The "Zen" of Feeding Dart Frogs

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Yes, ladies and gentlemen, feeding dart frogs is an art form - one, by the way, that I have not yet mastered.  It takes a steady hand, quick reflexes and a HUGE AMOUNT of swearing.    Here are some helpful absolutes to remember:

Absolute #1:   No matter how careful you are, you will let flies escape.

Absolute #2:   MORE flies will escape.

Absolute #3:   Some part of your house will end up looking like this page.

Vitamin Supplement

Here is the basic Step by Step process:

Step 1 (EASY) Pouring vitamin supplements into a "dusting" cup.

I just sprinkle about 1/5th of a teaspoon of the powder into a largish plastic cup.

NOTE:  Apparently it is very important to dust your frog's food with minerals.  I am told that this supplements their diet, giving them the extra nutrients that fruitflies lack.  There are a couple of different brands of mineral supplement out there.  I personally use Miner-All for no other reason than it was the only one the frog guy sold.

STEP 1  - piece of cake

Beer Cup

Step 2 (DIFFICULT).  Transfering flies from the culture to the "dusting" cup.

This is when the fun starts...   First you've got to take the top off the culture. Unfortunately, the top is where all the flies like to hang out (probably to get as far away from the smell of the culture as possible - I don't blame them.)  Therefore,  if you just whip the top right off without thinking, the flies will immediately start jumping out onto your hands, your shirt, the floor, etc. So you've got to tap the top first, sending all the flies to the bottom of the culture bottle/vial/jar.  Only then is it safe to take off the top (for a moment). 

Be sure to have your dusting cup ready at this point because, once the top is off, those flies start racing back up the sides of the bottle in a desparate attempt to jump all over your hands again. At that point you must tilt the mouth of the bottle toward the mouth of the dusting cup, and start tapping the bottle, knocking the climbing flies into the dusting cup.  Hopefully all the flies fall right into the cup.  Not likely though...

Once you have enough flies in the dusting cup, it's time to recap the bottle.  Only problem is....the lip of the bottle is now crawling with flies.  So you have to start flicking them back into the bottle, which takes a considerable amount of skill in itself. Meanwhile, the whole time you've been concentrating on getting the extra flies back in the bottle, the flies in the cup have been racing their way up to the top of THEIR vessel and are crawling across your table. So then you start focusing on knocking THEM back into the dusting cup.  All the while, the flies in the bottle are now starting to climb out again.  Nightmare....

Anyways,  once you've got the cap back on the culture bottle/vial/jar, and captured all the runaways, it's time to swirl the flies around in the dusting cup, getting them completely coated with the powder.  That part is easy.

tube of restless flies

STEP 2 -watch out for those hopping, crawling, escaping flies!

dixie-cup

Step 3 - Slightly Tricky

Step 4 - Come and get it!

Step 4 (FUN)  Feeding the Frogs

Step 3 (TRICKY) Getting flies from dusting cup to feeding cup.

Well, once you've got the flies in the feeding cup, it's time to sprinkle the food into the frogs' habitat.  I like to put them in a bunch of different places so that the frogs will encounter them from time to time and hunt them all day long.  I feel that's better than just dumping them in a pile and have the frogs race to eat them all up immediately.  I'll tap a few onto the high branches, a bunch more onto the low branches, and liberally distribute the rest of them amongst the leafy underbrush plants.  I'd say the 6 frogs polish off about 25 hydei and 25 melanogaster a day.   Unbeliebable.

Now it's time to transfer the newly-dusted flies from the dusting cup into the feeding cup (I use a small paper Dixie cup for feeding).  This can be tricky because there is always some extra powder on the bottom of the dusting cup.  The goal is to try to get all of the flies from the dusting cup to the feeding cup without getting any of the powder into it.  The trick is to continually tap the flies along the cup, making them bounce their way into the feeding cup.  
When I  first started doing this I would invariably knock  tons of extra powder in my feeding cup, and would end up dumping it into my vivarium along with the flies.  But once I got the hang of this skill, I realized that it was actually not too dificult.