Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I don't feed my frog with tongs, so i just throw ten or so crickets in at a time. I use bed a beast that is slightly moist and heated, and throw a little cricket food in the middle of the tank to prevent them from eating the frog, and to keep them gut loaded/attract them into the open.

I guess some were pregnant, because now there are about a hundred ant sized to pinhead cricket babies hopping all over the place. They seem to leave the frog alone, but I want to know

1) is this overly stressful for the frog to have little things too small to eat run around?

2) is the waste these crickets produce going to be an issue?

3) is it ok to continue this, or should i change out the bedding and kill off the baby crickets?

I'm counting on the fact that when the crickets each eatable size, the Pacman will have at them. I threw in some more crickets last night, I believe a few are also pregnant.

Thanks for any advice or help.

The best way to know if there are any problems or not is just to watch the cricket's and the frog's behavior. If the frog seems stressed, or the crickets seem to be biting the frog, you have a problem. But instead of killing off all the crickets, I suggest replicating the conditions in your frog tank in a separate enclosure and breed the crickets separately. I have tried twice to set up a breeding colony of crickets and failed both times. It always amazes me (and kind of annoys me) when I hear of someone doing it on accident.

I had this same experience when I kept two five-lined skinks one summer. Fortunately, the skinks were small enough to be interested in the baby crickets, and they munched out. Well, the male munched out...the female almost starved until we let the male go.

Well I figured that the crickets have been leaving the forg alone, the frog has been eating any large ones I throw in there and defecating whenever I move him into warm water. No harm done by the baby crix, right?

So today I went to check on him, put him in warm water. And then I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of sand around the central rock (I've described my set up under this paragraph) Then I noticed, each grain of sand was wiggling!!! I can only hope these are cricket larvae, I didn't see them before the first batch of baby crickets. Maybe it's maggots or soemthing? It literally looks like piles of sand all around the central rock. When these babies become tiny un-eatable crickets, I feel like my frog is going to be stressed.

Is this ok? What should I do? The crickets so far haven't bothered the frog, he just sits in his favorite spot until I move him into the water, then he poops and gets back into his favorite spot. Crickets leave him alone because there's always food on the rock.

OPTIONAL READ--- My set up

I have gravel (small enough to eat, this is dangerous) at the bottom for about an inch and a half, it forms a slope up to one side. On top of the gravel is a water dish at the shallow end which is burried in eco-earth, there's about an inch of eco earth over the whole thing. There is a relatively large rock in the very center of the tank directly under the light (crickets like to hang out on it) And three fake plants providing cover over the water dish, as well as a leafy plant at the other end of the tank to provide shade/cover. The thermometer at the top of the tank is a little over 80 during the day, little under 80 during the night. I have a small undertank heater that heats through the gravel into the soil, and a 25 watt heat lamp that provides heat and light.