Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just got a couple of fire bellied toads, which are in a mostly aquatic setup with a few big rocks for land. The crickets I put in drown within a matter of seconds, they just jump aimlessly off the rocks and land in the water. Some ever crawl under the water on the rock, and sit there til they drown.

How the heck am I supposed to feed my toads when their food commits suicide right away!?!?!

Crickets aren't the most intelligent of animals. Two options:

1) Add a larger land area to the toad's cage. The land area in a fire-bellied toad's cage should serve as the feeding area and can take up as much as two thirds of the cage space. If the crickets always seem to end up in the water you might want to make the land area larger.

2) Feed in smaller quantities. The crickets shouldn't be in the cage long enough to drown so you might be offering too many at once. If there are crickets still roaming the cage after an hour or two there are probably too many available for the toads to eat.

In my experience, crickets tend to float and swim around for a while before drowning. I've seen many fire-bellied toads go after live crickets that are floating on the water. Good luck,
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Devin Edmonds
devin@amphibiancare.com
www.amphibiancare.com

Or you could feed your toads by hand. Therefore you won't have any wasted crickets, and you know how much your toads have eaten.

Also, you could try a new and healthier option such as silkworms. Silkworms are slow, and easy to catch... and I'm sure won't go suicidal once put in the tank.
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Steven ,

and flock;
-1.1 Cockatiels(Buddy and Jake)
-1.1 Budgies(Chipy and Peaches)
-1.0 Orange cheeked waxbill

And slime/scales;
-1.0 Firebellied toad
-1.0 Japanese firebellied newt
-1.0 Leopard gecko
-4 leopard frog tadpoles

Fish, feeders and other wriggly things!

Thanks for the tips guys. I came up with another solution though, I added more water so one of the rocks has just a small dry area. Then I cut a small cricket size hole in the screen lid right above this area on the rock. I remove the crickets jumping legs and put them in one at a time, they can't jump away and are surrounded by water and stranded, by the time the crickets have decided to just crawl into the water the toads have seen them and its all over!

I'm going to start feeding them by impaling food on a broom straw and dangling it in front of them, then they'll become tamer.

Silkworms here are $1 each, and too big for my toads. If I could afford to I'd breed them, but I can't so I'll stick to crickets.

a good way to add land without adding more land is to put a piece of cork bark in there. it is removable and will perpetually float. the crickets will (hopefully) stay atop it until they are all eaten, then just take it out.
the silkworms you are talking about are golioth hornworms i think. they are expensive and huge.
silkworm farm.com has 100 small worms for 11$ shipped. i tried em, but didnt like them personally.
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1.1 Gargoyle geckos
0.0.1 asian golden tree frog
1.0 oriental firebelly toad
0.1 european firebelly toad
1.0 albino betta
1.0 orange tabby
0.0.1 asian painted frog
1.0 broad headed skink
0.0.1 fowlers toad
1.1 red eyed tree frog
1.1 red eared sliders
476.769.47 feeder crickets

I've been doing this for years. It's inexpensive and works reasonably well. I say reasonably because there's one cricket in every bunch that seems to commit suicide no matter what. I've taken a couple of branches from plastic plants (the ones sold in packages for aquariums where you usually bury the bottom end in the rocks)and just let them float on the water of their water bowl or soaking container. I don't have a fully aquatic set up you see. The toads don't mind sharing a bit of plant when they're soaking and the crickets usually cling on to the sprig of plant when they accidentally jump in then hop right back out, none the worse.