# Grinding/Blending insects



## xitch (Dec 5, 2007)

I thought I had read somewhere on here of people blending/grinding or otherwise "dustifying" field-swept insects, and then dusting their fruit flies with that.
any links or help would be appreciated.

thanks
mitch


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## Greg (Dec 25, 2007)

I don't know about grinding up bugs to dust FFs, but it is a common practice to dust FFs with a nutrient or supplement powder before putting them in the terrarium. I season my FFs with a supplement powder called "Miner-all" before I put them in the frog tank.


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## xitch (Dec 5, 2007)

Yes of course there is dusting of vitamins, etc. But i thought i read of someone blending field caught insects for diet variety. Anyone know anything about this?


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## xm41907 (Nov 26, 2007)

I'm sure you could grind and blend them, but why go through the trouble? Just weed out any you don't think the frogs would eat or that you wouldn't want in the viv and put the rest in. The frogs will love the variety too! Most insects will live awhile and just die, so don't be too concerned about an outbreak, just keep any eye on the tank and it should be fine.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

xitch said:


> I thought I had read somewhere on here of people blending/grinding or otherwise "dustifying" field-swept insects, and then dusting their fruit flies with that.
> any links or help would be appreciated.
> 
> thanks
> mitch


I don't see the reason for doing this? all you will get is a paste.


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## NathalieB (Apr 23, 2007)

I think I may have posted this somewhere. I have read it on a dutch site. I could give you the link but it's just text and it's in Dutch.

The person doing this fed "meadowplankton" or whatever it's called during the summer , but since there isn't any available in winter they collected extra bugs (flies, dragonflies, beetles, bees, spiders, ...) which were put in the freezer.
After the summer the collected frozen bugs where dried and grinded with a coffeegrinder and during winter this powder was added to the supplements that are used to dust the feeder insects. The person describing this process claims to have seen spectacular results with his frog (brighter colors, less problems with eggs, tadpoles and froglets, ...)

I am still planning to try it some time, but as I culture a lot of different feeders I don't do field sweepings and since I live in a big city I haven't gotten arround to doing sweepings for this experiment.


edit: It came up already in this thread, with some warnings and extra info from Ed http://www.dendroboard.com/food-feeding/topic35850-30.html


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## Greg (Dec 25, 2007)

I don't think it's neccesary to take the time to go out and catch bug to add variety to your frogs diet. But one thing I do to add some variety in my frogs diet is I usually will put in both hydei & melanogaster FFs together during a regular feeding. It probably doesn't do too much for nutritional matters but it might give the frogs a more interesting meal and it may do something nutrition wise, does anyone else do this or know if it does have any effect?


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## flyangler18 (Oct 26, 2007)

> But one thing I do to add some variety in my frogs diet is I usually will put in both hydei & melanogaster FFs together during a regular feeding.


This isn't really adding any kind of variety to the diet of your frogs, as the nutritional content is probably nearly equal in both melanogaster and hydei. To get the best variety, feed different 'kinds' of feeder insects (beetles, springtails, phoenix worms, termites, lesser waxworms, pinhead crix, etc). I feed out lots of meadow plankton this time of year.


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## xitch (Dec 5, 2007)

Which is why I'm looking for a method to grind up other insects. In all honesty, I'm currently specifically trying to find this info to apply to my current work. I'm trying to speed up the development of a local specie of treefrog, in order to get sexual mature animals in a year. By grinding up wild caught insects (caught on wild, conservation dept. land), I would be in turn providing a more "natural" ratio of the various nutritional compounds. I turned to dendroboard because I knew the topic had been discussed before [thanks for the links!]. However, I'm still at a loss as how to remove all the moisture from the insects, because an insect paste in a blender doesn't look appetizing, not to mention dust-able.


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## flyangler18 (Oct 26, 2007)

Rather than trying to process the insects into some 'dustable' powder, why not just feed out those insects to the frogs?


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## xitch (Dec 5, 2007)

was hoping blending would be more simple than sorting out the big bugs


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## xm41907 (Nov 26, 2007)

Freeze to kill them. Crush them some, to break up the exoskeleton. Bake them on a low setting or use a dehydrator. Then blend and grind them. That should make them less of a paste.


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