# How to supplement diets that mainly consist of springtails ?



## Bisier (Jul 8, 2012)

Hi All,

First post here, great forum !

I recently acquired a trio of reticulata and over the course of two months from what i can see they mainly eat springtails and don't care that much for fruit flies (at least from what I can witnessed). that being taken into account, how can i supplement their food and make sure that they get enough supplementation ? 

I use repashy supplements at every feeding and even if they eat a bit of flies in the leaf litter later when i'm not staring at the viv, by the time that they get to them the flies will have cleaned most of the ''dust'' from them. 

what do you guys think ?


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## Pacblu202 (May 8, 2012)

Are you feeding melagnosters or hydei? How big are the frogs?


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

You can dump springtails into a cup and supplement them. Easier to do if you are culturing your springs terrestrially vs in water. I use coco fiber and add chunks of charcoal and ripped up leaves. Put some whole leaves and a couple big pieces of charcoal on top. Then you can just shake, tap, blow them into a dusting cup.


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## Bisier (Jul 8, 2012)

Pacblu202: reticulata is one of the smallest dart frog available in the hobby, I Feed them melanogaster's, check out this pic for size reference, the cup is a regular 8oz:










frogface: I culture my springtail in a mix of coco fiber and hydroton, it's the mix that i have had the most sucess with, catching the springs is not an issue, I generally use pieces of mushroom and I also several small pieces of cork bark in there, they are always full of springs.

I never thought that dusting springtails would work due to their small size, is the dust really sticking to them ? would'nt it kill them? i mean they are so small that the supplements might suck out all of their water ?? not a big deal if they die other than the frog wont eat them and back to square one...

thanks for the help


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

I'm not sure if it kills them but they've stayed alive long enough to be eaten by hungry froglets.

Also, somewhere on this board, I read that the dust actually stays on the flies for around 12 hours. I think I read that and I think Ed said it. Maybe someone will come along and correct or confirm.


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## Pacblu202 (May 8, 2012)

I realized almost immediately upon writing that that they were thumbs haha yeah only thing I can suggest is to dust them like frog face said


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## Eric Walker (Aug 22, 2009)

Not trying to disagree but that looks like the smaller sized deli which I beleave is an 8 oz.

Iv dusted springs a few times and its worked just fine. Just dont use more than a pinch .


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## Bisier (Jul 8, 2012)

Oups, yes you are right, it's an 8oz cup, I corrected my first post

I will try dusting some springtails tomorrow.

Thanks again for the help.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

frogface said:


> Also, somewhere on this board, I read that the dust actually stays on the flies for around 12 hours. I think I read that and I think Ed said it. Maybe someone will come along and correct or confirm.


http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/food-feeding/79607-fruit-fly-grooming.html#post704516 

Ed


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## SmallScaleDan (Nov 16, 2008)

I usually use a piece of bark or other surface clear of plants as a feeding station in all of my tanks. Especially the ones used for growing out froglets. 

The flies tend to gather on them, and stay in "strike range" longer, and if you accidentally dump a bunch of calcium or vitamin dust in the tank, you can just remove the feeding bark and wash it off. 

Well, I've been using the Repashy supervite stuff, and I notice my froglets eating it.... I was a little weirded out at first. They seemed to be gathered around the dusted area of their feeding station and were "tonguing" at the little pile of supervite, but there were no flies there. 

Upon closer inspection I found that they were actually eating springtails which had gathered on the supervite! Apparently, the springtails are attracted to and consume 1 or more ingredients in this supplement. 


I haven't spent any time researching this yet, but perhaps if you add a bit of your supplement to your spring cultures (on a leaf or something) they might consume it, and effectively gut load themselves. 

Just something I noticed and I thought I would pass along. 

Dan


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## ChrisK (Oct 28, 2008)

Something you might want to try is to get a good population of dwarf gray or purple isopods established in the tank, the offspring of the isopods are small enough for any dart or dart offspring in the hobby now - I successfully raise Escudos on them until they're big enough for ff's (the isopods really need to be established to do this though).


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