Basic fire belly toad questions

[Jack]

1) I'm setting up a 29 gal rivertank system and am interested in fire belly toads. I don't mind feeding live food, but would like to mix with prepared foods. Is this possible with fire bellies?

2) What are the best/simplest live foods to feed?

3) Also regarding food, could you allow some amount of live food to stay in the tank or do you need to feed a specific amount and immediately remove any that is uneaten?

4) How many firebellies could you safely keep in the setup I just mentioned?

5) If breeding occurs, how do you care for the young and what would you do with them if any survived to adulthood?

[thunder]

my firebellies never would take prepared food. i fed them fruit flies when they were young, crickets and mealies as adults. if they lay fertile eggs: separate the eggs from the adults, tadpoles can be fed prepared food (suspended particles). dont put froglets in with adults, wait until they are bigger. a trio could happily live in a 29 gallon.

[Bartman]

I read somewhere that tadpoles could eat commercial fish food. Is this true?

[Double J]

Originally posted by Jack
1) I'm setting up a 29 gal rivertank system and am interested in fire belly toads. I don't mind feeding live food, but would like to mix with prepared foods. Is this possible with fire bellies?

2) What are the best/simplest live foods to feed?

3) Also regarding food, could you allow some amount of live food to stay in the tank or do you need to feed a specific amount and immediately remove any that is uneaten?

4) How many firebellies could you safely keep in the setup I just mentioned?

5) If breeding occurs, how do you care for the young and what would you do with them if any survived to adulthood?

1) Firebellies need to see movement, so prepared foods don't grab the frogs interest. I have only had things like african clawed frogs (Xenopus and Hymenochirus) eat prepared foods.

2)Stick with crickets. I have kept my firebelly toads for over two years, and have fed them nothing but gutloaded and dusted crickets. I feed my crickets chick laying mash, carrots, potatoes, assorted greens, and assorted fish foods. Chick laying mash is exactly the same thing as the cricket food sold in stores. The only different is that you get a 30 pound bag of chick mash for 7 dolalrs at a feed mill. Remember, what goes into your feeders, goes into your frogs. Essentially garbage in, garbage out.
My firebelly toads have stayed ridiculously fat , and have successfully bred for me (I sold and gave away around 40 babies), on three feedings of 3/4 inch crickets every week. I feed around 5 three quarter inch crickets per adult frog per feeding. I dust the crickets with an equal ratio of fine grade Rep-Cal (with vitamin D3), as well as Herptivite every feeding. I formerly used Miner-All 1, but from my experience, as well as the experiences of many other dart froggers, the rep-cal is a far superior supplement. Make sure you don't go for a cheaper, lower quality supplement (stay away from ANY Flukers supplement, ANY ESU supplement, ANY Zoo-Med supplement, ANY Herp-care supplement, ANY EXO-Terra or Hagen supplement, or anything else for that matter. They are all garbage!) The only three supplements I would ever consider using are Rep-Cal with D3 AND Herptivite (together of course), Miner-All 1, or Nekton Rep.

3) Keep your feeder crickets in s separate container! This is incredibly important. Uneaten crickets have a tendancy to chew on the herps that are in the tank with them. This can cause infections through wounds, and of course, the calcium and vitamin coating will wear off fairly quickly. Plus, the crickets wil quickly lose their nutritional content.

4) In a twenty-nine gallon tank, you could put up to five fire belly toads comfortably. I wouldn't go with any more. You see some interesting activity when these frogs are kept in groups. Males will often amplex each other :)

5) I fed my tads a mixture of frozen bloodworm, sinking fish pellets, and assorted ground fish food. Care had to be taken to seperate tads with legs from ones without. The tads without legs were chowing down on the tads who first grew legs as their swimming capabilites were compromised. Thewe tads were cannibalistic.
I fed my babies pinhead crickets, and hydei fruit flies when they morphed out. When the babies reached a decent size, I sold them to a wholesaler (for three dollars a frog), and gave a few away. I didn't make any money selling these babies.. though that wasn't my goal in the first place. Instead, I wanted to see if I could do it. To get them breeding, I dropped the water level down to an inch, kept the lights off, and reduced the feedings. After two months, I upped the water levels, cranked the lights, and cranked the feedings. It worked like a charm.

I am going to dig up a pic of my setup, and post it later today to give you an idea.

Good luck, and feel free to ask any more questions.

[Jack]

What's the best way to keep crickets long-term? I assume you would need to keep inside, but what's a practical way to do this without a lot of smell, a lot of loud chirping, without taking up a lot of space and at minimal cost?

[HeatherRose]

Keeping their container clean usually cuts down on the smell. If you want crickets that don't chirp you'd have to buy younger ones (they only chirp once sexually mature) but I don't think you'd have a problem with that as you won't need huge crickets for your toads.

If you want to keep crickets at minimal cost, I'd suggest breeding them, but you will have to endure the chirping.

If I ever have crickets that chirp, I keep them in the garage. I wouldn't keep them outside as you never know what can get into them and my garage is nice and cool, so the crickets go into a sleepy state and it's easier to scoop them out without having them jump everywhere and get loose...however this doens't help if you're trying to breed them.

A great cricket caresheet with breeding info:
http://www.reptilerascals.com/cricketcare.html

[Double J]

Jack, with five firebelly toads, you will go through between 60-80 crickets per week. Breeding your crickets would not be a feasible option if you only go through this number per week, as you would have to devote more space to the cricket breeding than what would be devoted to your frogs. Remeber, if you breed your crickets, you have to raise them up to a decent size for your frogs to eat. That would just be far too much hassle for you.
I go through 5000-6000 crickets per week (let's not forget the fruit flies on top of that :) ).... Take it from Heather Rose and I, the key to keeping your crickets alive and healthy... is to keep them clean, dry, well ventilated, and well fed.
My half-inch to large crickets are housed on a bare bottom, ten gallon glass tank. I keep 1000 crickets of this size in the ten gallon tank. This is the easiest to clean (I clean them out once per week), as I can use a razor blade to scrape the bottom (something impossible in a plastic container). I then use a veterinary disinfectant called Peroxigard (the BEST on the market in my opinion in terms of safety, throughness, cleaning efficacy, and environmental responsiblity). Though this is not an easy product to come buy unless you purchase it directly from a vet, you can use soomething as simple as Sunlight soap for your cricket container. I keep my pinheads in small rubbermaids.
Now what I recommend you do is this......

Buy 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch crickets. These are the best size for your firebelly toads, and of course, they will be silent! Though if you buy 3/4 inch crickets, you may get a few chirpies. Only sexually mature breeding male crickets will chirp. Keep your crickets in a medium sized critter keeper. This will be very well ventilated, small and compact, and easy to clean with a scrubbie. Keep a few rectagular shaped pieces of egg crate in there, and keep the bottom bare (free of substrate). In terms of watering and feeding, don't waste your time wth that cricket water gel. Frankly, I don't think it is good for your animnals in the long runas its main ingredient is acrylate co-polymer. I would not put that into my frogs.
The EASIEST way to water crickets in my experience, is to have a shallow dish, full of wadded paper towel. Saturate the paper towel, such that there is a SHALLOW pool of water (about half a milimeter) above the top of the paper towelling. This is dirt cheap to replace, and the lid can be cleaned out every week (or more if necessary). You can then top up the dish with water as necessary. For feeding, keep your chick starter/laying mash/cricket food in a shallow dish as well, and I simply place the dryed off carrots and potatoes on the bottom of the tank. When feeding, shake the crickets off of the egg crate, and into a deli-cup, or if you prefer, a baggie. Then dust of course.
The way I have described above, will be the most space efficient asnd easy to clean/maintain method for someone going through as many crickets as you will be.

Though it sounds like a lot.... it realy isn't much work at all. It reads a lot more complicated than it actually is.

Good luck, and don't hesitate to ask more questions.

I know for a fact that you will throughly enjoy your firebelly toads. With as many weird frogs as I keep, the firebellies are still one of my favourites.

[Jack]

How well do crickets handle extreme temperatures? I live in northwest Mississippi, which means the winters are cool to cold and the summers are usually downright balmy. I would like to keep the crickets out of the way, so my wife doesn't have to look at them. We have a good bit of attic space and since the tank will be upstairs, the crickets would be close to the frogs' tank if kept in the attic. Of course, the attic would be cool to cold in the winter and hot in the summer. I have a spare 15 gal tank. I guess all I would need is a screen top. I assume if you can keep 1,000 crickets in a 10 gal, you can keep 1,500 in a 15 gal (this could be a bad assumption).

Also, by egg crate, do you mean the stuff that is similar to egg cartons? I kept reef tanks for years and egg crate to reef keepers is that stuff you see on elevators, underneath the lights.

Do you clean your cricket cage after it's empty, or do you clean while crickets are still in there. If while they're still in there, how do you do it without the crickets jumping out.

Where is the best place to buy 1,000 crickets at a time? Pet stores? On-line? Bait shops don't give you that many crickets, but the crickets they give you are usually very large (they definitely chirp). When we buy crickets from the bait store, they give us a tube full, which I estimate is about 50 - 100 crickets. A tube, which typically costs $1 - $2.