# Alternate foods besides flys and springtails?



## zaroba (Apr 8, 2006)

would frogs be ok with food sources besides FFs and springtails?
i'm mainly asking this stuff because i like to provide the most naturalistic environment for my pets. i'm figureing that in the wild, dart frogs would also eat ants, millipedes, and other small insects they find crawling around.


ants:
if you could get an ant queen, you could place her in the tank before getting frogs. and granted that you had dirt or a similer nice substrate for her, she might start a colony in the tank. buy a bag of grass seed for a few dollars to sprinkle in the tank for the ants to collect and eat and you'll have a self sustaining long lasting food supply for the cost of a few dollars.

could always do it in a seperate aquarium aswell if the ants could be harmful to the frogs.


termites:
if you have a glass tank, you could also try termites. another somewhat self sustaining food supply. set up a spare glass aquarium with a termite colony, then just go into local parks for wood to feed them. when it comes time to feed the frogs, place the termites on a dish in the viv. even costs less then the ants.


fly maggots
an almost free (and smelly) supply of food is fly maggots. catch some fish in a pond, let em sit outside in a glass tank, when maggots start to form, harvest them to feed to the frogs.


millipedes and pillbugs
what about small locally caught millipedes or pillbugs? both are somewhat easy to breed (from what i have read) and barly need any maitnence.


spiders:
collect a bunch of similer spiders and hope they will mate. when they lay thier egg sack, transfer it to the viv and wait for the babies to hatch out. instant free frog food. since spiders can lay thousands of eggs at once, it might be easier if you let them hatch in a seperate sealed tank so the viv wont get overrun by baby spiders and to help prevent having escapies wondering all over your house (which reminds me of my bathroom last fall after bringing in the plants for the winter )


so...whats everybody think of the above stuff?
any comments or opinions on it?


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2006)

For termite culturing, here's a really good site w/photos of how to set it up and stuff.

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?s=15d55de44c97ac00d904b63c83780afc&threadid=14641

Another food source some people use are jewel wasps. They are usually bought in the form of a pupae of some sort. The wasps are stingless (to humans) and parasitic; the female deposits eggs in a host larvae and the babies burst out. Reminds me of Alien...is this putting nice images in your head?


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

I think going back thru the threads in the food section will give you some nice ideas. Other food sources you can culture are RFBs (larvae to feed out), crickets (breed adults and get pinheads), wax worms (larvae of greater, lesser waxmoths and similar meal moths), aphids (kinda a pain in the ass but can be done with pea aphids and fava beans), isopods/woodlice (slow to reproduce most of the time, adults not really eaten except dwarf whites, have to blow babies off adults for frogs, make nice tank custodians), jewel wasps (expensive and you have to raise the fly they parasitize which are usually carnivourus species you don't want around), houseflies (when are those breeding kits going to be released anyways?!).

You want to culture this stuff outside tanks to get enough to be active food sources, as once in the tank they will be wiped out by hungry frogs, or in such low densities they aren't really actively adding to the frogs' diets in any significant amount, unless they are part of an Eiben Compost Tank.

Now to go thru you list, give you a bit of feedback on the why and why nots that have popped up with these as feeders.

Ants - only certain species are accepted by PDFs, and I could be shocked if you could find their queen. Better way is to collect a bunch of fliers (the male and female young reproductives that fly off, mate, and start new colonies) hope they've already mated, and start a colony that way. Different ants feed on different things, so if you're lucky enough to get a mated female flier, and start that way, do some research and find out what they eat. Culture away from frogs, and prey they don't get out and go searching for food outside the container. Could, in theory, be done, but hasn't due to above complications.

Termites - If you magically get ants to culture, don't keep anywhere near termites, the bloodly ant vs. termite war will resurface, and you can kiss your termites goodbye.

Two main types of termites are collected for feeding PDFs - Dampwoods and Subterranian. Dampwoods are the ones recomended in the link mentioned above, and the easiest to get a culture of as the works are actually inhibited reproductives (basically, you can grab some workers and they will start a new colony, don't need a queen). Unfortunately these cultures have proven to be slow as all get out reproduction wise. Subterranian termites, on the other hand, seem to reproduce like crazy, but two problems - to set up a culture you run into the same queen issues as ants, and these are the ones that eat houses. Honestly, you don't want a subterranian culture in your house, you want one far, far away that you can just come by and snag a couple thousand workers from every once and a while over the summer (workers can be kept alive in the conditions in the link above - ideally you can collect enough during active periods during the summer months and use this culture method to keep them alive, and feed from it all year - this is what I do).

Fly maggots - we culture FFs, if you want maggots to feed, just feed out the FF maggots. I set up side cultures with special media (stuff I want in my frogs to gut load the maggots) no excelsior, and the media a little wetter than usual so they climb the sides. Scrap with rubber spatula or the straight edge back of a knife into a dish and feed. Similar ideas used to feed off the larvae of houseflies, wax moths, and meal moths, and I've left fruit in the tank to attract FFs and had maggots in them that the frogs have fed on. I don't want any carnivorus maggots NEAR my frogs, especially with so many other maggots available.

Millipedes and pillbugs - millipedes tend to pup up in our tanks and my frogs leave them alone (they give off nasty stuff to make them taste bad). They are generally a tank custodian, but have a bad habit of nibbling on stuff they shouldn't, like frog eggs. Pillbugs (and related isopods) make gerat tank custodians, tho are usually only eaten when small and soft shelled (hanging onto mom on her belly, gentely blown off into a tank makes for good froglet snacks). Usually only reproduce in small amounts and have to be "harvested" with the exception of dwarf woodlice, which are small enough that even adults are eaten, which is why so many people want them.

Only real spiders that make it into PDF diets tend to be from field sweepings. I've had baby orb weavers that have unfortunately travelled into the wrong tank and caught the attention of the ever ready to eat occupants, but that's about it, and wasn't on purpose (once they get a web up they are inactive and don't catch froggy attentions). I'd recomend buying praying mantis egg casings (available for "biological pest control" suppliers). Once they hatch you've got 200-500 baby mantids that if you're quick enough (before they eat each other) make lovely epiped and phyllo munchies (never tried them with dendros).


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## Guest (Apr 10, 2006)

food is the only thing that is making me skeptical about owning darts. My lizard is pretty easy to feed... crickets and a salad. I like low maintenance with my busy schedule and I forsee ffs and other critters mentioned above as a bit more of a hassle. Maybe I will buy some ffs after I get my viv set up and try handling ffs to see how it is before I consider buying darts.


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## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

These are interesting ideas, and I think they may be worth trying by someone besides myself. There are downsides to each of the ideas that come to mind. I will choose one: the ants. In the first place, you would have to choose a species of ant (and there are thousands or more) that dart frogs will eat. Ants are also diverse, and you would have to know what to feed them after you may find a queen and get a colony going in the substrate. It may not be as simple as putting in some grass seed for them to eat. Not all ants eat grass seed. They would also mine and build tunnels and nests in the substrate, if successful. This would more than likely disturb the soil and subsequent plant growth in a planted vivarium. Of course this all happens successfully in a vast environment, but here, you would be trying to contain everything in a crunched down mini-space. If you have ever grown a cabbage in a greenhouse that gets some small ants living in the soil, you will see the problem. Nothing much will grow on an ant pile. An ant pile can take up a lot of vivarium space. If the dart frogs like them, they will be eaten off faster than they can reproduce. It's simply too small a space to imitate a natrual environment with a sustainable food source. We do pretty well with raising dart frogs in biologically recycling as far as plants and wastes go, as well as extraneous mites and insects that invade-- usually rather briefly. 

Think "space." The same thing that may be successful in miles can't be crunched into inches in an glass container and still do the same thing. I may be wrong, so be sure to post your results, so I can figure out why I'm wrong, if it works.


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## zaroba (Apr 8, 2006)

thanks for the link squid. it looks pretty useful.


for ants, i've read online on several ways to capture a queen.
one of which is to overturn large rocks in spring when the queens come towards the surface to warm up after winter hibernation and when thier starting a new colony.

i forgot about millipede defenses.
i also forgot that i had them in my old viv with some geckos. they were too slow to get the geckos attention.

it would be easy enough to just catch termites to feed instead of breeding them. my girlfriend has some old roofing shingles in the back of her yard and we already know thiers a subterranian termite colony under them. i had picked them up last sumemr to throw them out and saw tons of the little white guys. since they weren't in the way at all, we left the shingles thier to prevent them from going elsewhere.

after settign up my viv, i'll be letting it sit for a month so the plants etc can establish themselves before getting frogs in it, so springtails would have ampletime to settle in.


good points about the space issue slay. i haden't thought of that.
maybe most of the stuff would be better to use as an occasional treat to offer variety instead of always feeding FFs and springtails.


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## npaull (May 8, 2005)

> food is the only thing that is making me skeptical about owning darts. My lizard is pretty easy to feed... crickets and a salad. I like low maintenance with my busy schedule and I forsee ffs and other critters mentioned above as a bit more of a hassle. Maybe I will buy some ffs after I get my viv set up and try handling ffs to see how it is before I consider buying darts.


Interesting... because ffs are, in my opinion, one of the #1 best reasons to own darts: SO much easier, cheaper, and less smelly than crickets! Try it; once you get the hang of them, they are the world's best food source - technically, you only have to buy them one time!


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## Guest (Apr 10, 2006)

npaull said:


> > food is the only thing that is making me skeptical about owning darts. My lizard is pretty easy to feed... crickets and a salad. I like low maintenance with my busy schedule and I forsee ffs and other critters mentioned above as a bit more of a hassle. Maybe I will buy some ffs after I get my viv set up and try handling ffs to see how it is before I consider buying darts.
> 
> 
> Interesting... because ffs are, in my opinion, one of the #1 best reasons to own darts: SO much easier, cheaper, and less smelly than crickets! Try it; once you get the hang of them, they are the world's best food source - technically, you only have to buy them one time!


I agree. FFs are easy to breed and they're so much cheaper than buying/breeding crickets, not to mention easier to feed [to the animals(IME)]. If you get a system going where you have a schedule on when to set up new cultures, you won't even notice it. It's just another everyday task. I can't stand the smell of crickets, and they're annoyingly loud. Try FFs, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

FFs are probibly the easiest staple food for PDFs, and do make life a lot easier, but that is not an excuse to have them as the only thing you feed your frogs - they are not the perfect all in one food for these frogs, even with vitamin and calcium dusts. These animals need variety to be healthy long term. If you're not willing to put in as much time into the feeders as you do the frogs, then this isn't the hobby for you. 

I add a good amount of variety to my frogs diet by having a staple of FFs and pinheads (mind you, I'm now severely allergic to crickets, I have friends who breed them give me eggs which I hatch out and feed), with RFB cultures, shorelinite beetle cultures, and springtail cultures which I feed out of occassionally (every 3 week for the RFBs, every 2-3 months for the shorelinites, springtails whenever I get a boom and remember they are there, these 3 feeders require very little care). I feed out aphids and termites as much as I can when I find them in the summer. This schedule involves very little work outside the FF cultures, yet adds a lot of much needed variety and is good for small collections. There are a couple other easy feeders that I will be adding to my food culturing (isopods, probibly waxies again) as my collection is growing, and I can add more feeders to compensate (if I added them now I'd have more feeders than frogs to feed!).


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## npaull (May 8, 2005)

> FFs are probibly the easiest staple food for PDFs, and do make life a lot easier, but that is not an excuse to have them as the only thing you feed your frogs - they are not the perfect all in one food for these frogs, even with vitamin and calcium dusts. These animals need variety to be healthy long term. If you're not willing to put in as much time into the feeders as you do the frogs, then this isn't the hobby for you.


Corey,

Though I agree strongly that variety is good (and it is something I strive to provide) I do not believe there is actually any evidence supporting the statement that all species of darts need variety to be healthy long-term. In fact, I think there are probably hundreds of frogs that have been raised exclusively or almost exclusively on supplemented fruit flies (this is alluded to on at least one prominent breeder's web page). I believe it would be at least theoretically possible to put together a supplement which would, in fact, make fruit flies a nearly perfect food, but clearly that does not yet exist.

At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised at all if other species with which the hobby community still has trouble are having difficulties because of dietary issues. My $.02


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## zaroba (Apr 8, 2006)

mother always said "its better to be safe then to be sorry" 

nature has good ways of doing things. why screw up its plans by limiting frogs to only 1 or 2 food choices?

i for one believe that any aniaml can become bored with its surroundings, including food. if you offer a variety, the frogs might be much happier and more stimulated into eating instead of getting bored with the same old food day in and day out. after all, how would you feel if you were forced to have ONLY peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and plain water for a year, or even for only a month?


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## Guest (Apr 10, 2006)

I know I like variety, but my bearded doesnt seem to fussy. No matter what I put in his salad... he always goes for the corn 1st lol. He does like mealworms better than crickets, but he would be pretty fat if I fed him those all the time :wink: 

I'll give the ffs a try for sure. You make it sound easy, so it boosts my confidence to at least give them a shot. Thx!


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Practice, practice, practice. The simplest way to go about it I guess (and what I do out of laziness mostly), is to use Instant FF Media (just add water, a pinch of yeast, and flies!). I highly recomend the stuff from Ed's Fly Meat, as I use their stuff exclusively, excellent product, little to no smell (unlike some home made recipes - more flies in the long run maybe but DEAR GOD the smell!), and its just SO EASY. I also add excelsior to my cultures, but thats a personal preference thing.

Starting out, you might want to try the Beginner's Special Kit from Ed's Fly Meat which comes with flies, media, and yeast. All you need is a couple more containers (which they also sell, of course!), follow the directions, and you'll have a couple more FF cultures going in no time.

Probibly the most important thing I can say about them is get a schedule and stick with it. I mark it on my calendar (if its not on the calendar, it does not exist in my world, and will be forgotten), so I know every Sunday is FF culture day! And every Monday is RFB day, I spend about a half hour (while watching TV lol) moving one rotation of my beetles to the next container. 3-4 days a week have a little mark showing I need to feed springtails. Stuff like that. If I deviate from the calendar, everything goes downhill, I have a habit of crashing my cultures, and then I have to call Erin for flies... again. I spend maybe 1.5 hours a week doing bug stuff, and thats mostly FF cultures.


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## bluedart (Sep 5, 2005)

Variety is everything, I agree. I keep waxies, 2 kinds of isopods, RFB, and ff's. I've got spring cultures and Shorelinite Beetle cultures comming shortly, along with Dwarf Woodlice and micro mealies. I'm a firm believer in variety, but with all herps, not only darts. I feed all of my geckos 4 different foods a month, with crickets as a staple. Anywho, Corey has posted some great stuff, and I don't feel like repeating.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

what kinds of isopods? I've been looking to expand my food items, and wanted to try Dwarf woodlice and micro mealies (tho I think the micro mealies are similar enough to RFBs that I might not bother with them). I have also seen the orange isopods... can you feed out adults of them?

The shorelinite beetles are great for forgetting about on a shelf til they actually explode in a culture. They have a long larvae stage compared to RFBs, and I've let them go for 4-6 months before I've got a big enough explosion in population to make new cultures and still have enough to feed in good amounts.


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## zaroba (Apr 8, 2006)

what are rfbs?


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

RFBs = Rice Flour Beetlies (_Tribolium confusum_ aka Confused Flour Beetles) little beetles that don't fly, are easily cultured, and the larvae make excellent frog snacks (most PDFs won't eat the beetles, tho I've heard of some, all mine spit them out or ignore them).

Interesting to think about tho... the shorlinite beetles are a bit shorter and rounder than a RFB, slightly different color.... but I wouldn't think the differences would be that noticable... my frogs usually just flat out ignore the RFBs but will hunt down a shorelinite beetle like its the last peice of food on earth (Shorelinite beetle larvae can also be fed out, but I don't feed them out as they are less active than RFB larvae, and it messes up the culture).


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## zaroba (Apr 8, 2006)

something else i thought of...

what about roaches?
could breed some roaches (like madagascar hissing roaches or other non flying/climbing species) and feed the nymphs to the frogs.

or possibly just keep the roaches in the viv (if its big enough and sealed enough) to breed and provide a food source.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

I would not keep the roaches in the viv, it really depends on the roaches by they can be very similar to crickets running loose in the tank, if they get very hungry they will munch on anything they can get their mouthparts on, including sleeping frogs.

There are a number of good feeder roach species that have nymphs of suitible size for most adult tinc group pfrogs and epipeds/allobates/phyllobates which like larger food prey, some of the nymphs are almost pinhead/FF sized. I've been looking at a number of species to work with for my TFs in which I'd be able to feed out the nymphs (if I can catch them) to some of my PDFs. I'd really only recomend it if you had larger animals to feed the older nymphs out to or else you're going to have a lot of roaches you don't know what to do with.

The species range from glass climbers/non-glass climbers (non-glass climbers are often called fliers, but most species rarely if ever fly - unless you throw them - and I still consider them much easier to handle than climbers), liver bearers/egg cases. There was one very small species that I believe flyculture.com was suppose to be producing, that as an adult staid small enough that some of the larger dendros could eat them, but I never got the name of them, and haven't found this roach floating around the roach breeders I know of - but I believe they were glass climbers (which I don't want to keep) so I didn't look as hard after I found that out!


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## Frogtofall (Feb 16, 2006)

Lobster roaches?


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## Guest (Apr 13, 2006)

I like the ant idea. Just, in a seperate tank. Hmmm. I wonder if I will be able to find a queen this summer.


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## Guest (Apr 13, 2006)

What is a springtail?


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## Jace King (May 5, 2004)

One of my favorites foods, good ole mites. 
Heres my current procedure, I have my springtails in another room. I place the sandwich container springtail cultures, and put them in the tank. After a week i put in a fruit fly container completely infested with mites. The frogs in included fresh froglets still axil chilling, go absolutely crazy. Eventually they migrate over to the springtails and whole viv. I wait another week, then remove both cultures. Toss the fruit flies and clean out the sandwich container cultures. I wait another week till i put in a new springtail container and start all over again. This week is the week i hope the frogs annihilate any additional mites. I know ive gone over this a lot but i think my pums are really lovin it.

I feed dusted fruit about 3 -4 times a week.

As as mites ruining my fruit flies cultures, this has not been a problem after about 2 years of mites. When i had larger frogs and was breeding hydei it could get a little out of control and scare me, but i always have extra fruit flies now.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

These are the common species in the hobby, a temperate species (there is also the tropical springtails which are basically identical in care and size/looks except they are from different places, and different species, and I think tropicals are slightly better for seeding our tropical tanks). These are a couple MM long, with other species cultured in the hobby going from .5 mm (micros, slow reproducers comparitively) to 8 mm (european black springtail which I am *desperately* looking to get a culture of - yes I know FlyCulture.com has them listed but they aren't available). They are used to feed frogs that will only take/prefer prey smaller than _melanogaster_ FFs (thumbnail and eggfeeder froglets often can only eat these when coming out of the water, adult thumbs and pumilio love to snack on these as well). They are also an excellent source of variation in the diet for those that eat them, due to their different food sources and general make up.

These guys are decomposers, eating fungus and mold that grows on stuff as it breaks down (you see tons of them in compost piles - they don't eat what we put in there to feed them as much as what grows on the "food" as it breaks down), which is why you see them a lot in the leaf litter in a tank. In a tank with moss as the substrate, or just bare substrate (no leaf litter or moss) they tend to stay in the substrate mostly - and due to this I highly recomend leaf litter layer on the substrate for froglet tanks, pumilio tanks, and thumbnail tanks as these frogs will hunt the springtails in the LL, and the LL will make the springtails more available to the frogs.


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## Guest (Apr 13, 2006)

You can probably find some springtails in the soil in your potted plants too.
If you dont have leaf litter, I would then choose a spot in the back of you viv, somewhere out of sight, and pile up as many fallen or dead plant material as you can. That will get your springtail population up.

I have been reading up on culturing pea aphids, Acrythosiphon pisum. Apparently they only feed off plants in the pea family (ex: clovers, beans, peas), so they should be safe in most vivs. You grow pea plants in a seperate container, let the aphids take over, and then put the plant in you viv. The frogs will find them and have a feast.
Anyone else do this?


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Here is one of the ways to culture pea aphids:

http://www.tracyhicks.com/aphid.htm

A lot of this has to do with keeping a schedule and making sure the plants don't dessicate (the aphids will dessicate with the plants). As long as you have the feeder plants in relatively good health (and replace plants going downhill with fresh plants) you should be able to keep a consistant aphid colony. This is more work than the majority of other feeders (requires seed starter supplies and decent lights, daylight deluxe from home depot works well for a low price bulb), and if you have a relatively small collection of frogs, is probibly not worth the work just to provide some variation in the diet.

Now if you *do* have a large collection, the baby aphids are excellent froglet food (I raised my first pumilio froglets on them instead of springtails, great to add more variety in the diet along with stuff like mites) and I have yet to find a frog that doesn't like picking them off. In tanks with groups, you can take out one of the pots (I used small plantlet pots for this, lots of little pots) place it in the tank, and let the frogs pick the aphids off the plant (make sure the pot is either tipped over or securely in the dirt as larger frogs can knock over small pots onto other frogs!).

Aphids, for the record, ship horridly. You might be paying for 100, and actually only get 10 that live, or possibly lose all of them. You only need a couple to start a culture, but it takes longer to build up the culture the less you have... so basically you won't be feeding out of the culture for a number of cycles. Not saying anyone's shipping is bad, just that its the nature of the beast, so its better to be forewarned that having someone freak because their aphids came in mostly dead.


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## Guest (Apr 13, 2006)

Thats all good to know. I think I will hold off on the aphid culturing till I have lots and lots of frogs. I tried feeding some aphids that were infesting some sort of plant in the Botany lab at work, the toads sort of kinda ignored them. But picked them off a little too. Mixed results. 

I bet you can get the same kind of aphid by collecting it in the field. Just find your local clover or heck grow a pea plant outside! What do you think?


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

You might, I know most of the "field" collected aphids I've gotten were off roses (not sprayed) and poplar trees (also not sprayed) which were good to feed off, but wouldn't work with the fava beans lol. Aphids may be pests, but they are very specific pests!

I'm just worried about collecting aphids due to the high prevailance of pesticides and fertilizers that are sprayed on the plants. I'd be willing to pay for lab raised clean insects rather than take a chance on wild ones... but I live in an urban area so there wouldn't be a place for me to collect them anyways lol.


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## Guest (Apr 14, 2006)

How many generations of aphid would you have to wait before the pesticides are gone?


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## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

Kahmul-- I should think one generation would be enough. The insects collected either didn't get a killing dose of the pesticid in the first place, or with an immune insect, is unlikely to pass it on in eggs to a new generation on fresh fodder. Personally, I would not think aphids worth deliberately culturing if you can collect some pesticide-free ones in season. They seem to be more of a sweet treat than a reliable staple for frogs. I don't know their over-all nutritional value, however. 

Living miles from nowhere, I collect on my own property without worrying much. I use aphids from fruit trees, pea plants, cabbage plants, etc. These are all pretty specific to a plant family. I've never had any infect any of my tropical plants in vivariums, however. The darts love them, so this may only be because they don't give them a chance. They will sit around a leaf full of aphids like a bunch of fat ladies sharing one of those huge chocolate "mud pies" until every one of them is gone. This might be a different story if I fed them daily, however.


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## Guest (Apr 14, 2006)

slaytonp said:


> The darts love them, so this may only be because they don't give them a chance. They will sit around a leaf full of aphids like a bunch of fat ladies sharing one of those huge chocolate "mud pies" until every one of them is gone. This might be a different story if I fed them daily, however.


Haha!! LOL!!!!!! Thats too funny. :lol:


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## octo (Mar 4, 2006)

I just bought a culture Rice Flour Beetles, but how do you collect the larvaes without getting a lot of beetles at the same time?


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

As for the aphids - I only recomend them as part of a balanced diet - aka use for variety, not as a staple. This is another reason I recomend these only for large collections, if you keep the schedule down and manage to culture the aphids all year you'll have tons of them, and they are for VARIETY, not a staple, so a lot of bugs as a small part of the diet makes for a large collection you're feeding to.

As for the RFBs, you've got two basic ways you can culture them. The first is just letting the culture just sit there and sifting out the larvae and beetles, which makes it a pain to seperate the beetles from the larvae. I've just used a plastic spoon to scoop out the larvae from the sifted mix of larvae/beetles/sheds, others like the "AZDR method" is to put the sifted stuff in a cup, with a strip of cloth or paper towel drapped over the side of the cup (which is sit inside another container) where after a period of time the beetles would crawl out of the cup, leaving mostly larvae.

The second method requires keeping a steady schedule, but is much better for producing larger numbers of larvae (and knowing when they are ready to feed) and when sifting out for larvae you don't have to worry about sifting out beetles as they aren't in the culture at that time. You'll need a number of containers (I like using gladwares), and need to keep track of the dates you move the beetles from container to container (and the age of the beetles themselves - I do this by color coding the different cultures and keeping records of the age of beetles and when they are moved). 

Set up a new culture, and populate it with beetles. Leave the beetles in for 3 weeks, then move them to the next culture. 3 weeks after the beetles have been removed, the larvae in the culture should be ready to feed out - sift and feed, no beetles! You can then repopulate the culture with beetles and start again. You can set it up so every week you're moving beeltes/getting larvae every week (3 sets of cultures, like red, blue, green labled so you know which to take care of which week) so you can potentially have SLEWS of RFBs going, and having thousands every week.

Two things to keep track of - the age of the media in the cultures (older media means less food means less production) and the age of the breeding beetles (after a certain age the beetles have lower production - off the top of my head I don't know at what age the beetles start having lower production but was recomended every 4 - 6 months to set aside larvae for fresh beetles.


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