[Guest]

What do you feed your food? Please be prepared, because if you say "nothing," or "Oh, I dust," I am going to tell you flat out that you are wrong.

I recently posted a topic called "is what we think we know..." and this goes right in line with it.

If you are keeping dart frogs, it is your responsibility to not only feed them as diverse a diet as you can (read that as to the best of your ability. If field sweeping is not an option for you, and crickets are too expensive, at least beg borrow or steal a springtail culture) but feed the diet a GOOD diet.

I know that the topic of fruit fly media comes up often, but it is always about what produces the best.

Y'know, I am not concerned in the least with what produces the best, so much as I am with what comes out.

Currently, there are 11 ingredients in my fruit fly mix. 11. And many of those 11 have many vitamins and minerals in them naturally. I believe that in the interest of keeping good frogs, along with promoting longevity, and good in season breeding, comes providing them with the best food. That means feeding your food.

To put it succintly, potato flakes and applesauce is not cutting it. Raise your standards from numbers to quality.

Also, before I start hearing it from people, Biological supply houses are not interested in selling you a media that is going to produce lots and lots of flies that are healthy, they are interested in selling you the cheapest media for them that is going to allow your university or study group study the genetics and life of the common fruit fly. That is it.

Let's see what kind of ingredients and sources for these ingredients we can come up with to raise the standard for our foods food. (And no, I do not mean vegetables and fruit.)

 

[Guest]

John, why don't we start by you posting how you make your fruit fly mix :wink:

Dustin

 

[Darren Meyer]

1, 3lb 15oz jar applesauce

2, 1 cup mollasse

3, 1 cup cornmeal

4, 6-7 cups quick oatmeal

5, 1 cup white vinagar

6, 1 cup brewers yeast or nutritional yeast (health foods)

7, 2 cups flax seeds (health foods)

8 , use the jar w/ the applesause fill up with water ( note you must first remove the applesause ) this water is for boiling the flax seeds ..

9, spirulina 3 heaping tbls. (optional)

10, mold inhibitor 3 tbls

11, active yeast ( sprinkle ontop of culture) tiny pinch

This is what we use and many others. I do feel as though it provides ample amount of vitimans . Possibly we can do better . by adding mineral suppelmentatins that are not found in our regular dustings of ff's ? Lets see what ideas pop up here .

This recipie is also low cost. You don't have to order anything (except mold inh.) The flax seeds when boiled produce a great source of fatty acids ,and aminos. And it produces ample amount of flies in a short time .

I'm not going to knock any of the supply houses , I do'nt know what is in their media , I have never seen them post the break down in nutrient values . :shock:
So the way it's made first boil the water in the largest pot that you have . add the 2 cups flax seeds , let boil and from time to time stir until it turns thick ( fatty acids ) looks like snott !!! Add 6-7 cups quick oats ( mix in water ,flax seeds ) take off stove . add all of the rest except !!!!! Nutritional yeast!!! let cool . now add yeast , reason being I have heard that heat kills the yeast . Possibly have to add more water for the right consistency :wink:

Makes about 8 lbs? Ido think that you can freeze the mixture I only place it in the refrig. I use mason jars (more enviromentaly friendly than plastic) 8) and place a 1/2 inch in the bottom , screw on lid w/ 3 coffie filters . makes 30 or so !!! Enough for a month? @ $10.00 give or take a few .
Add fly's ,let sit until you see maggots. Then you can feed the starter flies to your frogs by then the culture is well enough established.

so once again what are you feeding your food????? !!! Another good thread John possibly someday I'll be lucky enough meet you !!!
Happy frogging !! and I hope that I was clear enough on that recipe and no one will p/m me and ask me to explain it again ( happened the last time I posted food here )
Darren Meyer

 

[Marty]

I recently put my springtail cultures on the South Beach diet and my hydei cultures are doing Atkins. Their LDL dropped 20 points. :lol:

What do you feed your food? Please be prepared, because if you say "nothing," or "Oh, I dust," I am going to tell you flat out that you are wrong.

I recently posted a topic called "is what we think we know..." and this goes right in line with it.

If you are keeping dart frogs, it is your responsibility to not only feed them as diverse a diet as you can (read that as to the best of your ability. If field sweeping is not an option for you, and crickets are too expensive, at least beg borrow or steal a springtail culture) but feed the diet a GOOD diet.

I know that the topic of fruit fly media comes up often, but it is always about what produces the best.

Y'know, I am not concerned in the least with what produces the best, so much as I am with what comes out.

Currently, there are 11 ingredients in my fruit fly mix. 11. And many of those 11 have many vitamins and minerals in them naturally. I believe that in the interest of keeping good frogs, along with promoting longevity, and good in season breeding, comes providing them with the best food. That means feeding your food.

To put it succintly, potato flakes and applesauce is not cutting it. Raise your standards from numbers to quality.

Also, before I start hearing it from people, Biological supply houses are not interested in selling you a media that is going to produce lots and lots of flies that are healthy, they are interested in selling you the cheapest media for them that is going to allow your university or study group study the genetics and life of the common fruit fly. That is it.

Let's see what kind of ingredients and sources for these ingredients we can come up with to raise the standard for our foods food. (And no, I do not mean vegetables and fruit.)

 

[Guest]

I tried a few different cultures and found for myself the bananna/apple sauce mix with some high quality fish food added has worked great. I add about 1 cup of culture to each jar and they last 1-1/2 months. Im curious as to how much we can expect a "fly" to bulk up or increase in quality of feeder food. I may be wrong here but ive never seen a hulky looking fly from one mix to another, a flys physical structure doesnt appear to change like a feeder rodent as a example. Is there or has there been testing to prove that all these extra ingredients in the medium is passing from the fly to our frogs ? or is proper dusting of the fly just as benefical :?:

 

[Guest]

I recently put my springtail cultures on the South Beach diet and my hydei cultures are doing Atkins. Their LDL dropped 20 points. :lol:

Thats Funny! :lol:

 

[rmelancon]

Here is a nutritional breakdown of some of the common dart frog foods. It would be interesting to see if there would be differences in flies that were fed some sort of "enhanced" diet. Outside of the gut content, I wonder how much of the vitamins, etc. would be transferred to the frogs.

 

[Guest]

One of my friends is a PhD entymologist. I will ask her how common nutrients are used by fruit flies.

My hypothesis is that if the flies need the same vitamins and minerals that the frogs do, adding different ingredients to the media will add them to the flies, and then to the frogs (simplified). We have to remember that the flies eat the yeast, so the yeast would have to use the extra ingredients also unless the raw nutrients can be gotten from the larvae tunneling through the media. However, if the flies do NOT need something that the frogs do, then no amount of additive to the media will help, since the fly will extrete the compound as waste or not pick it up at all. Am I way off here? I'll ask my friend.

In any case a varied diet (different insects need different stuff) would be the only way to ensure a healthy spectrum for the frog.

 

[Guest]

Ok I'll bite tell me if you think my flies are getting enough, therefore my frogs who I think I spoil anyways. Here's my recipe ingredients (I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head and I have this all written down at home).

6 cups water
1 1/2 apple cider vinger
1 cup white rice
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 ripe bannana
2 med apples or 1 cup applesauce (what ever I happen to have)
1 cup brewers yeast
1 tbsp of spirulina
1 tsp of paprika
and sprinkled bakers yeast on top of the cultures.

I get a ton of flies from this and I don't get mold because of the vinger. It smells to high hell and tastes like vomit (yes I just had to taste it) :shock: I would be really nice to know if all this cooking and extra effort was going to good use by the frogs bodies but in reality I don't really know. Guess it makes me feel better, who knows.

On the side note, my cobalts won't touch crickets (never tried with the other ones) and for the most part ignore ants. I havn't tried field sweepings because I don't have a clean place to do that because they are always spraying the area I live in for misquiteos because of West Nile. So they are stuck pretty much with fruit flies and spring tails but they are doing great :lol: even producing fertile clutches of eggs from the get go. (at least the ones that are of breedable age).

If anyone wants the entire reciepe let me know I'll post it.

 

[Christian]

Taste it........ :?


You are a real frog addict.....

 

[Guest]

??????????????

so once again what are you feeding your food????? !!! Another good thread John possibly someday I'll be lucky enough meet you !!!
Happy frogging !! and I hope that I was clear enough on that recipe and no one will p/m me and ask me to explain it again ( happened the last time I posted food here )
Darren Meyer[/quote]

Dude, are you Crazy? We spent ten hours at least together yesterday in your new truck talking about this very thing! Hope I get to meet you. I bought you lunch, and it was the best damn BLT you ever had! Pretty funny though.

Did you forget to mention the Chlorella? that is something that we are adding as well.

Also, talk to Jon next time you get a chance; He may have come up with a new fly somehow just from screwing around in his back yard - Hardier and stronger than even the glider, but still does not fly.

He separated another male and female red amazonicus, and got eggs that night. Geez, he is going to enter the Frog Breeder Hall of Fame if he keeps that frog brothel of his going so successfully like that. Give me a call today, the cement guy called last night, and I am going to go and get him and his friend and see about bringing them out here to give an estimate on the floor. Perhaps you should be here as well??

Johnny

PS - If people start giving you a hassle about the working of the medium, just send them my way - Jen has it all worked out so I can cut and paste it, and she is quite a bit more eloquent than you are or I am.

 

[Guest]

Whoops!

Sorry everyone, I thought that was going to just Darren.

John

 

[Guest]

It turns out rmelancon hit the nail on the head.

The entymologist said that if you enrich the ff media and feed the larvae to the frogs, the enrichment will pass to the frogs.

She also said that if you feed only adult ffs, you're wasting your time because the gut contents of adult ffs is very small, as they do very little eating if at all.

The tissue levels of the enrichments in adult flies will not be noticeably larger as a result of the fly eating enriched media when it is a larva either.

Hope this helped

Lydia

 

[kyle1745]

Thats interesting, so if you feed the adults there is no point in changing the medium?

I've thought about trying some other mediums, but the whole cooking part keeps me from trying. I have used the same medium for awhile and get good results.

 

[Guest]

No Way

I think a point is being missed here.

when we eat something, we are not eating the guts, and I would suspect that the frogs are not programmed to go after the thing that they want based simply on the gut content. Their is muscle tissue, and other things that run through the fluids that pass for blood in these insects that has to be there in larger amounts if you feed the insect better, even in later stages of development.

From studies I have seen as to how vitamins and minerals pass through creatures, it is a good bet that a good portion of what we supplement our frogs with blows right through.

It would be neat to do a fecal to see what vitamins and minerals are there and compare that to the supplement being used, and see what is present, and what is not.

The reason that I know the frogs cannot be making it on food supplements sticking to an unsubstantial fruit fly is because of the frequency with which I supplement. It happens to be once or twice every two weeks if I remember to do it all. And my frogs are healthy, and live quite a while, and breed and breed and breed. The tads morph out into healthy little frogs, and though it pisses Jennifer off, I give most of them away. So there has to be more to it.

The entymologist needs to puree a bunch of fruit flies, and do an analysis as to what is there.

 

[kyle1745]

Interesting... I have upped my dusting to every day. I would be very interested in how much of the vitamins just pass through the frog. Its the same with humans though. Those vitamins that say 100% of A, B, whatever, we really only take in about 5-10% of that.

 

[Scott]

John and Jennifer's Flax seed recipe - from their fridge door to you:

6 cups water
2 cups flax seeds
-- boil until very thick (in John's words: snotlike, revolting)

1 2 lb jar applesause
2 tsp methyl paraben
1 cup honey
3/4 cup vinegar
3/4 cub brewers yeast
1 cup corn meal
--combine and heat over very low heat

-- add:
5 - 6 cups of oatmeal
-- cook briefly. Stir or blend in flax seed snot.

Caveat: I have not done this yet. I'm doing it soon.

John - I'll remove this if it's a problem. I note that you and Everett add a few other things on occasion also.

s

 

[Ryan]

I have 1/2 and 1/2 cultures since i read about someone useing flax in theirs. Its the powermix, but 1/2 of the cultures is instead of just brewers yeast it has 1/2 yeast and 1/2 flax. I also feed termites regularly, and looking towards ants big time. Found out most florida ant species are the right species for darts, Pheidole(big headed ants) are safe and are common around here, along with many others. Aphids are another i try to feed when i can.

Ryan

 

[Guest]

Biology is a tricky thing, and very complicated. Insects' tissues, muscles, and even blood are very different from those of vertebrates. It certainly won't hurt anything to enrich media, so if it makes you feel better, do it.

What she said, Kyle, is that the adult flies have a certain level of nutrients in their tissue. That level will not increase with the enrichment of media. Also, because the flies do not eat, there are no extra nutrients in their guts (which are the most digestible parts-in other words the guts yeild the bulk of the energy and nutrients).

Now, she said feeding the larvae which are fed on enriched media are a whole 'nother story. THEN it'd be worth it. I know another etymologist, so if it would make people feel better I can see if he agrees. He also happens to be a biochemist, so maybe he can shed some light on how vitamins are absorbed and transfered from one living thing to another.

 

[steelcube]

Lydia,

I am not sure if the adult flies can/do not eat.


SB