# Feeding ants to your frogs.



## Nuggular

Has anyone fed little red ants to your PDFs? I was just wondering. I have access to alot of red ants and I can just collect them from outside. There is woods behind my house that I know has no insecticide sprays or fertilizer. So the bugs are clean. Just trying to find another food source for my babies. I am going with the red ants, because they are smaller than the black ants.


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## reptileink

I know red ants are pretty nasty. They like to bite. I would be careful about feeding them red ants. I personally would use the smaller blackish-brown ants if anything.


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## Nuggular

the red ants are the smaller ones. I live in WI, they are not fire ants or anything. I could try the larger black ants though.


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## bbrock

I have fed 4 different species of ants successfully to PDF - both black and red. Some red ants are very docile and some black ants will eat you alive so you can't really go be color to judge aggressiveness. I would collect just a few of the ants and offer them to the frogs to see what happens. Try not to have the ants in a riled up state when you put them in the frog tank as I suspect this affects their palatability. Another thing you can do is go mess with the ant hill yourself and see if the ants swarm out to bite or sting the crap out of you. If they do, use extra caution feeding them to the frogs.


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## Nuggular

Cool thx bbrock. I will do just that. I will attack there hill and see if they bite me. If not, I will offer some to my tincs. How would I go about collecting them? Should I mess up there hill and put a jar over the spot I messed up and see if they crawl into it. How do you collect your ants? Thx for the help.


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## bbrock

Nuggular said:


> Cool thx bbrock. I will do just that. I will attack there hill and see if they bite me. If not, I will offer some to my tincs. How would I go about collecting them? Should I mess up there hill and put a jar over the spot I messed up and see if they crawl into it. How do you collect your ants? Thx for the help.


I would put a little peanut butter and sugar in a jar and leave it near their hill to bait them in. Then you can carefully transfer the jar to a frog tank. This way the ants aren't rialed up to where they may be releasing formic acid, pheromones, and generally P.O.ed to where they want to sting everything in sight. Just remember that frogs in the wild tend to snap up ants as they are calmly going about their daily business - unlike something like an anteater which tears in and generally ticks the ants off in the process of feeding. Whatever you do, never collect ants with an aspirator (a.k.a. pooter) unless you want to go to the hospital to get a new pair of lungs.


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## Dendrobait

Has anyone tried the Argentine ants that I'm pretty sure nearly everyone has conducting siege on their homes? They don't bite much but do emit a scent when "riled up". They are fast though.


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## bradadams

In my experience feeding ants is not a good idea. I have fed a couple different types and the frogs did seem to like them but they wouldn't eat them all and the remaining ants would set up colonies or scent trails to bring in more ants. Too many ants equals dead frogs. I have had the unpleasant experience of loosing a few frogs to ants. In fact the ants that killed my frogs were the argentine ants. Just thought I would relate my experience. If you do choose to feed ants, use caution as Brent stated.

Brad


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## froglet

Feeding ants is ok as long as thet are not agresive. Give the frogs a few and see how the frogs react to them. Once the frog eats on he/she will decide if its worth it to eat more. Some ants have what we call hair, and that hair can be a bit spiky sometimes. When i used to beed Tricolors they use to love ants and eat them like candy but my Imitators hate them so i only feed it to them once a month if not less. If you want to feed them different things try to use a fish net and pass it through the grass, ull be amazed at how many small bugs you catch with it. Make sure that you are not using any pesticides in your backyard or anything that can damage the ants


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## Lucidblue

bradadams said:


> In my experience feeding ants is not a good idea. I have fed a couple different types and the frogs did seem to like them but they wouldn't eat them all and the remaining ants would set up colonies or scent trails to bring in more ants.


I can attest to that situation, not fun.


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## EDs Fly Meat

*Uh-huh*



> Another thing you can do is go mess with the ant hill yourself and see if the ants swarm out to bite or sting the crap out of you.


So Brent..........................................................................................I take it you did the magnifying glass trick in your youth?

Dave


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## fleenor1

I have really been wanting to get a "Bug Vaccume". I bought one for my niefew last Christmas and it looked like it would be really great to collect ants to feed to the frogs.

I bought it at Toys-R-Us last November and have not seen them since....


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## Guest

> I will attack there hill and see if they bite me. If not, I will offer some to my tincs. How would I go about collecting them? Should I mess up there hill and put a jar over the spot I messed up and see if they crawl into it.


God, that's funny. Like, I think you might have been being serious, but it still sounds sarcastic. Oye.. mess up an ant hill.. Poor little ants...


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## audioandroid

i tried just a few ants to my leucs today. i made sure it was only 6-10 ants. the leucs ate them right up, however they seemed to eat one then kind of heave afterward. all most like a throwing up motion or they were getting stung. that however didn't stop them from going after another. yet seeing this i don't think i'll do it again. they were small black ants that didn't seem to sting me when i tried to aggitate them as a test. i dunno...it kinda scared me.


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## Michael Shrom

I use ants that are attracted to peanut butter. I put peanut butter in a jar and put it on my walk out back. I use no pesticides or yard poisons (yard dr. etc). The frogs love those ants. They do not like aphid tenders or the fast moving ants that are attracted to sugar.
It seems ant feeding is something that should be gone at carefully and might not be adviseable in certain parts of the country. Here in Pa. I have never had big trails of ants lay seige to anything. I have heard of it in other parts of the country. Don't make the wrong ant mad. It might run and get its buddies and attack you tank.


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## Guest

so does anyone know if ants are the bugs that make poison dart frogs poisonous? Just wondering. I havent got a clue. 
On that note, I wonder if there might be any insects up here in the states that would bring back the poisons to the darts???????


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## SLEDDER23

wanted to bump this back up to see if maybe anyone wanted to chime in on the original query, what ants can/can't you feed to PDFs.

any more experiences out there?


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## Ryan

I think it was Ben E. that made the post called ants again. Realy good post you should read. Many ants such as big headed ants(pheidole spelling?) you can feed.

Ryan


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