paprika

[kermit70]

Is anyone using paprika in there fly cultures? i have read that it helps to boost the color in tincs. What other ways are there to get some paprika to my pdfs?

thanks,
james

[Raymond]

You can also just dust the fruit flies with it. Just dash some into the dusting cup with your supplements, bounce the flies around, and feed them.

[KeroKero]

Do a search, there are a number of good threads in this section about them. Peprika and other carotene based color supplements talked about both added in the FF culture (only significant when feeding out larvae) and adding powders to the nutritional supplement you powder your flies with (only significant way to feed it out with adult flies).

[spawn]

So if I understand this correctly, you dust the insects with the paprika, and the frogs eating it will have more vibrant colors? Or, do you feed the paprika to the insects? Also, do you think it could work with crickets versus fruit flies? I have some Tincs (Patricia) I feed small crickets.

[joeyo90]

i believe paprika only enhances the colors red yellow and orange
you just dust it on the insects like how you dust calcium i would asume it would work using any kind of food you dust also

[KeroKero]

Here is a basic low down of how color works in our frogs... there are 3 types of pigmentation cells in the skin... melanophores (blacks, browns), xanthophores (yellows, oranges, reds), and iridiphores (blues, whites, "metallic" colors). The layering of these cells is what produces the colors and patterns we see in our frogs.

Melanophores - pretty straight forward. These not only create blacks and browns, but can "layer" over other pigment cells to make shades of those colors, or whole new colors.

Iridiphores - the most interesting to me, as these are not really pigments in the traditional sense as they are actually crystalline structures that reflect light. How the structure is set up determines which color(s) it reflects... these are traditionally responsible for whites and blues, but technically can produce any color just about. If the color on your frogs seems metallic rather than a flat color, iridiphores are involved. This is why I believe the reds/oranges/yellows in the thumbnail group are not nearly as diet dependent... they are metallic, and thus seem to be made up more of iridiphores than xanthophores!

Xanthophores - the only pigment in which there seems to be significant dietary influence. This pigment is made up of carotenes, and the specific kinds (there are hundreds) vary by the specific frogs. These tend to show up in our frogs as paler coloration of the reds, yellows, and oranges in CB and LTC animals. We aren't making the color better than it was, but rather trying to make it like it is for them in the wild.

Peprika is only one supplement with a limited amount of carotenes in it (more towards the orange scale), so it only helps so much. Naturose is a fish supplement a few of us are starting to use, which is more towards reds. The complicated thing about all this is that the stuff that we are supplementing is actually something the frogs have a toxicity sensitivity to, so you have to be careful using it. Peperika you can't really go wrong, but the others need to be used with care.

Here are some related topics as this has been discussed a number of times in the past, in particular with E. tricolor/anthonyi and D. pumilio, the two most well known frogs to have the color issues:
tricolor's stripes and color
Tadpole Diet and Color

On another note, you'll often hear about people supplementing for color with frogs like azureus where the color became more vibrant... this is not because the supplementing did anything to the iridiphores making them blue, but affecting the xanthophores which added a tint of red to the color... giving them a slightly violet cast that in certain lights makes them more vibrant looking.


Crickets are easier to get the supplementation into the frogs with my experience. Basically, you can not only dust the crickets with supplement powder containing peprika/naturose, but also gut load them as well, which you can't do with adult flies (but you can do with the larvae). I feed my crickets sweet potatoes and dark romaine lettuce, which was how the crickets at NAIB were fed during the time I volunteered there. The interesting thing to note is that there were pumilio that had been there a number of years, bribri I believe, that were an ugly brown/orange, but began to color up very well on a diet heavy in sweet potato fed pinheads. They never reached the blood red that some could get due to the specific source of carotenes (orange, rather than red) but there was significant difference. You can get a similar affect by stuffing the FF media full of carotene sources and feeding out the larvae (which tend to look pink). Both FFs and crickets are the best feeder insects we have to dust with supplements, so there is little difference on that bit.

[spawn]

Very informative post. Thanks for the reply. One last question, however...

Is the color of the frog influenced at all stages of life? I have some juveniles, and some adults, would a diet suddenly rich in carotene affect both of them equally? My thinking would be to start out the babies on the diet so they grow up to their full potential.

[KeroKero]

Depends on the frog. With E. tricolor/E. anthonyi the supplements seem to only influence the coloration when under about two years... once they reach that point, they seem to stay that coloration. I've tried supplementing adult frogs (2+ years of age) that weren't supplemented as young frogs, with no apparent color change. In contrast, frogs like pumilio gain and lose color throughout their life... if not supplemented they fade, when supplemented they gain color. I'm not totally sure how the colors work in the tinc group, as I've not worked with them much, but it seems like they hold color much like the pumilio, needing supplementation thru their lives to keep up the colors. I believe supplementing would help both animals, but don't know if the juvies supplemented would reach closer to full potential, or if supplementing them for long enough in general would do so.

In theory for the full color potential of the animals, start as tadpoles (this is more important for some frogs than others). This is often as easy as feeding "color enhancing" tropical fish flakes or "color enhancing" beta flakes - beta carotene is added so its basically the same affect as adding peprika to the diet of the morphed animals. If you make your own flakes, adding in naturose into the flakes is even better. If I get back into producing a lot of tadpoles, I'll likely "make" my own tadpole flakes including both the beta carotene (likely from using a color enhancing tropical fish flake) and naturose. The difference between tinc froglets fed a "color enhanced" fish flake diet and those fed a regular fish flake diet were obvious between cobalt siblings, with the "color enhanced" fed juvies morphing with orange crowns and bright yellow back markings, where the sibling was a flat yellow crown going to a light yellow back markings.

The differences between the siblings quickly faded when not supplemented as froglets, so this needs to be kept up. Supplementing as tadpoles is basically a kick start, and I believe that the froglets supplemented as tadpoles and continued supplementing as froglets probably reach closer to wild coloration, but I've not had the tinc froglets to test this with.

What I *do* know, is based off experience with E. anthonyi 'Salvias' results that came when I did a lot of experimenting with their tadpole diet to get more robust froglets. There was not a noticeable color difference between supplemented siblings at morphing, and until a couple months of age - but remember Epipedobates morph out brown, and develop adult coloration as subadults as they get closer to sexual maturity. At around 3-4 months of age I was getting sexually maturing froglets (males started calling) and the color change was in full swing. All the sudden the supplemented froglets were wine red subadults! The non-supplemented as tad froglets took a more gradual change. I couldn't see the bright coloration of the froglets on morphing out because the xanthophores in the froglets are covered by the brown and black melanophores. When the melanophores receded around sexual maturity, the differences in coloration were noticeable. After reaching full maturity, generally around two years to reach full color potential, this seems to be set. This does not seem to happen in the Dendrobates genus, and the eggfeeder and tinc groups seem to need supplementing their whole lives to keep up the color. It's unknown how much color supplementing helps the Quinq group out, and it does not seem to be needed with the Thumbnails, as their colors seem to be based more heavily on iridiphores rather than xanthophores, but wouldn't hurt.

I mentioned sexual maturity in 3-4 months with my froglets - this was due to the tadpole diet. In Epipedobates, especially the tricolor complex, froglet size is heavily influenced by tadpole diet, and typical Dendrobates algae based diet results in smaller froglets that take longer to mature... 6-9 months or so.

[Ed]

snip "Xanthophores - the only pigment in which there seems to be significant dietary influence. This pigment is made up of carotenes, and the specific kinds (there are hundreds) vary by the specific frogs. These tend to show up in our frogs as paler coloration of the reds, yellows, and oranges in CB and LTC animals. We aren't making the color better than it was, but rather trying to make it like it is for them in the wild. "endsnip

The xanthopores can also contain other pigments such as pterins.. The color is not totally dependent on carotenoids.

Ed

[KeroKero]

I was trying to keep it simple :cry: