How much food??

[Poly]

I can't get those fruit flies, and ants just climb out of the tank, and I think the toad is full after one grasshopper, I did as amy said, and offer it small grasshoppers, but it ignores them and goes after larger ones.

[nicodimus22]

Ants are a pain, but the good thing about them is that they are free. I used them for the first couple of weeks, and catching enough was a hassle, and they would go everywhere once placed in the tank. I bet my neighbors thought I was crazy, making several trips up and down my apartment stairs each morning, and sitting in the garden, throwing ants into a cool whip container each trip.

I have another suggestion for you, although I have not personally tried it. This thing would pay for itself in about a month for me:

Amazon.com: Zoo Med Bug Napper Live Bug Catcher: Kitchen & Dining

http://www.google.com/products/catal...ed=0CDQQ8wIwAA


I would imagine this would work wonderfully in a rural area, assuming you have a place outside to plug it in.

[Pete]

At this small size, I'd agree with Pete. You want to load up your toad until he's full. When they're this small they need a lot of food to grow.

I've been keeping my toadlets in a rubbermaid-type container outside (with a lid at night to keep the cats and raccoons away.) So it's a semi-wild setup. Inside I have a little compost pile of melon rinds and banana peels. At this point it provides a steady source of flies and grubs for the toads. The toads spend most of their time in the compost pile and emerge quite fat and hide elsewhere in the container while digesting. I have also been supplementing them with my own cultured wingless fruitflies and wild caught ants if I notice that they are starting to get thin. Since I've started doing this, I've been very happy with their growth rate.

I'm not so sure it's important how you do it, but you do want make sure they're well fed. When I want to gather ants, I leave some fruit scraps in the yard, and in a day or two they're usually covered with ants, which I can stake with a pencil and transfer to the toad tank. With ants you have to be a little bit careful, because some species can be aggressive. I noticed that we have one small species here that must have a lot of formic acid in their bite. When that species is all riled up, the toads look like their eating lemons. But some toads love ants, so you just have to watch what's going on.

As long as you don't feed them extremely large food items you won't have to worry too much about overfeeding them, because they'll stop when they're full.

[Pete]

I can't get those fruit flies, and ants just climb out of the tank, and I think the toad is full after one grasshopper, I did as amy said, and offer it small grasshoppers, but it ignores them and goes after larger ones.

Also if you want to keep the ants in the tank. If you put a little dry dish in a water dish you can keep the ants on the island. (I use a 6 inch claypot bottom as a water dish and then put a dry 4 inch claypot bottom in the middle of it.) So with my ant-covered fruit. I just put it on the island, and then the ants are trapped, but I keep the water level low enough the toads can go over and eat the ants. Just an idea to try out.

[Greg M]

The oft-repeated rule of thumb is "as much as they can eat in a 15-minute period". The frequency depends on the age - every day for juveniles, transitioning to maybe twice a week when they are mature. Generally, as long as you are feeding just insects, you can use their appetites as a guide - the adults simply are not as hungry as the juveniles, particularly when the juvi's are having their growth spurt. As others have stated, make sure the prey is not too big for your toad, particularly if the food has a hard-to-digest shell (grasshoppers!). You have more latitude with earthworms.

Some wild-caught bugs that I have used as food for small toads and frogs (assuming that you and your neighbors are not spraying!!!):
earthworms (cut up as needed)
isopods (very high in calcium)
termites
aphids
fruit-flies
Sadly, because spraying is so prevalent in my current neighborhood, I only use home-raised or store-bought food now... I would add to the suggestions made by others above that baby Dubia nymphs are great and are extremely easy to keep (my absolute favorite feeder for toads, period).

If you use mice as food for your toads, which some do and some don't, then you have to use more discretion with respect to frequency and amount fed - feeding rodents can produce obese toads, which may develop corneal opacities. IMHO, the occasional pinkie mouse or other "fatty" food can be handy (for the larger species) when the juveniles are growing super fast and have high calorie needs - for Woodhouse's toads, this usually happens between about 1.5 and 4 inches in length...

[Poly]

Well, my toad may in a high growth state right now, I have noticed since a captured her about 2 weeks ago, she has almost doubled in size!

Hahaha "you and your neighbors", not everyone has neighbors buddy! () I live in the country, 220kms for the closest town, and my closest "neighbor" is over 15kms away. We don't have a nice groomed lawn and white picket fences where I live, we have a small lawn (in front of our house) surrounded by Jackpine conifers (there out white picket fence... lol) and we never spary anything... oh, and behind my house is 160 acers of my backyard... sooo I have plenty of room to look for insects!

As for the food, thanks for the suggestions, I've pretty much got it down pat by now, I've had her for almost 2 weeks, and everything has been working out, she wouldn't eat anything for 3 days, but honestly, I think it was because she was extremely "full", within three days, she defecated 4 or 5 times. Today, I set her on the floor, dropped a small grasshopper in front of her, and she snapped it up in a second, then, just to see what she would do, I put a large grasshopper in front of her, (it was about an inch long) I thought she would just ignore it because it was too large, but as soon as it moved, BAM! She snapped it up, "swallowed" about 6 times, and finally got the whole thing in her mouth... after that, I think she was full because she wouldn't eat anything else!

I'm not sure how old she is, I would estimate a few months old, but I am figuring within the next 4 months or so, she will be large enough to eat pinky mice... and is there really Obese toads? I thought they were similar to Pacman frogs where as they can grow very large.

Thanks

[nicodimus22]

Today, I set her on the floor, dropped a small grasshopper in front of her, and she snapped it up in a second, then, just to see what she would do, I put a large grasshopper in front of her, (it was about an inch long) I thought she would just ignore it because it was too large, but as soon as it moved, BAM! She snapped it up, "swallowed" about 6 times, and finally got the whole thing in her mouth... after that, I think she was full because she wouldn't eat anything else!

I'm glad your toad is doing well, but I kind of cringed reading this. If you think a food item is too large, it probably is, and you should not offer it. Doing so only puts the toad at risk of choking or impaction, especially with a hard-bodied item like a grasshopper. It's always better to feed several small items than one huge one.

[LilyPad]

I also am glad that she is eating, but an inch long grass hopper with a hard body inside a small toad is a recipe for disaster. You should not be feeding food bigger than the space between her eyes or you risk different digestion issues including impaction. They might snap up that stuff in the wild, but most of them never make it to adulthood in the wild either.

[Poly]

Alright, well again, not too sure if it was too large, but it did seem like that, but I will stick to feeding it small grasshoppers from now on, that is, until it does get bigger. How old is a toad when it reaches "adulthood"?

Thanks