So last night I fed my Female Almirante from the end of a safteypin. She took two hydei larve in one shot. I was only trying to use the pin to get the larve on the leaves of the broms but when I moved them close to her face she went for it!
Last night
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Cool. Glad to hear it didn't prove fatal.
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Safer method . When I feed larvae. There are a few tricks . First , start w/ a culture that is well started and before they start to pupate. Here is where it gets tricky! to get the most maggots you place the clulture in the dark . The maggots will come out of the media and upto the top where it is very easy to gather them . I use a plant lable stick us it like a spatula and them I even dust them w/ vitamins in a cup . Two benifits , the maggots separate and you can easly shake them into your tanks ,where hungry frogs are ant they are dusted . Oh ya reason # they don't have sharp pointy things any where near them . 
My frogs love when I do feed them larvae and I believe that it dose them good w/ the extra fat (ask anyone who has seen my collection the are huge!)
One problem is that I found is in the life of a culture is there are only a few days that you can really collect that many larvae before they go to pupate .
Darren
My frogs love when I do feed them larvae and I believe that it dose them good w/ the extra fat (ask anyone who has seen my collection the are huge!)
One problem is that I found is in the life of a culture is there are only a few days that you can really collect that many larvae before they go to pupate .
Darren
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No the culture dose not crash . There are plenty to go around but I guess that all depends how well you "seed" the culture to begin with .
Darren
Darren
Some other benefits to Darren's method is that this gives you a chance to gut load. You do not have this option with flies. Dusting out flies provides minerals and vitamins to frogs that get to them quickly. Many thumbs are shy and don't have as good a chance as aggressive feeders. The flies groom themselves of the supplement powders. I'm sure tha maggots have higher protein and fat contents when compared to the flies as well. Currently I play around with supplementing my mixed hoping the frogs will eat some larve. You are what you eat.... You get out of it what you put into it.. whatever....
If one uses this method, think about what goes into you FF media? Do you use a nutrient friendly mix or one that uses many "fillers" and sugars? I have found that making a new mix with added proteins and supplements seems to increase mold growth. Without wanting to increase mold inhibitors, I have switched to less ff media in my cultures. I now use 14oz cups. As a result, I now have larger clutch sizes with a high % of good eggs. Also, frogs that have been reluctant to breed in the past, now breed.. periodically.
Something else I've noticed is that the frogs will poop out the skin of the maggots, suggesting there might be difficulty in digesting the skin. Sometimes I wonder if intestinal blockage might be something to worry about. The skins have obviously been "deflated", so I know the contents have been utilized, but I do worry about my thumbs during long term larve self-feedings? Have others notice this? Currently, I larval feed once or twice a week as precaution.
Jon Werner
If one uses this method, think about what goes into you FF media? Do you use a nutrient friendly mix or one that uses many "fillers" and sugars? I have found that making a new mix with added proteins and supplements seems to increase mold growth. Without wanting to increase mold inhibitors, I have switched to less ff media in my cultures. I now use 14oz cups. As a result, I now have larger clutch sizes with a high % of good eggs. Also, frogs that have been reluctant to breed in the past, now breed.. periodically.
Something else I've noticed is that the frogs will poop out the skin of the maggots, suggesting there might be difficulty in digesting the skin. Sometimes I wonder if intestinal blockage might be something to worry about. The skins have obviously been "deflated", so I know the contents have been utilized, but I do worry about my thumbs during long term larve self-feedings? Have others notice this? Currently, I larval feed once or twice a week as precaution.
Jon Werner
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