Bought my FBT today (Trevor the Toxic Toad)! He's all set up and so far he's just sitting around mulling things over. He's from a local pet store, and like most of the FBTs I've seen in the stores around here, he's black on top instead of green. This is most likely the result of some deficiency in husbandry, right? That's no big shocker given that he came from a pet store, but what I'm wondering is will he "green up" again once he's being given the right environment and diet? Or once they've turned black, is that it?

The pet store had him in a tank that had deep water with piles of rocks for him to sit on. Everytime I'd been in there he was on the rocks, not in the water. There was a light on him but I don't know if was a UVA/UVB. They fed him crickets.

Now he's in a semi-aquatic 10 gallon, with a gravel base, then a layer of larger gravel, Eco-earth as a third layer, and finally clumps of moss (it smells really nice in there, like a fresh spring pond). The water area is about 3 inches deep, with large rocks and plants to climb on. I have some aquatic plants in the water and pothos on the land. The water is filtered with a Whisper 10i. His light is a UVB strip light that's one year old, and was originally a 10% UVB output. Since these lights lose most of their UVB after a year, I'm hoping there's enough left to keep him and the plants happy. I could always get another bulb if I need to.

Right now the air temp in there is 78 degrees and the water is a little bit less. I can do a heat spot but I don't know that he needs one since during the day it's likely to get slightly warmer in there anyway.

I plan to feed crickets dusted with calcium powder but for variety I'd like to try freeze-dried bloodworms and daphnia (this is what I have for my newts), plus reptile/amphibian pellets if he'll eat those. I have some meal worms as treats for my aquatic turtles but I don't know if it's a good idea to give these to the FBT since he's not very big. My FB newts don't care for them even if they're cut in half.

A diet question, too: Has anyone had much luck getting their FBTs to take the prekilled crickets, either freeze-dried or in the can? When I had a bearded dragon, he switched from live to not-live without too much trouble.

Thanks guys. You're always a helpful and informative bunch!

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