Hey

[ShadowWake]

Just joined via recommendation of the site owner, mostly out of curiosity and a little bit out of the hope that at some point in the near future I will be getting myself a Red Eyed Tree Frog. Probably going to start with simple Xenopus dwarfs at first in a fully aquatic tank and then after that, I shall upgrade to my beautiful tree frogs.

So any advice on either would be much welcome. My dude would also like to know the best way of keeping crickets where they're supposed to be rather than having escapees all over the house! He hates insects... *sniggers*[/i]

[lestat]

Welcome! I'm Ryan, or lestat... or theperfectlestat anywhere that someone else has already claimed "lestat".

Be sure to check out the chat room. That's where most of the action is on this site. But you're more than welcome to post threads as well! I reply to pretty much everything.

Good luck getting the RETFs. What's standing in your way of getting them? Xenopus can be fun. They're totally different than most frogs.

I've never been 100% cricket escapee free, but I do have some tips to help keep the numbers down. I order crickets by the thousand, so you probably won't need anything this large scale for a long time. (frogs are addictive, however, so you might end up with 50 before too long. )

I keep my crickets in a 25 gallon aquarium with a screen lid. I make sure the egg crate and other stuff the crickets climb on never goes above the halfway point, or else they can jump onto the lid and crawl out. I like to use paper towel rolls at the bottom of the tank. The crickets climb inside them. Then, when I need to feed frogs, I get a plastic bag (either a large ziplock, or the bags small quantities of crickets come in). I brush the crickets off the outside of a paper towel roll, and put one end into the bag and give it a good shake. That should get a pretty good number of crickets into the bag, then I pour them into cages.

With just a couple frogs, however, you won't need a thousand crickets all at once. You'll probably be looking at buying them by the dozen once or twice a week. In that case, you can probably just pour the crickets directly from the bag you buy them in, into the cage.

If that doesn't work, just tell him it'll be ok... the crickets will attract spiders, which will kill the crickets. Problem solved. Spiders are arachnids, not insects, so he shouldn't mind.

[ShadowWake]

Hahaha! I think it's the whole 'loads of legs' thing that he doesn't like: not so keen on the spiders either! Thanks for the tips, though; he's happy with me having a frog as long as I deal with it, so I'll just make sure he's out of the room when I'm feeding it!

I'm assuming the store that will sell her the frog will stock crickets (though I'll be checking this on Sat) but where do you buy yours? I guess somewhere slightly different than a little pet store considering the amount you buy, but I was curious if you could get them elsewhere?

I got a phonecall on Saturday from my little sister who said that her and her boyfriend want to get me a RETF for my graduation present. They're buying me the starter kit to go along with it as well! I feel very lucky at the moment... The only thing that was stopping me was the initial cost (frog, kit, etc.) as I'm due to move out with my dude in a month's time but now that's been taken care of for me, so I can just enjoy having only the expense of cleaning and feeding!

How often do you clean out your frogs? I don't want to do it too often/too little in case it makes him poorly, so any advice is welcome on that front. Similarly, would you recommend I treated any of the starter kit he'll be living in? It's obviously made for amphibians (being an amphibian starter kit) but I didn't know whether it was worth going over it anyway...?

I'm so excited!!

[lestat]

I buy my crickets in bulk through a reptile and fish store locally. They already buy in bulk for the store's usage, so I just add my order onto theirs. That way I get free shipping and I don't have to be home when they're delivered. You can also order them online though. There are dozens of places that sell in bulk.

What does the starter kit include? Sometimes starter kits are great, but sometimes not. Depends on whether the store knew what they were doing or not. I can probably give you some money saving pointers.

How often the cage gets cleaned depends on the substrate and plants. I have fully planted tanks that never get completely cleaned out. The plants and cleaner bugs take care of it. I also have semi-planted tanks that I clean out every so often, and quarantine tanks that get cleaned out a couple times a week.

Good luck with your new frog. Don't hesitate to ask questions here.

[ShadowWake]

As far as I know - though I'll be checking it out on Sat - that starter kit contains tank, substrate (bark I think), heating pad and plastic plants (though I prefer real so I might replace those at some point). I'll know more on Sat when I go and see them though. The store that they're from, I've heard really good things about, but I'll judge for myself when I go this weekend.

Thanks for the tips on the crickets. I'll let you know more when I see the stuff on Sat.