Reptile & Amphibian Forums

is there anything else i can feed them till i get some more fruit flys. probably about a couple days as i have to order them.
maybe pin head crickets ?

Pinhead crickets are a nice treat, provided they are true pinheads (6 days old or so.) Dust them as with fruit flies. You can also collect "field plankton" if you have an area free from pesticides. Leaf hoppers, gnats, etc. can be caught with a net. If you don't have a "butterfly" net, look for aphids and just put the entire infested leaf in the tank. No, they will not infest your plants, and most darts eat them as if they were a decadent dessert. Aphids are plant species specialists, so those found on peas or fruit tree leaves for instance, will not infect your tropicals, even if the frogs fail to gobble them all. Just be sure the foliage has not been sprayed wherever you collect.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.

what about ants(not fire ants) just the common black ants not sure of name. they dont seem to interested in the aphids i dont think they move enough for them to even notice them. found 3 extra small grass hoppers. anyway i can attract gnats or other small critters

That's strange about the aphids. I believe every one of my frogs loves the ones that get on cabbage, peas or fruit tree leaves. The little tiny black pavement ants are a good source, from what others have said, but avoid anything large or those that sting, such as red or the red and black mound ants. There are so many ant species, it's difficult to be specific, but just about everyone has some form of the so called "pavement ants" that tend to build nests between bricks or sidewalks. You can trap them in a deli-cup with a piece of sugared fruit. Don't put too many in at first, because if the frogs don't eat them, they will burrow around and become pesty for the duration of their lives. Fortunately, what you capture won't breed, but you probably already know that.

I didn't mention that they will also eat baby isopods such as the pill and sow bugs, but not the adults. These are rare here because the country is so dry, but whenever I find any of them, I put them in my tanks, even the adults. They feed on organic matter, don't seem to bother the plants any, and the frogs take care of any population explosion--too well, in fact, to keep them going reliably. You can actually raise them in a container of soil and leaf litter laced with bran cereal.*

Another food source that many dart keepers recommend are termites collected from under decayed wood in the forest. I've never found any, so don't have first hand experience with this.

Good luck. Keep us posted on any successes (or failures) with field food.

*I haven't raised isopods since I was a kid, but my cousin and I used to raise "stables" of the type that doesn't pill up when disturbed. We would hitch them with thread to carts made from the small cardboard match boxes and have races. We lived way off in the boonies, pre-TV days, no electricity, so invented a lot of weird stuff to do. I have no idea how we discovered what to feed them, except the old Post Toasties bran flakes seemed to work.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.

they are really liking the ants i put in there. also noticed some of the aphids were gone but they could be just cruising around the tank. also could only find 1 of 3 grass hoppers i put in there. so i think they liked there smorgesborge of critters.

thanks for all your help