# Feeding our food



## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

What do you feed your food? Please be prepared, because if you say "nothing," or "Oh, I dust," I am going to tell you flat out that you are wrong.

I recently posted a topic called "is what we think we know..." and this goes right in line with it.

If you are keeping dart frogs, it is your responsibility to not only feed them as diverse a diet as you can (read that as to the best of your ability. If field sweeping is not an option for you, and crickets are too expensive, at least beg borrow or steal a springtail culture) but feed the diet a GOOD diet.

I know that the topic of fruit fly media comes up often, but it is always about what produces the best.

Y'know, I am not concerned in the least with what produces the best, so much as I am with what comes out.

Currently, there are 11 ingredients in my fruit fly mix. 11. And many of those 11 have many vitamins and minerals in them naturally. I believe that in the interest of keeping good frogs, along with promoting longevity, and good in season breeding, comes providing them with the best food. That means feeding your food.

To put it succintly, potato flakes and applesauce is not cutting it. Raise your standards from numbers to quality.

Also, before I start hearing it from people, Biological supply houses are not interested in selling you a media that is going to produce lots and lots of flies that are healthy, they are interested in selling you the cheapest media for them that is going to allow your university or study group study the genetics and life of the common fruit fly. That is it.

Let's see what kind of ingredients and sources for these ingredients we can come up with to raise the standard for our foods food. (And no, I do not mean vegetables and fruit.)


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

John, why don't we start by you posting how you make your fruit fly mix :wink: 

Dustin


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## Darren Meyer (May 22, 2004)

1, 3lb 15oz jar applesauce

2, 1 cup mollasse

3, 1 cup cornmeal

4, 6-7 cups quick oatmeal 

5, 1 cup white vinagar 

6, 1 cup brewers yeast or nutritional yeast (health foods) 

7, 2 cups flax seeds (health foods)

8 , use the jar w/ the applesause fill up with water ( note you must first remove the applesause ) this water is for boiling the flax seeds ..

9, spirulina 3 heaping tbls. (optional)

10, mold inhibitor 3 tbls 

11, active yeast ( sprinkle ontop of culture) tiny pinch 

This is what we use and many others. I do feel as though it provides ample amount of vitimans . Possibly we can do better . by adding mineral suppelmentatins that are not found in our regular dustings of ff's ? Lets see what ideas pop up here . 

This recipie is also low cost. You don't have to order anything (except mold inh.) The flax seeds when boiled produce a great source of fatty acids ,and aminos. And it produces ample amount of flies in a short time . 

I'm not going to knock any of the supply houses , I do'nt know what is in their media , I have never seen them post the break down in nutrient values . :shock: 
So the way it's made first boil the water in the largest pot that you have . add the 2 cups flax seeds , let boil and from time to time stir until it turns thick ( fatty acids ) looks like snott !!! Add 6-7 cups quick oats ( mix in water ,flax seeds ) take off stove . add all of the rest except !!!!! Nutritional yeast!!! let cool . now add yeast , reason being I have heard that heat kills the yeast . Possibly have to add more water for the right consistency :wink: 

Makes about 8 lbs? Ido think that you can freeze the mixture I only place it in the refrig. I use mason jars (more enviromentaly friendly than plastic) 8) and place a 1/2 inch in the bottom , screw on lid w/ 3 coffie filters . makes 30 or so !!! Enough for a month? @ $10.00 give or take a few .
Add fly's ,let sit until you see maggots. Then you can feed the starter flies to your frogs by then the culture is well enough established. 

so once again what are you feeding your food????? !!! Another good thread John possibly someday I'll be lucky enough meet you !!!
Happy frogging !! and I hope that I was clear enough on that recipe and no one will p/m me and ask me to explain it again ( happened the last time I posted food here )
Darren Meyer


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## Marty (Feb 27, 2004)

I recently put my springtail cultures on the South Beach diet and my hydei cultures are doing Atkins. Their LDL dropped 20 points. :lol: 




Tincs.com said:


> What do you feed your food? Please be prepared, because if you say "nothing," or "Oh, I dust," I am going to tell you flat out that you are wrong.
> 
> I recently posted a topic called "is what we think we know..." and this goes right in line with it.
> 
> ...


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

I tried a few different cultures and found for myself the bananna/apple sauce mix with some high quality fish food added has worked great. I add about 1 cup of culture to each jar and they last 1-1/2 months. Im curious as to how much we can expect a "fly" to bulk up or increase in quality of feeder food. I may be wrong here but ive never seen a hulky looking fly from one mix to another, a flys physical structure doesnt appear to change like a feeder rodent as a example. Is there or has there been testing to prove that all these extra ingredients in the medium is passing from the fly to our frogs ? or is proper dusting of the fly just as benefical :?:


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

Marty said:


> I recently put my springtail cultures on the South Beach diet and my hydei cultures are doing Atkins. Their LDL dropped 20 points. :lol:


Thats Funny! :lol:


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## rmelancon (Apr 5, 2004)

Here is a nutritional breakdown of some of the common dart frog foods. It would be interesting to see if there would be differences in flies that were fed some sort of "enhanced" diet. Outside of the gut content, I wonder how much of the vitamins, etc. would be transferred to the frogs.


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

One of my friends is a PhD entymologist. I will ask her how common nutrients are used by fruit flies. 

My hypothesis is that if the flies need the same vitamins and minerals that the frogs do, adding different ingredients to the media will add them to the flies, and then to the frogs (simplified). We have to remember that the flies eat the yeast, so the yeast would have to use the extra ingredients also unless the raw nutrients can be gotten from the larvae tunneling through the media. However, if the flies do NOT need something that the frogs do, then no amount of additive to the media will help, since the fly will extrete the compound as waste or not pick it up at all. Am I way off here? I'll ask my friend. 

In any case a varied diet (different insects need different stuff) would be the only way to ensure a healthy spectrum for the frog.


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

Ok I'll bite  tell me if you think my flies are getting enough, therefore my frogs who I think I spoil anyways. Here's my recipe ingredients (I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head and I have this all written down at home).

6 cups water
1 1/2 apple cider vinger
1 cup white rice
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 ripe bannana
2 med apples or 1 cup applesauce (what ever I happen to have)
1 cup brewers yeast
1 tbsp of spirulina
1 tsp of paprika
and sprinkled bakers yeast on top of the cultures.

I get a ton of flies from this and I don't get mold because of the vinger. It smells to high hell and tastes like vomit (yes I just had to taste it) :shock: I would be really nice to know if all this cooking and extra effort was going to good use by the frogs bodies but in reality I don't really know. Guess it makes me feel better, who knows.

On the side note, my cobalts won't touch crickets (never tried with the other ones) and for the most part ignore ants. I havn't tried field sweepings because I don't have a clean place to do that because they are always spraying the area I live in for misquiteos because of West Nile. So they are stuck pretty much with fruit flies and spring tails but they are doing great :lol: even producing fertile clutches of eggs from the get go. (at least the ones that are of breedable age). 

If anyone wants the entire reciepe let me know I'll post it.


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## Christian (Mar 8, 2004)

Taste it........ :? 


You are a real frog addict.....


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

*??????????????*

so once again what are you feeding your food????? !!! Another good thread John possibly someday I'll be lucky enough meet you !!!
Happy frogging !! and I hope that I was clear enough on that recipe and no one will p/m me and ask me to explain it again ( happened the last time I posted food here )
Darren Meyer[/quote]

Dude, are you Crazy? We spent ten hours at least together yesterday in your new truck talking about this very thing! Hope I get to meet you. I bought you lunch, and it was the best damn BLT you ever had! Pretty funny though.

Did you forget to mention the Chlorella? that is something that we are adding as well.

Also, talk to Jon next time you get a chance; He may have come up with a new fly somehow just from screwing around in his back yard - Hardier and stronger than even the glider, but still does not fly. 

He separated another male and female red amazonicus, and got eggs that night. Geez, he is going to enter the Frog Breeder Hall of Fame if he keeps that frog brothel of his going so successfully like that. Give me a call today, the cement guy called last night, and I am going to go and get him and his friend and see about bringing them out here to give an estimate on the floor. Perhaps you should be here as well??

Johnny

PS - If people start giving you a hassle about the working of the medium, just send them my way - Jen has it all worked out so I can cut and paste it, and she is quite a bit more eloquent than you are or I am.


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

*Whoops!*

Sorry everyone, I thought that was going to just Darren.

John


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

It turns out rmelancon hit the nail on the head. 

The entymologist said that if you enrich the ff media and feed the larvae to the frogs, the enrichment will pass to the frogs. 

She also said that if you feed only adult ffs, you're wasting your time because the gut contents of adult ffs is very small, as they do very little eating if at all. 

The tissue levels of the enrichments in adult flies will not be noticeably larger as a result of the fly eating enriched media when it is a larva either. 

Hope this helped

Lydia


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Thats interesting, so if you feed the adults there is no point in changing the medium? 

I've thought about trying some other mediums, but the whole cooking part keeps me from trying. I have used the same medium for awhile and get good results.


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2004)

*No Way*

I think a point is being missed here.

when we eat something, we are not eating the guts, and I would suspect that the frogs are not programmed to go after the thing that they want based simply on the gut content. Their is muscle tissue, and other things that run through the fluids that pass for blood in these insects that has to be there in larger amounts if you feed the insect better, even in later stages of development.

From studies I have seen as to how vitamins and minerals pass through creatures, it is a good bet that a good portion of what we supplement our frogs with blows right through. 

It would be neat to do a fecal to see what vitamins and minerals are there and compare that to the supplement being used, and see what is present, and what is not.

The reason that I know the frogs cannot be making it on food supplements sticking to an unsubstantial fruit fly is because of the frequency with which I supplement. It happens to be once or twice every two weeks if I remember to do it all. And my frogs are healthy, and live quite a while, and breed and breed and breed. The tads morph out into healthy little frogs, and though it pisses Jennifer off, I give most of them away. So there has to be more to it.

The entymologist needs to puree a bunch of fruit flies, and do an analysis as to what is there.


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Interesting... I have upped my dusting to every day. I would be very interested in how much of the vitamins just pass through the frog. Its the same with humans though. Those vitamins that say 100% of A, B, whatever, we really only take in about 5-10% of that.


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## Scott (Feb 17, 2004)

John and Jennifer's Flax seed recipe - from their fridge door to you:

6 cups water
2 cups flax seeds
-- boil until very thick (in John's words: snotlike, revolting)

1 2 lb jar applesause
2 tsp methyl paraben
1 cup honey
3/4 cup vinegar
3/4 cub brewers yeast
1 cup corn meal
--combine and heat over very low heat

-- add:
5 - 6 cups of oatmeal
-- cook briefly. Stir or blend in flax seed snot.

Caveat: I have not done this yet. I'm doing it soon.

John - I'll remove this if it's a problem. I note that you and Everett add a few other things on occasion also.

s


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## Ryan (Feb 18, 2004)

I have 1/2 and 1/2 cultures since i read about someone useing flax in theirs. Its the powermix, but 1/2 of the cultures is instead of just brewers yeast it has 1/2 yeast and 1/2 flax. I also feed termites regularly, and looking towards ants big time. Found out most florida ant species are the right species for darts, Pheidole(big headed ants) are safe and are common around here, along with many others. Aphids are another i try to feed when i can. 

Ryan


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2004)

Biology is a tricky thing, and very complicated. Insects' tissues, muscles, and even blood are very different from those of vertebrates. It certainly won't hurt anything to enrich media, so if it makes you feel better, do it. 

What she said, Kyle, is that the adult flies have a certain level of nutrients in their tissue. That level will not increase with the enrichment of media. Also, because the flies do not eat, there are no extra nutrients in their guts (which are the most digestible parts-in other words the guts yeild the bulk of the energy and nutrients). 

Now, she said feeding the larvae which are fed on enriched media are a whole 'nother story. THEN it'd be worth it. I know another etymologist, so if it would make people feel better I can see if he agrees. He also happens to be a biochemist, so maybe he can shed some light on how vitamins are absorbed and transfered from one living thing to another.


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## steelcube (Mar 17, 2004)

Lydia,

I am not sure if the adult flies can/do not eat. 


SB


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2004)

Hi,

Is there a reason you cook the flaxseeds vs grounding them? I personally take 2-3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed (I ground it myself) every morning to obtain the maximum nutritional benefit and want to know if this would be ok to add to the media.

Many thanks!

Lorie


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

Lydia said:


> Biology is a tricky thing, and very complicated. Insects' tissues, muscles, and even blood are very different from those of vertebrates. It certainly won't hurt anything to enrich media, so if it makes you feel better, do it.
> 
> What she said, Kyle, is that the adult flies have a certain level of nutrients in their tissue. That level will not increase with the enrichment of media. Also, because the flies do not eat, there are no extra nutrients in their guts (which are the most digestible parts-in other words the guts yeild the bulk of the energy and nutrients).


Lydia is right, mostly. The thing is that ff are made up of components of muscle, chiton, and other tissues and the chemical make-up of these tissues does not really change with diet substantially. A protein molecule that makes up a flight muscle, for example, is always the same and therefore yields the same nutrients no matter what the insect was fed that made it. What changes with nutrition is the speed with which the ff can develop, how many a culture can produce, and maybe the size of the resulting fly or even the proportion of different tissues - like a fly on a rich diet might be able to pack on a little more muscle or fat than one on a diet that barely gets them by. What I don't completely agree with is that "the guts yield the bulk of the energy and nutrients". That's close but not exactly true because the insects body contains a greater mass of protein, fat, and other nutrients than the gut typically. However, some insects like crickets can contain a significant amount of nutrients in their guts and they eat a variable diet which makes it possible for us to "load" their guts with particularly desirable nutrients and therefore boost the nutritional value of the insect as a whole. Ff larvae would be great candidates for gut loading as Lydia's friend suggests except that many froggers have reported pdf passing intact larvae after eating them. Despite all of this, I still spike my ff media with spirulina and brewer's yeast. I figure even if it doesn't boost the nutritional value of the flies, then maybe it boosts the output of the cultures.

I personally think that providing as many different insect species as possible is the first choice in providing good nutrition to the frogs. Secondly, whenever insects lend themselves to gut loading, take advantage of it by providing a nutritious and varied diet to the feeders. Crickets and waxworms come to the top of my list for gut loading. Rice flour beetle larvae should lend themselves to gut loading fairly well too I would think.

I'm pretty sure the study that was suggested of comparing nutrient content of the tissues of insects fed different diets has been done for some feeders. I don't if Ed K. is on this forum but I'm sure he could provide the citation very easily. Also, I'll put a plug in for the booklet called "Thoughts for Food" that ED's Flymeat sells. It's a great book full of nutritional facts about feeder insects and supplements.


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2004)

I don't know how unscientific this is or not (probably not :? )about a theory of absorbtion but I know that I only add paprika to my fruit fly media and not to the flies when I dust them. I have two little froglets that I keep on papertowels and the when they eat flies their poo stains the moist papertowels bright orange. So is that the paprika being passed throught the bodies of the fruit fly larvae into the adult fly, hence into the froglet or something else totally (like the vitamins in the media or the dust)? On a side note, I also do feed them occassional larvae but the orange fecal stain happens more often then not.

And if none of the stuff we put in the media really gets passed on to the frogs from the adult flies then is that line about the paprika and spiriulina keeping the yellow and blue/green colors from fading in frogs a bunch of BS? Because I've been doing that since day one and I've had my tincs retain a high amount of yellow and have no clue if it's because of my cooking or because of their genetics :?:


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2004)

I think the red/orange poop in the frogs comes from the red-eye ff. I've seen it, and seen many other people comment on it.


-Tad


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2004)

Thanks for the additional insight Brent, it is much appreciated. 

On further discussion with Maria (the entomologist) she said she neglected to mention that enriching the fly media will help to make sure that the flies themselves are not deficient in their nutrients. She said that gutloading them (as we would crickets, as Brent mentioned) specifically for the frogs does not work, because they don't eat much of anything during the short phase of adulthood. Needless to say, I will be adding some additional ingredients to my media to make sure I'm not feeding deficient flies. 

As for the pigment molecules, all I have learned so far in school is that they are oddballs. Again, Monday I'll ask the biochemist about this stuff. It pays to be the professors' pet. 

Do you mix paprika into your media or just sprinkle it on top?


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## EDs Fly Meat (Apr 29, 2004)

*Good topic long post*

Wow many good questions and thoughts being thrown around. Let me answer one question. Adult flies do in fact eat. They eat the same way our good ol friend the Musca domestica does. He lands on his potential food source and sniff his meal with his feet (Yes! His feet) The molecules that he/she smells stimulate electrical signals to the brain that says its food or its not food. As the fly (a fruit fly in our case) has a sponge like lapping mouth part it cannot mechanically take a bite (unlike deer and horse flies which can. ouch!) or chew its food. So it regurgitates onto its food item. Yeast. The acids of the stomach contents break down the elements of the food item into a liquid/semi-solid state where upon the fly laps up its food mush.

Gut loading is a good idea, but it is just bonus food. Flies have a high metabolism and gut load constantly. It is true that they have a small GI tract but it is usually full. Flies eat in order to maintain top conditioning to meet their metabolic demand and to be in peak conditioning to breed. Breeding takes a lot out of a fly. I think Brent once again has a good point. The flies themselves are full of lots of great stuff for the animals that eat them. Don't think so? Just squish one right now between your nails and observe all that great goo. In my opinion female flies are the richest, especially gravid females. All those eggs. Yum!

John had a couple of good points. Diveristy in diet. My god there is lots down there in central america. And if a froglet can avoid being eaten long enough down there, there is a "Horn of plenty" in the way of food items. Springtails, rock crawlers, silver fish, spiders, roaches, ants, millepedes, mites, catepillars, flies, flies and more flies. There was a good post a while back on the 6 food items for darts. That should be a minimum in my opinion. We can argue amoungst ourselves later on crickets vs fruit flies as a staple. As for media ingredients. Supplementation is a good idea, but maybe not as important as diveristy. One shouldn't eat chicken everyday. Sure it will keep you alive, but you also need your veggies, and fruits and fish, and pasta. etc etc. Vitamins are a must to balance your diet out of things you lack. But you can't live on a diet of vitamins alone. The body of humans and frogs need calories. That is not to say that supplementation is wrong. In order for there to be life we need essential elements Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, (Carbs)Phosphorus, Potassium, Iodine, Nitrogen, Sulfur, Magnesium, Calcium, and Iron (fats and Amino acids). Fact. The more your food item eats the more that gets passed on to the predators. It was a repetative message in ecology class. My question is for people looking for the golden receipe is, where do you stop? Put whatever you need into your media. Heck we do. We developed our media with PhD's from California State University, Chico (Not the party school you think it is.) Its the same brand that we use in our flies that we feed out frogs, and the same brand that they use in their fly experiements. We did the research, and feel comfortable that the frogs are getting everything that they need. So as far as supplementation goes do whatever makes people you feel better. I don't think there is anything wrong with apple sauce or potato flake as media bases. But have a reason for it, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I have always been of the mind, if its not broke don't fix it. And YES! There are biological companies out there that are into quantanty and not quality. Many people know that, at least they better. I hope no one takes my thoughts a a flame. Because they are just that, my thoughts, my opinions.

Good topic John, we'll have to meet someday.

Dave


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

CFeeney said:


> And if none of the stuff we put in the media really gets passed on to the frogs from the adult flies then is that line about the paprika and spiriulina keeping the yellow and blue/green colors from fading in frogs a bunch of BS? Because I've been doing that since day one and I've had my tincs retain a high amount of yellow and have no clue if it's because of my cooking or because of their genetics :?:


Like Lydia says, pigments are a complex thing. We still haven't fully figured out what creates good color in frogs. We know that beta carotenes appear to help really bring out the reds, yellows and oranges. The connection with spirulina to greens and blues is a little more tenuous. The changes seem to be more subtle and I just don't think we have good comparisons like we do with beta carotenes. UV light has also been implicated in bringing out the best colors (see the Vivaria Projects web site). So off the bat we've got this problem of not being sure which supplements actually make a difference even if fed directly to the frogs. But the evidence for beta carotene is solid so let's stick with that.

The stuff that Lydia, I, and others said about the nutritional content of the media not significantly changing the nutrition of the fly is a generalization. Lydia's point about nutritious media making sure the flies aren't missing something is important because flies (and other animals) can survive and reproduce despite some nutritional deficiencies. So feeding a rich and nutritious media should insure that the flies will be a nutritionally loaded as a fly can get but there is a limit to what is pausible. You can't turn a fruit fly into a piece of squash by feeding it squash. Then there are things like pigments that serve specialized functions and may not be entirely necessary for an animals survival. There have been plenty of apparently healthy and happy washed out E. tricolor produced for example. So suppose that the beta carotene from the paprika in the ff media gets taken up by the larvae and stored in the adult. It could be in the eye for instance since ff have red pigment in their eyes. Maybe flies fed on the enhanced diet have a higher concentration of red pigment in their eyes than those that don't.

So the real points here are that a ff has a maximum potential of the chemicals that it can incorporate into its own tissues which would then become available to frogs when the flies are eaten. This potential is based on the genetic potential of the flies. Suppose the eye/carotene example is correct and that is how red pigment from the media gets to the frogs. Now suppose you were feeding the white-eyed mutant of ff to your frogs. These white-eyed flies would not have the genetic potential to incorporate the paprika as red pigment and you would can nothing by feeding paprika-enriched white-eyed flies to your frogs. But gut loading provides another way to put nutrients into your frogs by getting feeder insects to ingest nutrients we want to give our frogs. Essentially we are shoving little vitamin pills inside the insect prey. The insect may eventually just poop those nutrients out without using them but if a frog eats the insect first, then the frog gets the opportunity to use the nutrients.

And just in case anyone is thinking about it, I didn't get into the possibility of fat storage of chemicals. Fats can absorb chemicals from the blood stream and store them for a long time. These aren't necessarily chemicals the animals will use but they get trapped and stored nonetheless. I've only really heard about this type of storage in the context of toxins like mercury or PCB where long lived fatty animals accumulate high levels of toxins. I don't know if this type of storage could be used to our advantage for nutrition or not. Certainly not in ff since they don't have a lot of fat but waxworms?


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Wow, this thread is great.

So my question on top of the ones already here is that how much do the different types of FFs differ in nutritional value. I feed my frogs 4 different types of ff's, but does it make any difference? I've been avoiding breeding crickets, but may start in the future.


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2004)

*Bah!*

Meet me!? I don't want to meet Erin, or Dave, or Jon Werner, or Scott Macdonald, and I ESPECIALLY do NOT want to meet Darren Meyer, though his woman Stephanie is a major cook, and can come be my house maid and cook anytime. (Though I have never met her or her man.)

I am a Hermit, and live on a hill, and even make my wife say the password to come in. 

So all of you beware, I am MEAN!!

But I love the hell out of my Frogs and Dogs, and even my gorgeous wife!


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

*Re: Good topic long post*



ED's_Fly_Meat_Inc said:


> So it regurgitates onto its food item. Yeast.


Not sure I've ever gotten the chance to nit pick at Dave so I can't pass this up. Just for absolute correctness, I think it is widely belived that ff actually eat more than just yeast. The yeast actually act to predigest fruits and other food stuffs so when the ff sucks up its meal it is actually getting a slurry of yeast and a nutrient cocktail produced by a combination of the digestive action of the yeast and its own digestive juices. Great post and great thread though.

To continue the discussion of variety, two things I want to try. Red spider mites. I use to work near a guy who cultured them for research. Basically he just had a bunch of nasty looking pea plants that were infested with them and he would give me mite infested leaves to feed my frogs. Second, compost. Soil microfauna appear to be very important to pdf in the wild and may be more important in captivity than we think. I think the majority of froggers who have worked with difficult froglets have come to the conclusion that leaving froglets like pumilio in the parent viv for as long as possible helps the froglet off to a good start. The consensus is that a well established viv has enough microfauna to get small froglets established. Setting up a small compost bin innoculated with some organic rish forest or prairie litter should be pretty easy to keep going and periodically harvest with a burlese funnel.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

kyle1745 said:


> Wow, this thread is great.
> 
> So my question on top of the ones already here is that how much do the different types of FFs differ in nutritional value. I feed my frogs 4 different types of ff's, but does it make any difference? I've been avoiding breeding crickets, but may start in the future.


My hunch is that the differences between ff species/types is very negligible. Just remember that the closer two species are taxonmically, the more similar they are genetically, which means the make-up of proteins etc. are also going to be very similar. However, sometimes very subtle difference may be significant (like the white-eyed mutant example earlier). But I don't think I would even count melangaster and hydei as two different types of food for providing variety.

As for crickets, no question they are higher in protein than ff and can be gut loaded much better. However, you'd have to have a screw loose to not hate those bastards. I've heard people say they don't stink. PLEASE. Anything that has to be cleaned at least once a day to keep from making you hurl STINKS. But I find they make a fantastic once a month or two supplement. You can buy thousands of pinheads for a reasonable cost and feed them as a staple for a couple weeks with little fuss and then go back to ff. Also, when I was feeding adult crix to red-eyes, I would throw a small container of moist vermiculite or peat in the cricket container for a few days to get the females to dump their eggs. You can get pretty good bumper crops of pinheads with just a dozen crickets a week. But I would have to have a LOT of frogs before I thought it was worth breeding them myself... but then again, I'm lazy.


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## Arklier (Mar 1, 2004)

I remember seeing a study somewhere online that was done on crickets that involved dusting vs. gut loading. Dusting won far and away. I suspect that it is the same for FFs. Gut loading is nice, but you shouldn't depend on it exclusively. If you think about it, it makes sense. There's far mor surface area for the powder to stick to on these insects than there is in their gut. Personally, I see nothing wrong with relying on dusting FFs. Now, my springtails I do feed nutritional yeast, since they are impossible to dust. I just have to pray that some of the vitamins it contains reaches the frogs.


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## Guest (Sep 19, 2004)

What a well informed thread, great input !! As mentioned earlier that dusting the ff is by far, more benefical then gut loading , then any one of the medium ingrediants all of use, could be considered fine .Providing we dust the ff properly, so how much and how often is dusting the ff going to be considered safe and efficent :?:


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

zoso said:


> What a well informed thread, great input !! As mentioned earlier that dusting the ff is by far, more benefical then gut loading , then any one of the medium ingrediants all of use, could be considered fine .Providing we dust the ff properly, so how much and how often is dusting the ff going to be considered safe and efficent :?:


Susan Donague, D.V.M. of Walkabout Farms recently posted on frognet about their trials with dusting and found that dust formulated for crickets sticks to ff in higher quantity. Enough so that some vitamins were being overdosed. So far the best advise I've heard from various sources is to dust with vitamin and mineral powder about 4 times a week and dust with plain calcium on the other days.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

bbrock said:


> Susan Donague, D.V.M. of Walkabout Farms recently...


Sorry, that should be Donoghue. That's what I get for being in a hurry.


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## Guest (Sep 19, 2004)

What are your thoughts on how regular to feed? Many feed every single day...with frogs seemingly on the brink of tragedy if a single meal or more is missed. I have a hard time believing that they have it this good in the wild. If we are hoping to simulate more variability in their environment, how much should irregular feedings times/routines play into their keeping?

Thoughts?


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

*experiment*

Hmmm... this sounds like an experiment may be in order. I'm interested to know how "supplimented" FFs might effect frogs. I was thinking something noticable like beta carotine in a frog that is very diet dependent on color, such as santa isabel tricolors.

I've always supplimented beta carotine (am I even spelling that right?) with my tricolors. This is in the form of peprika in the FF media, crickets being fed sweet potatos, and peprika in my vit/mineral dust. I worked with two bloodlines of santa isabel and two lines of salvias/anthonyi. I did a mini experiment with a salvias line that I was breeding, feeding one group supplimented FFs (both cultures and powder) and the other non-peprika supplimented FFs (all my crickets were fed sweet potatos so I just didn't feed them these for the couple months I tested this). The supplimented frogs colored up almost completely by the time they were 6 months old (mine you these guys color up a lot faster than santa isabels). The non-supplimented group did not fully color up until I put them on a supplimented diet after the 6 month point.

I'm tempted to do this a little bit differently with the santa isabel morph. Unsupplimented santa isabels tend to stay that washed out bubblegum pink. Supplimented ones turn a blood red. Supplimented froglets from bubblegum parents would most likely turn blood red since this isn't genetics as much as diet (tho I'd like to test this). My thoughts were having three groups of froglets - 

-group 1 fed unsupplimented FFs
-group 2 fed FFs supplimented only in their culture media... this tests how much might be stored in the parents.
-group 3 fed dusted FFs (where the dust contains the suppliment).

About 10-20 froglets in each group, with same parents/bloodline, or possibly froglets from two sets of parents in each group (some from red parents, some from bubblegum parents). Another twist would be using the white-eyed form of FFs, so it would kinda cut that out as the source of the red, but rather limit it more to the body of the fly. After 6 months to a year you should be able to tell the differences in supplimentation. Santa Isabels can take up to 2 years to color up, but supplimented animals, from my experince, color up before this.

Thoughts? Comments? Flames? (Well, hopefully not flames)

This might give us a tad bit of insight in vit/mineral transfer rates in supplimentation.


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## Guest (Sep 19, 2004)

Sounds good, although with the white-eyed ffs, you need to devise a way where there is NO possiblity that the flies have paprika tracked onto the outside of their legs or bodies. They've got sticky hairs that pick up a lot. This way, if the frogs do look like the pigment has transferred to them via the flies' tissue, we can be more sure that it WAS really the tissue and not paprika stuck to the flies. Even if the paprika is well mixed into the media, it is still possible that the flies have it stuck to their legs and bodies, so have fun with that one!


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

*Re: experiment*



KeroKero said:


> Thoughts? Comments? Flames? (Well, hopefully not flames)
> 
> This might give us a tad bit of insight in vit/mineral transfer rates in supplimentation.


This could finally answer the question of whether red frogs can be colored just by supplementing insect media. It might also tell us if we can more safely use more powerful coloring agents like canthoxanthin by feeding it to the insects first. However, I' be very reluctant to generalize the results to the ability to pass vit/min supplements to the frogs by supplement insect diets. The different modes of transfer, absorption, storage, and metabolism of various nutrients is just to varied and complex to make such generalizations. The results of the story wouldn't really tell us anything about vitamin D transfer.

To do a study on specific vitamin transfer you would probably want to label supplements in the insect media with an isotope and then assay the frogs to see how much of the labeled isotope is becoming frog tissue.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

skylsdale said:


> What are your thoughts on how regular to feed? Many feed every single day...with frogs seemingly on the brink of tragedy if a single meal or more is missed. I have a hard time believing that they have it this good in the wild. If we are hoping to simulate more variability in their environment, how much should irregular feedings times/routines play into their keeping?
> 
> Thoughts?


Now it's getting interesting. Actually, PDF in the wild probably do have it that easy for much of the year anyway. Go out to any local natural area during the warm season where you live. Lie on your belly and just stare at same square foot or so of ground for awhile. Most likely you will see lots and lots of little arthropods cross this little spot in just a few minutes. Then consider that the tropics tend to be more abundant in arthropods than temperate areas and it is warm all year long. So my feeling is that PDF probably can and do feed every day in the wild. But it's not so simple as that. Look at what they are eating. They are eating a lot of very tiny little things, and a lot of things, like ants, that are hard to digest and not exactly packed with nutrition. Also, they tend to be foraging off and on all day eating a little here and a little there and expending a lot of calories in between. In contrast we tend to dump huge quantities of very nutritious insects into the vivs at one time. I have no clue what the best feeding regimin is but I do think we tend to over feed our frogs. I tend to feed fairly heavily when I want frogs to breed but scale back to feeding every other day or even every third day otherwise. Froglets are a different story, I think they should have food available almost all the time but all of this is guesswork.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Brent - I guess it would kinda be a preliminary thing to show at least with this one very visible element that there might be a difference in how dusting vs. supplimenting the FF cultures would do. The rest of the vitamins would require more scientific testing of frog requirements that I couldn't dream of doing, hell most of this isn't even known for reptiles (which is what most of our suppliments are made for, not amphibians).

Lydia - There is no real way I could keep the peprika being picked up on the feet, but in the end that would still count as coming from the media (imagine all the spores and what not frogs get from eating the flies in the wild). In theory this wouldn't be truely significant to chance results I would guess unless I flat out made them walk through the powder before I fed them. Finely grounding the peprika usually keeps it nicely mixed in the media from my experience.

Now were the heck would I get these mysterious white eyed flies? No way I'm working with them unless they are flightless!


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## steelcube (Mar 17, 2004)

CBS has them.


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## Dragonfly (Dec 5, 2007)

bump bump bump


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## rollei (Jun 4, 2009)

Old thread, but much needed revival seeing as how the hobby has grown to many more new people.


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## SeanyG (Dec 18, 2009)

After reading all of this, Wow!

Well if at all I have a little info. I have been a huge fish keeper for years and I think about 2 years ago this little food was introduced into the hobby. They are called Cyclop~eeze. They are tiny little red shrimp from the artic area. Bio-engineered to be as they are. When I feed my angel fish only these things after 6 months they had red, yellow, and orange pigments show up in their new scales. So I was wondering instead of paprika grind these little guys into a powder and dust the flies with them. Here is their nutritional info:

Biological Pigments 
Astaxanthene
(foundational carotenoid) 3,000 ppm - 7,500 ppm 
Canthaxanthene 150 ppm 

Omega-3 Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (HUFAs) 
20:5n3 Eicosapentaenoic Acid 13.4% (min) 
22:6n3 Docosahexaenoic Acid 12.8% (min) 


Approximate Analysis 
Protein (min) 60.0% 
Carbohydrate (min) 8.5% 
Fat (lipids) (min) 34.0% 
Ash 3.5%


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