Frog Food

Owning pet frogs means I need to provide them with a source of nutritious live food. I offer both my Dainty Tree Frogs and Green Tree Frogs crickets as their main food supply. These are usually purchased from the local pet store and come in 4 sizes: baby or pin head, small, medium and large. I buy a tub of small and 2 tubs of large every couple of weeks.

Once home, I place the crickets in a larger container and offer them special cricket food as well as carrot slices and orange segments. They are usually starving and have swarmed all over the food within minutes as you can see below.

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Choosing the right storage container is important. My first container for large crickets was a medium sized plastic storage box. I cut out part of the plastic lid and siliconed fly screen wire in place. Unfortunately I’d chosen soft flexible fly screen and the crickets ate through it and escaped. Whisper ( the cat) is an excellent cricket catcher… in fact I can call her, say crickets and she comes running. Yum! 🙂
I found the cricket box got rather smelly too as there was not enough air circulation and space for the large crickets.

I’ve since bought a 1 metre tall plastic garbage bin. No need for a lid and some recycled paper kitty litter in the bottom as well as lots of bits of egg carton seem to have fixed all my problems. The cricket do make a lot of noise though.

Every so often I buy woodies (cockroaches) or house flies to vary the frogs’ diet. The woodies come from the same pet store. The flies I have ordered from ARC. They sell crickets and cockroaches as well.

To ensure all the frogs have an adequate calcium intake, I dust the crickets with a pinch of calcium powder every second or third feed. I usually do this by adding calcium and crickets to a plastic bag, give a gentle shake and tip them into the enclosure. Sometimes the Green Tree Frogs are so keen on getting to the crickets they get a mouthful of plastic bag instead 😀

One Response to “Frog Food”

  1. thanks I am having big cricket box problems!
    your advice helped alot
    I have 4 baby green tree frogs. They eat like pigs and knock everything over!!!
    its hard to set the tank up with enough hardy plants!!!