later (providing we get rain this year), and you should find a boatload of termites. Here's the deal, tho - termites are like candy to pdfs, so although they absolutely love them, the termites are very fattening and should not be substituted for fruitflies. You can safely keep them in an airtight container inside your house. Termites cannot survive loose in the house because the humidity is too low.

Other than that, poison dart frogs are very easy keepers, and putting the vivarium together is an artform unto itself. It an be as intricate as you like, or as simple, just as long as the frogs have plenty of hides and lots of plants.

Once a pdfer, always a pdfer, so watchout, Pacman.....!!

kristi