# Red Eyed Tree Frog feeding.



## MonopolyBag (Jun 3, 2007)

Crickets... I have recently acquired RETFs and have began to attempt to breed and raise my own crickets for them.

Any hints, tricks, tips?

Here is my plan...
-Two 5 1/2 gallon tanks, one with adults (20) and other to keep babies in and raise eggs.
-Food (cricket quencher and dry in each)
-UTH in each tank for extra heat
-Use a cup of peat moss and that is where the eggs will be laid
-Crumpled paper in each tank for them to crawl on and into

Any other things I need to know about breeding them.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Easy Pinhead Culture

I'd recomend larger containers (at least for the pinheads, the adults can be in a large critter keeper), and I prefer plastic storage containers as they tend to be easier to clean (nice rounded edges and corners) and since you'll need to clean a lot so this is important.

Do not use watering gel with the crickets, they've been shown to cause impactions/internal ruptures. I generally aviod any of the commercial gels/cubes for this reason, and stick to veggies (sweet potato, romaine lettuce, and a sponge waterer for the adult crickets).

The UTH is great for incubating cricket eggs, but if you're looking to heat the adults, it won't do much. If you don't have a warm enough area for them, use a heat lamp.

I prefer egg crating rather than newpaper. It's easier for them to grip, easier to see how many crickets are there, and having them stand virtically allows for a lot more space than newspaper would give, more territory avaible to the crickets (which is needed as they are territorial). Just make sure the egg crating has not been in contact with chickens/eggs... I get mine from a roach supplier clean and fresh.

Keep the tanks clean! These guys have a reputation partially mainly because people don't keep them clean enough! They can't just be cleaned out once a week, it doesn't work like that. You need to go in the tanks and remove deads, skins, and dropping daily or every other day, and I recomend washing 1-2x a week.


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## MonopolyBag (Jun 3, 2007)

OK thanks.

I actually do know about cleaning, less clean, more deads, less healthy, and bad food.

In terms of the wet gels, never knew this. Thanks.

In terms of the egg crates, my problem with that is I can't find any, and I didn't want ones that had eggs in them. Where can I buy clean ones?

But the paper is like brown paper bag paper, actually sued for shipping, I got ALOT of this. And it is working fine, I crumple it up and the crickets hide, climb, and stay in it most the time.

In terms of UTHs, they actually are working pretty good, they are heating the tanks well.

I was thinking of larger tanks, but I really do not need that many crickets right now. But in terms of cleaning, I find glass not too bad, but I can't use the UTH in the same way with plastic, that is why I went glass.

Thanks so much, you really know your stuff.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

I have gotten mine thru a couple different roach suppliers, most buy in bulk and are often willing to sell off smaller quantities, especially if you buy other supplies from them lol. I know blaberus.com advertises them on their site too for small batches. Also, you can often find some in the Kingsnake Classifieds in the supplies section. The brown bag paper will probably work fine since you don't have many adults, and since it's not a slippery paper then I think the egg crate may not be worth the effort! When most people say they give crickets paper, they mean super smooth newspaper, and the poor buggies don't have much to grip 

The adult crickets won't need that much room, but if they do their job, they will produce a lot of pinheads for you  They'd be the ones that it may be handy to have a larger tank/container around for. I give my pinheads just fresh dark romaine lettuce and sweet potato, that gives them plenty of water that they won't drown in or stick to. Then again, they might not last long enough to need a big tank either!

The gels thing has been relatively recent and at least two vets I know of have talked about how this has become a serious issue (one with frogs, and one with reptiles). The crystals dry up, and little particles have been carried on the crickets/roaches... and when the crickets/roaches get eaten, they go into the herp. They are exposed to liquids in the herp, and expand rapidly. I saw a photo that illustrates the problem very well... a small gel particle was carried into a terrarium via a cricket, and swelled up due to the ambient humidity... to nearly the body size of the body of one of the resident tincs, who is in the pic for a size reference. Now just imagine if that was in the frog when it expanded...

I bred many, many crickets when I bred geckos, including the first two years I had PDFs... I never had FFs until I stopped breeding crickets!


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## MonopolyBag (Jun 3, 2007)

OK thanks for more detail. yeah I recently read online while RETFs are babies, FFs can also be fed to them.

But the gel, I use pre wet gel, and will keep an eye on that. I thought you meant the cricket explode somehow, but now I understand, thanks.

Yeah, I know thta smooth paper is not as good, but I find my crickets on the udnerside of the brown paper hiding clinging on fine. And I put in a cup od peat moss, is this ok for their eggs to be laid on? I know that peat moss is usually sphagnum moss, and that has some stuff in it that reduces bugs, right? Is this bad? Cuz other things I read was put potting soil in a cup, but I only have potting soil with perlite and fertilizer in it and I know that is bad. I made the peat moss moist then squeezed it so it is only damp. Then placed the brown paper a corner over onto the cup so they can climb into it.

In terms of size of tnak, yeah, I got 6 1 month old RETFs from Black Jungle, I don't think the pinhead babies will be around to much longer, unless I introduce them into the adult tank (lucky ones) that will have the pleasure of breeding and continuing them.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Wow, they really are babies! (Awwwwwwwwww!)

Hydei would be the better FF for them at that age. I've got some 1 month marmorata (which grow at best 2/3 the size) going for hydei and 1/8-1/4 inch crickets. There are a lot of larger sized PDF foods you could feed them, but give them a few more weeks and they'd grow out of most of them lol.

The squeezed peat moss should do fine, the crickets lay in just about anything!

You may also want to look into roaches... less work, and less of an explosive breeder (smaller amounts, but generally consistant).


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## MonopolyBag (Jun 3, 2007)

OK Thanks.

I have alot more knowledge in crickets already. And truthfully, the expense is large to start out, but once going, they are fairly cheap to keep going.

So, I may try some Fruit Flies tonight, but the only problem, they do fit through the tnak screen. LOL, well, still gonna try them. Just theya re small now and want them to get full nutrition and will eventually be feeding them mroe foods, but for now, crickets are pretty much easiest thing to get small, other than my ventrimaculatus food.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Hmmm... I'd just gauge it by using the width between their eyes as the size of the food they should eat. Sounds like FFs are already too small... RETFs only really eat them when just out of the water. Sounds like the crickets are a good plan!


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## MonopolyBag (Jun 3, 2007)

OK thanks. I got some FFs in ther now, and put some fiberglass mesh in between regular screen and tank, that is working, and got a bunch of crickets I feed them too. I do believe they are eating those.

Also, I am feeding my crickets cricket food, but they actually prefer the fresh food I provide them from my garden.

What should I do when it gets winter and no more fresh food form my garden, how bad are vegetables form Market Basket (Grocery Store) in terms of pesticides?


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

I've always fed mine fresh produce rather than the cricket foods (which are basically full of cheap crap anyways). I make sure to rinse my lettuce very well before giving it to them, just like I do when I use it in my own salad and when I ged it to my bearded dragon. I used to give the sweet potatoes the same scrubbing treatment and never had issues... but one of the zoological institutions kept finding chemicals in the frogs that seemed to be coming from the crickets eating the skin off the sweet potatoes, so they started skinning their sweet potatoes. I don't know if there was ever conclusive evidence on if that helped, or if the chemicals even hurt the frogs, but they weren't supposed to be there.

Plus you can also go organic... but don't let that lable convince you that you don't have to give them a good scrub too! Fish poo is better than chemicals, but only by so much :roll:


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