Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello, everyone. I need some advice:

I recently acquired an infant, captive-bred Red-Eyed Tree Frog. He is very healthy and is feeding on pinhead crickets at regular intervals. However, there are so many cricket vitamin supplements on the market and I'm having trouble deciding which products would be best for dusting/gut-loading/hydrating my crickets. How often should I dust the crickets? Is too much calcium dangerous? Are "cricket drink" products a good asset, or a waste of money?

I plan to start feeding Mrs. Robinson (the RETF) a variety of foods once I finish setting up a new 46-gallon bowfront vivarium, but crickets are the most convenient food for the time being.

Any advice on this topic will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nathan I.

So...no one seems to want to take a few seconds to answer my simple query. This is disappointing. I've read through thousands of posts regarding tree frogs on this site, and the main thing I've noticed is this: the threads that receive the most replies are those started by careless owners who mistreat their animals. Everyone seems to jump at the chance to tell someone else what they are doing wrong. Personally, I think this is a bit skewed. Those careless owners are most likely going to go on being careless, regardless of the advice they are given. I am not trying to say that people should stop replying to their posts, but instead that the focus be shifted to conscientious herp owners and their questions. I really would appreciate it if someone would take a stab at answering my question regarding cricket gut-loading/dusting. Who is up to the task?

Thanks (and sorry for the rant),
Nathan I.

i use Flukers calcium fortified cricket quencher and dust with Herpcare calcium and vitamin D3 supplement. For an infant red eye you should dust at every feeding, as an adult dust at least once to twice a week. Too much calcium, just as too little can be bad, but that is more a problem in adults. If you decide not to use a hydrating product from the petstore you can just put an apple slice or carrot in for a water source, just change daily b/c it will dry out. Hope this helps

Thanks for the info, amphibianfreak. I'll do precisely as you say and decrease the amount of calcium I use as the frog grows.

Thanks again.