Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone tried keeping these guys on just fruit flies (you know, the flightless D Melanogaster or d Hydei) They are nice and cheap and easy to dust with vitamin supplements etc. I've also heard that you can improve red/yellow color of captive bred frogs (this works for Dendrobates Leucomelas) by adding paprika to the fruit fly culture media...

any input would be appreciated

~dj

Hhhmm..very interesting. I have never heard of feeding toads fruit flies. They are very small, can the toads even see them to catch them?-or are you talking about some weird large fruit flies (all that I have ever seen were very small).
I once inquired about feeding my fbts guppies, I had read somewhere that it was okay, but the guy at the pet store said that the toads may not be able to see them well enough.
But ofcourse that is absurd because crickets are smaller than guppies...
But yeah, that is interesting about the fruit flies.
I have a large 50 gallon tank, if I put fruit flies in there, wouldn't they fly around the top of the tank?
Do you feed yours fruit flies?-or were you just asking if it was okay to?

Tanzee

Wow havent heard of that one yet. I feed mine almost only wax worms...they love em. I got tired of the nasty crickets in the tank that drown in the water. So I hand feed mine wax worms.

they use flightless mutants of drosophila melanogaster or D. hydei (slightly larger) to feed poison dart frogs. The larger dart frogs are about the same size as FBT's and most hobbyists feed almost exclusively with fruit flies. they are really cheap to produce, have a 14 day life cycle so they grow fast, and are easy to dust with vitamin supplements. I think this is what I'm going to try- just wondering if anyone else has.

`dj