Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have some juvenile frogs, a pixie, an ornate horned frog and, a budgetts frog. I feed them crickets 3 times per week. How often should the crickets be dusted?

What are you using as a supplement?

Ed

I use repcal.

If you are using Rep-Cal you are only using one half of a multivitamin supplement. This product only contains D3 and calcium which isn't going to meet the frog's need for vitamin A and E (for examples). If there is insufficient vitamin A in the diet then the frog can hypovitaminosis which can include short tongue syndrome (STS). While calcium is a require nutrient, it also has a very narrow rage of tolerance below which hypocalcemia is a problem and above that hypercalcemia is a problem.

I would suggest getting herptivite and alternating the two with the feedings. This will reduce/prevent the risk of over and undersupplementing. The alternate method would be to also get Herptevite and as well as a straight calcium carbonate supplement and alternate dusting with the mixed supplement and the calcium carbonate.

Some comments.

Ed

I can respond only to the pixie case, but the pacman frog should have a similar response.

Juvenilles are in a stage of life where they need all the vitamins/food they can get in order to prepare themselves for adulthood. Meaning, it would be wise to dust your crickets with CALCIUM supplement all the time. Just make sure that the calcium isn't clumped on the cricket and so that the cricket is "lightly dusted" with the powder.

If you're having problems with the cricket having calcium clumped on it try placing a tiny bit of calcium powder in a ziploc bag, then add your crickets and shake. Before removing crickets, give them a little shake to just make sure any excess calcium powder stays in the bag.

As for vitamin powder, I find that it doesn't stay on very well on crickets and that's where nightcrawlers come in to play. The vitamin powder adheres to their skin perfectly (even the little bits that come in the powder) and so there is no problem here. However, with crickets you can only use the same method as if you were using the calcium powder. Unless you want to spray them with water then dry them off a bit and then place them in a bag. But that's too much trouble.

Feeding Regiment: I would toss in five crickets into the juvenilles tank and repeat every two days. Just be sure to monitor how many crickets your frog will be willing to eat in a feeding. I'm sure you'll see that they make it seem like their stomach is bottomless, not the case. Remember that these guys are greedy when it comes to food so they will eat anything that comes in their way. This means that you have to control the feeding. So again, be sure to monitor their feeding habits with the initial five crickets.

Feed two crickets dusted with vitamins (or one large nightcrawler) every three days and the rest of the crickets should be dusted with calcium powder.

I know there is a calcium supplement that already includes vitamin D3 to help the frog absorb the calcium, but I don't have that. I have Jurassivite and Jurassical in which the Jurassivite has vitamin D3. This means I have to supplement the Jurassivite often so that my frog has the D3 needed to absorb the calcium.

As taken from the JurassiCal website: "Although Vitamin D3 is required for calcium processing, it could easily build to toxic levels if it were part of a frequently used calcium supplement. Vitamin D3 is more safely supplemented as part of a comprehensive and well balanced vitamin supplement like JurassiVite™."

As long as your crickets are LIGHTLY dusted, you should be fine.