Time to get a frog… or is it?

Yeah, yeah it’s cool but hold on a minute. Have you considered the most important thing(s) before taking a plunge?

“ Have I mastered the skill of breeding fruit flies? “

If you don’t know how crucial and important this step is, then you certainly have no business having a dart frog under your care. (yeah, I said it. And I definitely mean it) Clearly, you must know that this is the first consideration before choosing to purchase a frog. Please understand that this hobby is not like others where you can simply jump in a car and go to your nearest Petco or PetSmart and purchase frog food (fruit flies) - and expect that to be adequate. There’s a lot more involved. Unless you have endless cash laying around under your mattress, it’s just not enough or sustainable. It just wont. You don’t want to rely on their distribution to keep your frogs alive. Why not minimize this dependency and take control of the situation?!

To be clear, I’m not saying that the cultures from these big box stores are no good but they are only good for 2 things:

1) seeding new cultures (cuz from time to time, your cultures will crash)

2) to provide a serving in case of emergency

It just doesn’t scale. Especially, if you live out in East Bumblefuck rural county, miles away from stores.

“Hold on, I thought this blog article was about getting my first dart frog?”

It certainly is. If you have any intention of giving it a good life, or even keeping it alive then read on. If you’re simply know all there is to know about dart frog care, nutrition, and health requirements, then feel free to move on. I take no offense if you stop now. However, if you really do have a vested interest in doing things the right way, then please proceed.

Okay, are you sure you got it all figured out?

….. How can you be so sure?

Like i said in my previous blog, there is a very high percentage that as a beginner you’ll be buying a froglet or juvenile, at best. And IF YOU DO purchase adults, then my point resonates even more… ten-fold.

Back in the early 90’s or perhaps earlier even, many dart frogs that were brought in captivity perished because it wasn’t quite clear how to feed these little guys. Thankfully for their sacrifice, scientists and hobbyists alike have figured it out and gotten a good grasp on the most ideal way to feed these little frogs with high efficiency and effectiveness. (Frog lives were sacrificed, not scientists or hobbyists. To my knowledge I don’t know of any human lives lost in this effort to find the best food for captive dart frogs. Then again, nothing would surprise me)

Anyway, in comes the Drosophila (Melanogater/Hydei)

“BUT what about crickets, pinheads… I heard/read you can feed them pinheads”

Depending on the specie, you probably would not be feeding pinhead crickets to the froglets. They will be too big. And do you have any idea how fast crickets grow? Even if you were to say you breed crickets, you have such a small window for which to allow feedings. They will outgrow the frogs and eventually be too big to fit in the mouths of (most of) the dart frogs in the hobby. You have a couple of days at most when they’re at the optimal size. Plus, who likes to breed crickets, anyway? They smell bad and breeding them for dart frogs is certainly not efficient. Last item on this point…. if you’ve ever fed crickets, you would have noticed how much quicker crickets are in eluding your frogs. Why make it tougher for the little ones? Trust me, you’ll have an easier time culturing your own fruit flies and your frogs will thank you for it.

“Most breeders have a beginner pack where you can buy fruit fly cultures along with frogs to start. Is that enough?“

It’s certainly a better start than most but I urge you to try your culture making process BEFORE you purchase the frog. Even if this is a week or two before taking delivery of one. This is a tough proposition because most people are impulsive and want things NOW, NOW, NOW. Like the dumb, American mentality of credit, “BUY NOW, PAY LATER”. That’s equivalent to BUY FROG NOW, WORRY ABOUT THEIR FOOD LATER.

At some point, you’ll need to be cognizant of the timing for starting your new culture. The typical window between producing adult flies is anywhere from 10-15 days at both ends of the range and type (D.Melanogaster or D.Hydei, respectively). However, this schedule depends on factors like humidity, temperature and how that affects your media consistency. One overlooked element is when you choose to take from the producing culture to seed your new ones. Ideally, this shouldn’t be sourced shortly after adults are seen or at the tail end of the culture’s production cycle.

Just know that if you get a beginner pack from a vendor, insist that you get a producing culture so that you can easily start the process right away.

“How much do I feed?”

“How many cultures do I need to satisfy the number of frogs I have, (or will have)?”

These two questions almost always come as a pair. I’ll respond to the first…. with this saying,

FYF - FEED YOUR FROG !!!

There is no magic number on how much each frog should have per feeding. There’s so many factors involved in answering this question.

• Temperature - I’ll reiterate that these animals are ectotherms (or cold-blooded) and their temperature dictates metabolism in their bodies. If your temps are higher in the tank, like above 75F, then understand that they will need to eat more often. To keep them in the sweet spot of just above 72F, they should be eating at least EVERY 2 to 3 DAYS. (Ohhh, I sense the keyboard herpetologists now …. they’ve had a year now of keeping dart frogs, which they, of course, exaggerate to add credibility by a minimum factor of 2. They want to debunk me here and say they don’t need to eat THAT often. Read on…)

• Age - As with all creatures on this earth, the early development phase of their lives is crucial to the longevity and foundation as adult frogs. Why deprive these animals of food and sustenance? If your frog is fresh from the breeder at around 2-3 months OOW (out-of-water), realize that they will need to get as much food, AS POSSIBLE, to grow. This growth period can range from 1 year up to 3 years of age (depending on specie).

  Furthermore, if you are feeding adults of breeding age then they DEFINITELY need to be well-fed

• Number of vivarium-mates - Always account for stress and speed of other tank/vivarium mates present. The more inhabitants in your grow-outs the more flies or food must be provided. Which ultimately means, more cultures you have to make.

• Set-up of your grow-out vivarium - How efficient are you with keeping the flies inside? How do you manage from having too many escapees? Do you have a feeding station? All these will dictate the amount actually goes into the frog’s stomach.

To answer the second question, here’s a reference of what I personally do to illustrate what portions look like in my basement. I don’t have a large collection any more but for about a dozen occupied vivariums, I have at least 10 producing cultures at any given time, and create about 5-7 cultures a week. There’s overlap since I do both hydei and melanogaster which produce at different rates:

That’s a 32oz cup filled about an inch from the bottom with D. Hydei - for 3 vivariums ( 3 P. Terribilis (adult), 2 D.Tinctorius (adults), 5 D.Tinctorius(5mo. old) - single one serving, 2-3x a week.

My rule of thumb: If you can count how many flies you give your frog per feeding, then you’re clearly not feeding enough!

I’m not talking about keeping Atelopus here, so you should have no excuse for why it looks like one. Here’s what an Atelopus body type looks like and why your frog should NEVER look anything close to this:

Atelopus Zeteki - Not my picture

It’s infuriating whenever someone new to the hobby shares their frog and it looks like someone from Ursula’s Garden of Poor Unfortunate Souls in Disney’s the Little Mermaid. But all joking aside, it’s really sad and this blog is meant to avoid that from happening.

All in all, once you start the cycle, you cant stop. To ensure success in this hobby, you have to master this component first and know that it comes hand-in-hand with keeping a dart frog. If you cannot envision yourself adhering to the pattern of making cultures, then as I said earlier, you shouldn’t even consider getting a dart frog as a pet. This is perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT part of this hobby and should not be taken lightly. You should be experts at breeding flies before you even consider letting your frogs breed among themselves. (That’s another topic altogether for a later blog)

Anyway, there are plenty of resources out there on the web on how to culture flies - different methods and suppliers of material. My goal in this blog is to inform the reader that there is a massive discipline involved with keeping a dart frog that should always be considered before jumping into the hobby. At some point, I’ll also discuss the importance of which culture media to use and why it makes all the difference when it comes to the overall health and appearance of your frogs. I will also talk about my experiences with the supplements I use during feedings. More on these two additional topics to come…

If you have any additional questions on this topic, feel free to reach out. Thanks for getting this far.