# Supplement to Crickets for Whites Tree Frogs



## Nath514 (Jul 8, 2012)

Hey Everyone,

I have three juvenile whites tree frogs. They are about and inch long. So far I have been feeding them 5-6 small crickets 5-6 days a week. They are still pretty skinny though so I was wondering if there were any other bugs I could supplement the crickets with?

All the crickets are dusted with Repashy Plus

Thanks


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## RyanD (Jul 18, 2006)

I feed my whites wax worms. Good source of fat. AND if the wax worms turn into moths, I feed them too. Mine whites are a few years old and I always would leave the lights on outside and use a net to grab a bunch of moths and feed them, or crickets from outside. I don't have to worry about pesticides though; I live in the middle of nowhere. 

As far as nutrition goes, you should be ok since plus has calcium and vitamins. How often do you dust the crickets and what do you feed the crickets?


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## Nath514 (Jul 8, 2012)

I dust every feeding, so almost every night. I don't normally feed the crickets anything as they go in the tank as soon as I return from the petstore and are usually gone within minutes. They do sell wax worms but they look a bit large for the little frogs.


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## singhm29 (Jun 28, 2009)

I would recommend gutloading your crickets instead of putting them straight in the tank, I do this using organic dog food and fish flakes grinded up together and a carrot as a moisture source (quantity of each depends on how many crickets you get). Pet stores normally use oatmeal to sustain the crickets but not make them nutritious (as a cost saver) so it would be a good idea to try that out. 

As for waxworms I would not go ahead and make that a staple part of the diet but more of an occasional addition, yes it will fatten them up if you feed it exclusively but thats like a person eating big macs everyday and thinking the fat they have put on is healthy in my opinion. If you do want a variety I would vote on mealworms before waxworms as they are definitely more nutritious then waxworms.

I have two of these creatures myself and have fed them 3x a week on gutloaded crickets and occasional mealworms giving each 5 crickets seperately. They have gone from being 3/4" to 2" in little over a year.


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## Nath514 (Jul 8, 2012)

Guess I will need to get another tank to keep the crickets in. I am worried about the worms having too much chitin leaving to impaction. Any reason to be concerned?


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## WeeNe858 (Sep 13, 2010)

Mealworms should be fine as long as you have the right size for them. But you should try to keep crickets in a critter keeper and get some proper gutloading food. It will help transfer nutrients to the frogs.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

singhm29 said:


> I would recommend gutloading your crickets instead of putting them straight in the tank, I do this using organic dog food and fish flakes grinded up together and a carrot as a moisture source (quantity of each depends on how many crickets you get). Pet stores normally use oatmeal to sustain the crickets but not make them nutritious (as a cost saver) so it would be a good idea to try that out.


On what basis do you think that diet makes the crickets more nutritious? 

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Nath514 said:


> I am worried about the worms having too much chitin leaving to impaction. Any reason to be concerned?



A widespread piece of incorrect information.... See for example The effects of prey species on food conversion efficiency and growth of an insectivorous lizard - Rich - 2008 - Zoo Biology - Wiley Online Library 


Ed


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## singhm29 (Jun 28, 2009)

Ed said:


> On what basis do you think that diet makes the crickets more nutritious?
> 
> some comments
> 
> Ed


On the basis that you are what you eat? 

Typical organic dog food has chicken, egg, alfalfa and apple in it to name a few (Healthy Pet Product Search ? Organic Dog Food, Dog Treats and More ? Natura Pet Products) and I dont think its much of an arguing point that fish food doesnt have some nutritional value to it. Perhaps you could argue that a fair amount of this is not transferable nutritional value but when comparing it to crickets fed oatmeal I think there is a substantial difference.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

singhm29 said:


> On the basis that you are what you eat?


So you are claiming that crickets utilize the amino acids, starches and fats in the oatmeal diet differently than the diet you offer? 




singhm29 said:


> Typical organic dog food has chicken, egg, alfalfa and apple in it to name a few (Healthy Pet Product Search ? Organic Dog Food, Dog Treats and More ? Natura Pet Products) and I dont think its much of an arguing point that fish food doesnt have some nutritional value to it. Perhaps you could argue that a fair amount of this is not transferable nutritional value but when comparing it to crickets fed oatmeal I think there is a substantial difference.


 
Again, on what evidence do you have that your diet is better at transferring nutrition to the consuming animals? As an example, on what basis are you making the assumption that the diet you are feeding is 

1) not the equivalent to a big mac to the crickets
2) well tolerated/converted by the cricket 
3) doesn't actually result in a nutritional imbalance in the cricket that can then result in conditional deficiencies in the consuming animal? 

If you are feeding a diet that for example significantly changes the fatty acid profile of the cricket (say through increasing lineoleic acid (or even cholesterol), which makes the frogs at risk for corneal lipidosis.... 

So do you have any references that oat meal is an insufficient diet for crickets? If for example you use steel cut oats, it has a protein level of about 14-15% and the roughage required by the crickets for an optimized diet... roughage is required for peristalisis and low roughage diets for the crickets result in poor growth which is an indication of poor nutrient uptake......... 

So ideally, a good diet for the insect is going to correlate to a more nutritious feeder insect since at the very least it allows for the replenishment of lost protein, fat and moisture from shipping... (See the Nutrition chapter in Reptile Medicine and Surgery)... 

One of many papers on what is a good diet for crickets... http://jn.nutrition.org/content/78/2/139.full.pdf 

Now this doesn't mean that oatmeal by itself is a perfect diet but it puts some reality to the blanket claim of they are what they eat n(and there are some studies that firmly put that statement in question...)... 

Some comments

Ed


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## singhm29 (Jun 28, 2009)

Ed said:


> So you are claiming that crickets utilize the amino acids, starches and fats in the oatmeal diet differently than the diet you offer?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Like I stated previously it is likely that a fair amount of this may not be transferable nutrition.

But I am claiming that offering a a varied diet can increase the chance of greater utilization of amino acids, starches and fats that a diet only consisting of oatmeal would limit. 

Can you tell with certainty that what I recommended is far from good and potentially bad for crickets? If you could point out what in my proposed diet would cause problems that would be appreciated as unfortunately my research is based on what others in the hobby have found works for them in terms of lower deaths and better breeding rates in their cricket colonies. I can’t say they all have controlled lab conditions running to confirm what they used was better than other diets but I doubt you can say every hobbyist that contributed to the progress of the hobby had a reference for what they did.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

The hobby with respect to gut loading repeatedly has ignored the published science on the topic... and instead has gone with a wide variety of anecdotal impressions.. 

I provided one link that if reviewed with an eye to your diet, that should have pointed out issues.. insufficient amounts of roughage inhibit the ability to process nutrients so even a high protien diet like that of the dog food/fish flakes, could easily be preventing the crickets without replenishing thier nutritional stores.... So your claim with regard to oatmeal isn't supported.. Which is why I asked you to provide proof of your position, and I've provided a reference on the opposite position... 

As a further direct comment, I noted a link to corneal lipidosis (see Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry) and linoleic acid... which is added to dog food and fish food.... So even if the diet is well accepted by the crickets, then you are risking the health of the frog via higher levels of linoleic acid and cholesterol... 

As for the carrots, insects accumulate and store carotenoids, but the primary carotenoid in carrots are the carotenes (beta carotene mainly) and it is well established now that amphibians either poorly convert or don't convert at all beta carotene to vitamin A.. It is also well established that crickets are poor sources of preformed vitamin A.... 

So right off the bat the claim of "what works" has to be viewed with a highly degree of pessimism... 

I'm not sure why you think I should supply the burden of proof as to why your position has issues.... I think I've already provided some strong references as to why your diet isn't ideal for the crickets or subsequently the frogs. 

Some comments

Ed


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## BlueRidge (Jun 12, 2010)

Then why gutload at all? Isn't the point of gutloading to give the animals supplemental nutrition above what the crickets offer?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

JaredJ said:


> Then why gutload at all? Isn't the point of gutloading to give the animals supplemental nutrition above what the crickets offer?


 
Where has anyone said it can't be done? I think I've actually been pretty clear that it can be done. 

As for providing nutrition *above what any feeder species* offers, that is obviously going to depend on what you are feeding the prey/feeders species and how you go about it... As a classic example, if you offer feeder insects one of the high calcium gut load diets (either commercial or home made), you cannot offer them any other food sources including fruit or vegetables for water. There is a simple reason for this.. the high calcium diets are unpalatable to them (and typically begin to kill the feeder insects after 48 hours) and they will consume anything other than the diet that is available. In addition, with respect to crickets, even with high calcium diets, only pinheads typically achieve a positive calcium to phosphorus ratio..... 

This is also before we get into issues like tocopherols which are added as preservatives and many insects accumulate them potentially into levels that can disrupt the uptake of vitamin A and D3.... 

Some comments,


Ed


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## singhm29 (Jun 28, 2009)

Apologies Ed,

I decided to review my cricket care during the last week and I read a number of your posts on the difference between a "gutloading" diet and a diet used to sustain crickets. However it does seem in a number of posts you yourself recommend organic dog food as a viable option to use assuming the calcium and tocopherol levels are low. The mistake I definitely made was assuming that the dog food diet was for gutloading rather than simply sustaining the crickets to replenish fats and vitamins.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

singhm29 said:


> Apologies Ed,
> 
> I decided to review my cricket care during the last week and I read a number of your posts on the difference between a "gutloading" diet and a diet used to sustain crickets. However it does seem in a number of posts you yourself recommend organic dog food as a viable option to use assuming the calcium and tocopherol levels are low. The mistake I definitely made was assuming that the dog food diet was for gutloading rather than simply sustaining the crickets to replenish fats and vitamins.


As I uncover more documentation, I modify my position on nutrition to take the additional documentation into account. With respect to the organic dog food, you have to feed the crickets diet for 48 hours to restore fats, minerals and protien lost during shipping. After that point, they can be dusted and fed out. There is little risk at that point that they have accumulated sufficient tocopherols that would allow interfere with uptake of D3 or vitamin A (in the form of retinol/retinal). Now if you were keeping a group on it for extended periods of time (multiple instars for example), then the risk increases over time. Optimal nutrition is a moving target, and gets better all of the time as we achieve better and better understanding of the issue. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## singhm29 (Jun 28, 2009)

I agree, thats why I went ahead and apologized for some of my rash statements. Its pigheaded to ignore facts just because you initially thought it was some other way. 

I prefer to keep about 500 crickets on hand simply because it is more cost effective than buying a couple dozen a week.

My current feeding plan is

Gutloading diet (2 days prior to feedout):
50 Organic Dry Dog food: 50 fish flakes 
+ potentially adding some supplement powder to that mix (although im not sure how well that would carry over to nutritional value to the animals)

Also at this point should I even be offering carrots as a water source while gutloading or will that be counter-intuitive to gutloading because they will ignore the nutrient rich food and just go for the carrot?

Sustenance diet: 
Oat bran 
Carrots

Everything would be ground up to make it a bit more difficult for them to pick and choose what they eat from the mix. It seems from my reading that this plan would make sense but im all ears for potential problems with it.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

singhm29 said:


> My current feeding plan is
> 
> Gutloading diet (2 days prior to feedout):
> 50 Organic Dry Dog food: 50 fish flakes
> ...


I would suggest skipping adding the supplements since that increases the tocopherol uptake (vitamin E) and the calcium content which makes the diet more unpalatable to the crickets. Also you would need to keep them as close to 80 F to give you the best chance of succeeding in getting the calcium levels up (and even then it is very difficult to do this in anything other than pinheads). 

Carrot is fine for water but it isn't going to help with carotenoids as the main carotenoids in it are beta carotene. As long as the gut loading diet isn't high in calcium, they should be fine with it. 

The main diet is probably fine although you may want to bump the protien up a a little as the crickets grow and do better on a higher protien content. This can easily be done by mixing some nutritional yeast/brewer's yeast into the bran... Alternatively you mix some good organic chicken mash into the bran (just watch the tocopherol content) to bring up the levels. 

Ed


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## singhm29 (Jun 28, 2009)

> I would suggest skipping adding the supplements since that increases the tocopherol uptake (vitamin E) and the calcium content which makes the diet more unpalatable to the crickets. Also you would need to keep them as close to 80 F to give you the best chance of succeeding in getting the calcium levels up (and even then it is very difficult to do this in anything other than pinheads).


Dusting them instead of feeding them the supplement would work better it sounds like. Have you personally found any use for expired supplements? 



> Carrot is fine for water but it isn't going to help with carotenoids as the main carotenoids in it are beta carotene. As long as the gut loading diet isn't high in calcium, they should be fine with it.


Luckily the organic dry dog food I picked up does not have added calcium enrichment so I think I might be set on using that.




> The main diet is probably fine although you may want to bump the protien up a a little as the crickets grow and do better on a higher protien content. This can easily be done by mixing some nutritional yeast/brewer's yeast into the bran


I never considered brewers yeast as something I could use for the crickets, what kind of ratio would you mix this with oats? I have been trying to find a reliable local source of chicken mash so I will look into that more, alternatively would their be problems using fish food to increase the protein content? I dont see anything stated on the ingredients that indicate additional calcium or vitamin E (tocopherols) have been added. 

I know my questions are pretty specific to my situation and PM'ing came to mind but I see this as a question someone else in the future might want answered. (assuming they know how to use the search button, which took me awhile to learn lol)


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