Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My husband brought home an American Toad this weekend. It is in a 29 gallon tank and I just put some dirt from the yard in there. I put a shallow bowl of water in and I have been feeding it about 3 crickets(gut loaded and dusted) a day. Is there anything special I should do to make this guys stay a bit more comfy? Also how long can we keep him before he cant be returned to the wild? We have a 2 year old son and we just like to bring new creatures in for him to view and check out for awhile then we release them. Any advice would be great.

Thanks
Melissa

I am against taking in wild caught animals as pets, but thankfully you don't sound like you want to keep it long. so in that case i will tell you that as long as it is eating you could give it a meal or two and then return it to where you found it. If you keep it too long in captivity though it can pick up germs that it can pass to other toads it meets that may not be immune to it, so it can hurt the population in the long run. good luck

I agree I dont like the idea of keeping wild caught animals as pets either but it is a good experience for my son to get up close to the wonderful wonders of nature. So far this summer we had a garner snake for 3 days, a painted turtle for about a week, and we raised about 1000 green tree frog tadpoles. All of those guys were kept outside in a large kiddy pool. We will be returning this guy outside in a couple of days. I just did really find to much info on them and I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right for this lil guy.

If you keep them outside then there should be no problem with the germ contamination. Thats more a concern if they are brought inside. Well glad to hear you are not for wild caught animals, it seems there are less and less of us. I hope you son has a passion for animals someday. good luck