Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A month ago i posted a question on how to make my pacman frog become the size of a basketball(or close enough). You posted that livebears like mollies would help. What about guppies? Minnows(rosys)? Goldfish? are worms ok as well? I use red trout bait worms. I work at a petstore and use my "pet bucks" i get everymonth to by a small animal like an anole to feed it. What other animals are safe?

I would skip the gold fish as they are too high in saturated fats. (personally I would skip the anole (unless you are feeding out introduced brown anoles which are displacing green anoles in Florida).

If you want the frog to grow fast then you need to feed it frequently on high protien foods. (there is an article out recently (in I think Herpetologica) on growth in a large anuran that supports that most of the size is attained before sexual maturity.

Live bearers, cold and cool water species (other than carp and goldfish) and most marine species of edible fish are fine as a food source. Guppies are probably too small and at some point the rosey reds (actually a fat head minnow) will also get too small (some people use shiners).

There are many suggestions for feeders on the forum here. I suggest checking them out.

Does this help?

Ed

Earth Worms of a reasonable size will definatly bulk up your frog, especialy if you pick your own from your yard after a rain fall, but make sure thats your yard is pesticide free and also free of chemicals. They also are a great stable diet for your pac.

I am leery of using earthworms as a staple diet in rapidly growing anurans as they have been implicated in muscle developmental problems in bullfrogs.

Ed

Hey Ed, you've made it clear what's bad for the frogs, but I was just wondering what you would recommend as a food source specifically. I'm not too experienced with fish and I'm not sure what constitutes "live bearers". What do you feed your pacmen?

I am inbetween pac man frogs at the moment as my last one passed away several years ago.

Livebearers are fish that do not lay eggs and have live offspring, such as gambusia, swordtails, mollies, platies and guppies.

Feeder guppies tend to be too small for anything but small metamorh horned frogs.

There was less diversity when I was raising my horned frogs than is available now (as my last personal one was a metamorph over tne years ago) but I have worked part-time in several petstores and fed a number of them there (and I used the fish instead of the crickets as unless you take and feed the crickets for at least 48 hours post purchase from the pet store they are deficient in fats, minerals and protien). this is hard to accomplish in a pet store.

So my horned frogs were raised on a diet of fish and rodents. As small animals I did not feed more than 2-3 pinks a week or a fish daily (dusted with a supplement for D3) but as the frog got bigger I cut back on the feeding until they were getting only one midsized rodent (as the old breeders are very high in fat stored vitamin A and can induce a form of "MBD" at a frequency of every two to three weeks and if the frog refused food occasionally as long as a month or so.

Ed

Ed, I really don't believe that earth worms are bad for pacmans, I have been feeding my packmans earth worms for a couple of years now and I have yet to see any problems. I think its funny because ever since the time that I started going onto this forum, there has been a tone of aurguments over whats the best possible food for packmans. Many people said that rodents are horrible for packmans, while many others believed differently, They still are high in fat and if they are fed to the frogs as a weekly meal for their lives, they will have short life spans. If a horned frog is fed an overabundence of pinkies,fuzzies, etc. it will lead to a lipid buildup which edventually will cause the frog to go blind and in some cases die. Meal worms are out of the picture, they have nouthing to them. Its the same for supperworms. Crickets like you said have nouthing either unless you gutload them for 48 hours and they should be dusted with a D3 supplement. There also has been complaints against guppies, tuffies, and goldfish because people have said that goldfish in particular carry alot of parisites, but I'm still looking into that myself. What I think is funny is the fact that we have been over almost all of the food sources for our pacs and right now nouthing seems like a good choice, lol. My personal idea for feeding pacs is that if you feed your pac. gut loaded crickets dusted with your multivitemin, earth worms, tuffies or guppies, and the occasional pinkie or fuzzie, which should be feed sparingly, you should have long lived happy healthy pacman!

-Paul

PS. don't take this the wroung way I'm not trying to start a board aurgument, I would like to hear all of your ideas please.

Well I'm not EdK, but here are my thoughts about the ideal feeder. In nature their diet is from what I have heard like 80% or something made out of other anurans and maybe other amphibians aswell, I don't know. If they eat insects in the wild they are most likeley more nutritious than normal crickets(maybe not gutloaded ones?), and that they also maybe could get a fish(somehow?) and maybe a small bird if they are lucky. It could be a pretty varied diet.
So my conclusion is that, at least to me, the ideal staple feeder is crickets.
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CokeOfMan

Yes I agree about the crickets being a good stable diet. As for packmans in the wild, as you know they are from argentina and parts of south America. Packmans in the wild will consume insects and earth worms and yes they are highy more nutritios then your every day pet shop feeder cricket, thats why we gut load them first before we feed them to our herps. In the wild the insects are eating all the nutritios aspects to their diets so when a horned frog gets ahold of one, he has all the nutrients he needs. As for the occasional fish in the wild, I'm not sure because horned frogs have a fast strike, but i can't picture a horned frog nailing a swimming fish lol, all though that would be a awesome thing to observe. I'm sure if they are big enouph to that they could nail a small rodent or chick too.

You don't happen to know anything about how much of their diet consists of other amphibians?
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CokeOfMan

In the wild, I have read that a horned frogs diet can consist of small lizards, snakes, small birds, other ampibians, large insects, and the unfortuent rodent that happens to walk across a horned frogs path. I would not suggest feeding your horned frogs snakes and lizards though, lol. I have acually been talking to some breeders about a horned frogs diet latly because I was woundering if I could feed him bull frog tadpoles without a problem, but I still haven't found out if its ok yet.

-Paul

I've read in zoology books that pacmans eat MOSTLY frogs in the wild. This makes sense considering Argentina isn't a great climate for crickets. Also, since they live in the rainforest floors, I don't imagine there being too many fish. Considering this, I tried to feed some of those little swimming frogs, but frogs probably contain more parasites than fish, and frog parasites would be more likely to infect your pacman. My big one hunted him down and gobbled him up without a thought (which is weird because he's the picky eater) but my little one would spit him out. So I'm just using pinkies and fuzzies now, but I'm so confused about the lipid build up. I thought goldfish gave those too!? What if my frog won't EAT bugs???

I'm guessing that your frog is a very picky eater? Thats anouther problem that I forgot to mention. When you first buy a baby frog and you feed him a stable diet of just crickets or just one type of food item, he will most likly become a picky eater and only except the food that you have raised him on. Mice are not good because, one they are extreamly high in fat/lipid. I have heard on numerous occasions of friends of mine losing their horned frogs to a diet of mice, but they only offered them mice as a diet and they fed them quite alot to. Thier frogs died because of a lipid buidup, which led their frogs to blindness and they eventually died. If your frog does not except crickets, maybe you can try earth worms, just wriggle the worm in frount of him and he should nail it hopefully. I have gotten picky eaters to except worms and rosy reds, but I never have gotten them to except crickets. You should talk to EDK because he knows alot about whats better for your frogs diet, I think that he also knows more about the mice to.

-Paul

PS. when I talked about insects in the wild i didn't mean crickets, there are alot of different types of insects in the wild that horned frogs feed off, and yes they do eat other frogs to, but I never knew that their diet was mainly other frogs.

yeah I've tried rosy reds and wax worms, he hates them both. Once I actually tricked him into a wax worm and he spat it back out. So far he'll only take fuzzy mice and goldfish, both of which have been deemed unhealthy by a lot of ppeople on this board. I think I'll try Goliath worms, any objections?

thanks everybody that was helpful
creatin ok as a prtien suppliment for frogs?

Wow lack time to get on here for a couple of days and it gets really busy.

Okay the earthworm controversy. There is evidence that a earthworm only diet causes muscle disorders when fed as the sole diet to Bullfrogs (Rana catesbiana). As anurans as a group have similar methods for assimilating prey and growth it is possible that a sole diet of earthworms can/will cause problems in horned frogs. That is pretty much what I have said all along about earthworm diets.

As for the frequency of feeding rodents this is soley dependent on the size of the rodent, the size of the frog and the temperature at which the frog is kept. Yes, if fed too often rodents can cause corneal lipidosis and other problems associated with obesity however these problems are also seen in frogs that are fed solely on insect diets (I believe I have posted a grey tree frog pic and a squirrel tree frog pic that were affected with corneal lipidosis. I chose those two specifically as they are too small to be fed rodents to prevent that argument). On a usable nutritional basis, domestic crickets are very similar to domestic rodents. The only difference is that commercially raised rodents will have a much higher vitamin A ratio and require a supplement of D3 to balance this out (if these rodents are raised on commercial chows).

Actually Zoophobas have a good nutritional content.

Yes, many people complain about goldfish carrying parasites but are quite happy to feed collected nightcrawlers to the frogs which are often implicated in carrying parasites when routine fecal checks are performed on the frogs.
The risk is no greater than when earthworms are fed to the frogs. Goldfish are high in saturated fats and this is why they should be avoided.

A varied diet is always better than a nonvaried diet as long as the frog is not fed to excess.

On a volumetric basis, the diets of horned frogs are over 90% (If I remember correctly) vertebrates including birds (but mainly amphibians). I have cited the reference last year on this forum and will not have time to dig it out for at least a couple of weeks.

Contrary to popular belief this genus is not restricted to rain forest and (I think) most of the species actually are selva and montana dwellers.

Ed

It's good to know someone that knows his nutrition lol. I feed my frogs a varied diet of earth worms, crickets, wax worms, rosy reds, and a occasional pinkie/fuzzie which depends on the size of my frog and like you said the temperature. whats your thoughts on my feeding scheduals? I also have been looking into feeding them bull frog tads, whats your thoughts on that to?

Ideally you would need to calculate out the metabolic rate of the frog at an average temperature (at which you keep the frog) and this will tell you on average the frogs caloric needs per day. You look at the various options available and the caloric content of the food item to determine the frequency of feeding.
It is hard to give a "hard and fast answer" to this question. With juvenile frogs, I would probably feed small meals daily (mainly fish)with the occasional pink (although I have raised them on nothing but pinks fed every three-6 days). Adults, depends on what I fed them, if using mice probably once every two weeks or so if the frog showed an appetite.

Personally if you are concerned about the parasite issue, I would not feed anurans in any form to the frogs unless they had been frozen for at least two weeks.

Ed