# Copper Sulfate Pentahydrate: long-term danger for frogs?



## n.riou (Dec 14, 2008)

Since a few months, I use rehydrated dry dogfood as culture media for fruitflies. The results are excellent. The mixture is very productive, and drosophilas are very big.
But this dogfood contain copper sulfate pentahydrate.

For the moment, that seems to raise no problem on frogs. Their health is good, they breed etc...

But I wonder if someone know the long-term effects of the copper sulfate on amphibians? Health, possible infertility etc....

regards


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

I wouldn't worry about the copper as it is a trace nutrient that the frogs also require in minute quantities. I would actually worry much more if the dog food contains tocopherols (vitamin E) as preservative. The reason is that fruit flies can concentrate tocopherols up to a thousand times greater than the media which can disrupt the uptake of vitamin A (retinol/retinyl) and D3. This can have a long-term effect on the frog including decreased immune function, loss of fertility, and possible increase in spindly leg. 

Production of flies is not a good benchmark for fruit fly culture as it doesn't demonstrate the nutritional quality of the flies which is more important than the number of flies produced. 

Ed


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## n.riou (Dec 14, 2008)

Hello,

Thank you Ed for your answer.

I understand what you want to say. I also find the drosophilas are big, what for me is a good sign of the nutritional aspect.

Concerning vitamins, the ratio is almost of 100:10.1. Besides, I supplement my insects 1 time every 15 days (or 1 time a month) with the vitamin A specially, twice a week with the D3 specially (+Ca), and the rest of the time with a mixture multivitamins.

Regards

Ps: Composition of the used drogfood


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## motydesign (Feb 27, 2011)

i think what ed was trying to say is that the tocopherols (which are the last item in your ingredients) are going to limit the frogs ability to uptake vit A. so even if you were properly supplementing, they are not able to take absorb it.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

motydesign said:


> i think what ed was trying to say is that the tocopherols (which are the last item in your ingredients) are going to limit the frogs ability to uptake vit A. so even if you were properly supplementing, they are not able to take absorb it.


Exactly what I was saying.. 
It could impact both A and D3 uptake. 

For the complete discussion on this see this post (and associated citations) http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/food-feeding/67766-repashy-superfly-26.html#post608267 

Size doesn't mean that flies are optimized either because that is based on protien levels and doesn't indicate other nutrients. See this post and citations. http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/food-feeding/23765-genetic-cause-culture-crashes.html

Ed


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## n.riou (Dec 14, 2008)

OK.

But I believed that the ratio was good (100:10:1). It isn't the case?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

n.riou said:


> OK.
> 
> But I believed that the ratio was good (100:10:1). It isn't the case?


what happens is the flies store up the vitamin E which skews the ratio when you try to dust the flies and feed them out. If the flies have more vitamin E (alpha tocopherol) in thier tissues then you need higher amounts of A and D3 to stay within that ratio. The supplements are not made to compensate for that problem. The best thing you can do is not use anything that contains a alpha tocopherols as a preservative as a media ingredient (particularly if it is a major ingredient). 

Ed


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## n.riou (Dec 14, 2008)

Ok, so you recommend to use only mixtures with the least possible of vitamin E?

Drosophilas do not fix as much the vitamin A and D3 as E?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

n.riou said:


> Ok, so you recommend to use only mixtures with the least possible of vitamin E?
> 
> Drosophilas do not fix as much the vitamin A and D3 as E?


Other than some vitamin A used to form rhodopsin in the eye of the flies, fruit flies do not fix or store any vitamin A (and this has been shown on analysis) nor do they store any vitamin D3. Any vitamin D3 in the gut of the fly is digested and used to make cholesterol or excreted. The gut amount of time it takes a fly to void all of it's gut contents are approximately 6 hours. So if the flies have access to tocopherols they uptake and store them so the levels of vitamin E are in excess of the levels that supplements are targeted to correct. In a post a couple of pages back I linked to a post where I broke a lot of this down in detail. 

This is why it is important to understand the physiology of the feeder invertebrate as much as possible as it is surprisngly easy to do the wrong thing while attempting to optimize the nutritional value of the feeders. 

Ed


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## snake5891 (Dec 10, 2009)

Today I was making some vivarium substrate mix and after reading some articles on pumilio care I decided I was going to add some calcium and mineral sources to the substrate. I remembered I had a bottle of Kaytee Hi-Cal Bird Grit lying around and after reading the first couple of ingredients decided it would be perfect and added a handful to the substrate before I mixed it with water and added it to the vivarium. It wasn't until I was done that I decided to read ALL the ingredients and found a couple further down the list that concerned me.

Kaytee » Kaytee Hi-Cal Grit - Small Birds

It contains oxides of copper and zinc along with mineral oil and orange oil which I'm sure I could do without. There must be a tiny amount of it as the grit didn't seem oily in any way. 
Like I said I added a handful to half of a 5gallon bucket worth of substrate, would you take all the substrate out and start again?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

snake5891 said:


> Today I was making some vivarium substrate mix and after reading some articles on pumilio care I decided I was going to add some calcium and mineral sources to the substrate. I remembered I had a bottle of Kaytee Hi-Cal Bird Grit lying around and after reading the first couple of ingredients decided it would be perfect and added a handful to the substrate before I mixed it with water and added it to the vivarium. It wasn't until I was done that I decided to read ALL the ingredients and found a couple further down the list that concerned me.
> 
> Kaytee » Kaytee Hi-Cal Grit - Small Birds
> 
> ...


No...but keep in mind that unless the particulates are small enough to be ingested by the frog, or the invertebrate, they might as well not be in there since the humic acids are going to react with the calcium resulting in insoluble tannate salts on the surface of the grit. This is why just adding random calcium sources to non-clay substrates is an issue. 

Ed


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