How much food??

[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.