# Vacation Feeding Revisited



## Jordan B (Oct 8, 2004)

Hi all,
I am curious what is the best way to do vaction feeding on a collection consisting of more than a few tanks. My collection is now not only growing in tanks, but by a fair amount in value. I would not feel as comfortable leaving a culture in the tank and closing the vents for a week or more considering that there can be $600+ in frogs in some of the tanks. The fact that one bum fruit fly culture can kill off alot of frogs doesn't seem like a good idea considering the time and money we all put into our collections. So, what do you guys do with the larger or more valuable collections? Even if your collection isn't huge, speak up!

Jordan


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## Auhsoj27 (Jun 3, 2005)

Find some time to make a friend between culturing flies and tending to frogs. Then train that friend to culture flies and tend to frogs.

;-)


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

yeah...easier said than done. IMO
That would be best, to have a frog sitter.
I would really hesitate to both seal a tank totally, and put an active ff culture in the tank (unless the viv were fairly large). Reason being that a ff culture produces CO2...which could build up to deadly concentrations.
I would think a well established frog could survive on what microfauna is in the tank for a good week or so...froglets would be another story.


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

I have a sad tale to tell. My family and I just recently returned from 10 days in Tokyo. I left six frogs (three leucs and three tricolors) in separate ziplock containers each with a small baby food jar fruit fly culture. The leucs are now fatter than when I left. The tricolors are sadly no longer with us  . These tricolors were very small and that may have had something to do with it. They were also in slightly smaller volume and higher containers.

Hope you have better luck,
Chris


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## dmatychuk (Apr 20, 2005)

Brian is VERY right about the CO2 or maybe I think it may be ammonia, but in either case this is deadly to PDFs when left in especially small confined containers with no plant life. The floor space is what is important here and would not recommend using FF cultures in anything as small as a 12x12 and definitely not old or smelly cultures period. And don't leave multiple cultures either, this just compounds your problem. I think using one culture in a 12x30 floor space with a newly hatching FF culture is acceptable, especially with larger PDFs and I have done this on a regular basis even when I am at home to watch the process. I would heavily feed prior to leaving for a week or so and make a bunch of springtails to through in there as well as an alternative to a culture.


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## Guest (Dec 16, 2005)

I have made up some mini cultures out of small Gladware conatiners and tested them out. I didn't feed my 3 adult auratus for over two weeks and they did great. Thye even got fatbecause it is basically for feeding larve.
Somewhere here on Dendroboard is the post Ben Green wrote up about making them. Or it could have been Randy Strann. When you get old your memory is the second thing to go :lol: 
Mark W.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Depending on how long you are going to be gone, perforating a lid and placing a piece of flexible tubing into the lid and then into the enclosure will allow the flies to go from the container to the enclosure without the concern of CO2 or ammonia (the ammonia is unlikely to be a problem) as plants and bacteria readily take up ammonia and either sequester it (in the case of plants) or convert it to nitrates (bacteria)). A piece of orange will encourage the flies to move down into the cage. How far you push the tube into the lid helps control the rate of movement by the flies. 

If you are only going to be gone for a few days, you can just place the piece of orange in the tank with a bunch of flies. 

Ed


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

Good idea(s) Ed...
I'd just make sure the flies will crawl all the way through the tube, and not change their mind halfway and turn back.

One idea I had to minimize the CO2 risk in small, sealed tanks, is to take a good amount of ff larvae, more or less free of excess media, and put in the tank, that way there would be minimum CO2 from fermentation, the frogs would eat a lot of the larvae, and the larvae that got away would pupate, and hatch later on.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

I have used this on smaller scale with the small tubes of fly cultures and have had all of the adults migrate out to be consumed. I haven't needed to try it with a large culture yet but I do not see why it still wouldn't work (besides the orange slice is good incentive). 
Unless you have frogs that are really small (and then a large clump of springtails will do the same thing), then I would be worried about drying out before starvation during a vacation if you are only going to be gone for a week or so.


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