Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, I brought home two fire belly toads last week and have been doing lots of online reading to find out how to care for them.

Two questions I haven't been able to find answers to, tho, and I'm hoping someone can help me with. In fact, any help would be appreciated. They're fun little guys and I'd like to keep them healthy and alive.

- We've been feeding them Mealyworms, 2 medium-sized ones every 2 days (rolled in reptile vitamin powder). Now I'm hearing they shouldn't get regular Mealyworms. Can I feed them brine shrimp as well, to break up the mealyworm meals? The petstore owner said not to bother with crickets 'cause they're too big for the toads and so stupid they'll drown in the water before the toads can eat them. Any ideas? That's about all there is available up here thru the petstores. We've also fed them flies, spiders & mosquitoes from outside but that won't work when winter arrives.

- How much should I feed the toads, and will they overeat? My boyfriend upped the mealyworms to 2 every day and they're eating them all like they're starving. Is it even possible to overfeed the toads or will they stop when they're hungry?

Here's a pic of the tank we set-up (I hope it shows up). It's a 25G aquarium. The land area is a new shampoo-holder that would usually stick on a shower wall (we built stilts to hold it up out of the water). The filter is a statuary pump bringing water up to a regular aquarium filter where it's filtered, then brought back down by a black PVC tube to keep spashing to a minimum.

Thanks in advance!

i have 8 fire belly toads and the pet shop guy has to be dumber than your toads if they are small feed them pin head crickets or small but be sure to dust them with calcium powder. meal worms are not a good thing to feed them cuz their skeleton is too hard for them and is difficult to digest. i feed mines once a day its best to buy crickets in bulk. i hope this info can help.

Thanks Hustler_619.
Yeah, the petshop people didn't know much about them. We bought a couple of small crickets today and they gobbled them up ... problem is, there aren't many small crickets in stock (most are big) and they're .25C per cricket (that'll add up quickly!). They don't have pinhead crickets (nor does the other pet shop).

Do you know if they can/will eat brine shrimp? I heard we could breed/raise them easily. And how much do you feed your firebelly toads each day? Mine seem to eat like pigs...they'd eat 'til they burst.

I powder the mealworms (& any other food) with the calcium powder. One of the toads doesn't seem to like it and smacks the heck out of his worms to shake the powder off, before he eats them. That's why he's named Slappy now. lol

thanks much for the help.
Oopy

no i dont think they'll want brine shrimp never heard of them eating that. i feed mines at least 5 crickets each. 25 cents a cricket is ALOT i get 125 for $8 so whoa ! try not to feed them meal worms that often i dont think its good for them.

Okeys, thanks. I found an online Canadian site that sells crickets and have ordered 250 pin crickets. MUCH cheaper than the local store. Will probably feed them 3-4 pin crickets every 2 days and see how that goes.

Now I just have to set-up the cricket habitat. Man, these wee toads are more high-maintenance than I thought! lol But worth it

I feed my fire belly toads crickets i personlay dont but powder on them. But the pet shop guy is right they do get them selfs stuck in the water fairly quickly. I find that happends ifd your over feeding your toads you should feed them weekly and when you put crickets in the tank put your frogs in the water part so the crickets that do wander in there dont have time to drownd. My frogs eat about three crickets each when the are put in the tank. But when they are done some cricekts still haven't learnt there leason so after then minutes after feeding them i go down and save the drowing crcikets i find pucking them with pens are fine. After that i would stop borthering with them drowning. One time i but crickets in to the frogs trank and one cricket got stuck in the water so much i found him doing the back strock to the shore in my tack and jumping back in the the water of leave overhanging the water.(My frogs didn't like the constant slashes, he didn't last very long after i gound him.)

okay, give them 2 crickets evey other day or mix it up a bit often too with meal worms or just cut up worms. the crickets won't drown if you pick them up. good luck they are very entertaining.

DON'T FEED YOUR TOADS MEAL WORMS. They will very happily and healthy live off of exclusively crickets. You can go to the pet store once a week and get a dozen small crickets per toad and feed each toad 3-4 crickets every other day. If you want to be positive of how much each one is eating, take them out and put them in a small critter keeper or something and feed them one by one that way. This also helps in making sure they're healthy and will get them semi-used to handling. They'll at least start to think it's a good thing, lol...I really wouldnt' recommend feeding them stuff from outside. They're just fine on small crickets.

Thanks for the info. I ended up having 250 baby crickets shipped up here to feed them over time. The pet store charges 25c per cricket here and they rarely have small ones available. We're down to giving them a meal worm once a week or so as a change in their diet.

Hope all is going well with your little toads.. I have a couple that eat 2 or 3 crickets each every other day or so.. and a tip about the crickets, if your pet store is over charging for the crickets, try a local fishing or spots/outdoors store.. any place that sells live bait. I get 15 crickets per dollar at my local sporting goods store. I haven't been able to get my toads to eat anything in the water. I put several feeder guppies in there, and they just have a great old time swimming around and having babies... the fbt's don't pay them any attention at all. Crickets are also pretty easy to raise at home, if you're interested. I chose not to, because I actually like going to the store for new crickets once a week, so I have an excuse to go see what new stuff the pet store has. Plus I despise crickets, I think they favor roaches too much =)
LOVE your habitat, by the way =) good luck with everything.

Thanks for the tip on the sports store. We only have one here, and they don't sell live bait. I may look into breeding red wriggler worms as a change in their diet, but will research it more.

I decided to have crickets shipped in. Its cheaper and easier to take care of...and yup, they do favour roaches too much. big ich on that part. Thanks on the habitat. It was our first effort. We've already come up with some ideas to improve it and make it easier to maintain.