If you are taking a tree frog as a pet, you would want to know its dietary requirements. For example, can tree frogs eat bloodworms like other aquatic pets? Let’s find out.
Among exotic pets, tree frogs are surprisingly easy to take care of. However, you still need to know what they can eat and provide them with a well-balanced diet.
Although frogs aren’t picky eaters, pet frogs have different dietary requirements from wild ones.
Bloodworms are a good choice of food for pet tree frogs, even though they don’t eat bloodworms in the wild.
Here are some more details on how to feed bloodworms to your pet tree frog.
Do Frogs Eat Worms?
One of the best things about having a pet frog is that you can feed it a wide variety of insects and worms. Although the diet isn’t as diverse as wild frogs, you still have plenty of options.
It includes several common feeder worm species, such as bloodworms, redworms, earthworms, waxworms, and mealworms.
Besides worms, you can also feed them crickets, snails, slugs, locusts, minnows, etc. Larger frogs can eat small rodents like pinky mice too.
A nearby exotic pet store should be able to provide you with all the worms you need for your tree frog.
Do Tree Frogs Eat Bloodworms?
Bloodworms are common feeder insects for various exotic and aquatic pets.
In case you already purchased these worms for your fish or other pets, you might wonder if it’s okay to feed those to your tree frogs as well.
Wild free frogs don’t usually eat bloodworms, possibly because they cannot find them on land. However, you can feed these worms to your pet tree frogs without any problem.
Are Bloodworms Nutritious For Frogs?
Just because your tree frogs can eat something, it may not necessarily be a very nutritious food source.
Besides checking whether you can feed your frogs a certain species of feeder worms or insects, you also need to find out whether it fulfills their nutritional requirements.
Bloodworms are quite nutritious for aquatic frogs and tree frogs alike.
Nutritional Content of Bloodworms
Bloodworms offer a decent amount of iron and protein, along with vitamins and trace elements of different minerals.
While they do contain amino acids, the variety isn’t great. Here’s a quick overview of a bloodworm’s nutritional content:
- Moisture: 81.7%
- Crude protein: 8.3%
- Crude fiber: 3.9%
- Crude fat: 1.2%
What Nutrients Do Frogs Need in Their Diet?
Ideally, your frog must have a daily diet with at least 30% to 60% protein content. They need fats and fatty acids to absorb vitamins and create important enzymes.
The fats also help cushion internal organs and are a crucial source of energy for frogs. Other necessary nutrients include vitamins and carbohydrates.
Why Bloodworms are Good For Frogs?
Bloodworms are quite good for frogs as they meet the latter’s nutritional needs very well. As shown earlier, most of a bloodworm’s body (81.7%) comprises moisture.
Frogs in captivity need plenty of moisture to survive. Bloodworms also provide frogs with the necessary protein content, as proteins account for 45.3% of their weight as dry matter.
The crude fat content in bloodworms is suitable for frogs. While frogs need fats to survive, an excess fat content in their diet can easily lead to obesity.
What To Feed Adult Frogs?
Adult frogs survive on a varied diet comprising insects, worms, small rodents, mollusks like snails and slugs, etc.
While rodents and mollusks might be relatively harder to come by, you can buy a variety of feeder insects and worms from pet supply stores and online retailers.
Among commonly found insects and worms, crickets, beetles, locusts, caterpillars, hornworms, earthworms, waxworms, bloodworms, and mealworms are good choices.
However, if you can get some minnows, slugs, or pinky mice, feel free to hand them over to your pet.
How To Feed Adult Frogs?
A good pet owner should know not only what to feed the pets but also how to feed them. If this is your first time owning a frog, you might be unsure how to feed it. Here’s how you can go about it:
- Take the feeder worms or insects and put them in a container.
- Add some calcium powder to the container and shake it to coat the worms/insects in the powder.
- Now, open the frog’s enclosure and drop the food inside with a pair of tweezers, one by one.
- Wait for it to eat the first insect before you give it the next one. Don’t drop in too many at once, as it might allow the prey to get away.
- On average, it shouldn’t take longer than 10 to 20 minutes per feeding session. In case the frog leaves any food uneaten during this time, remove it from the enclosure.
Do Tadpoles Eat Bloodworms?
If your frogs are juveniles, you’ll need to keep them on a slightly different diet from adult frogs.
They can’t eat all the prey species that adult frogs can. Larger species of prey may escape or get stuck in a baby frog’s digestive tract.
However, you can still feed them pinhead crickets, redworms, brine shrimp, and bloodworms as well.
Tadpoles, on the other hand, live on a mostly herbivorous diet. In the wild, they feed on soft plant matter and algae.
At home, one can feed them algae wafers, fish food, and a small number of bloodworms.
How To Feed Bloodworms To Baby Tree Frogs?
Feeding baby frogs might be a little tricky as they can’t handle large prey and may not notice or be able to catch food you drop into the enclosure.
A good way to go about this is to take a fishing string and put the food on its tip.
You can now lower the end with the food into the enclosure, using the string to hold the food in front of your baby frogs. They’ll pounce on the food and take it off the string.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do frogs eat besides insects?
Although insects constitute the majority of a frog’s diet, they also eat a variety of worms.
This includes several common feeder worm species, including earthworms, mealy worms, and bloodworms.
An adult frog can also eat small rodents like pinky mice and even other frogs.
What Can I Feed A Frog From My Kitchen?
Unfortunately, you can’t feed anything from your kitchen to frogs.
Frogs cannot eat human foods unless you count live insects eaten by people in some cultures as human food.
They are carnivorous and can only feed on live prey. You cannot feed a frog cooked or processed food from your kitchen.
What Do Baby Tree Frogs Eat?
Baby tree frogs eat small prey like brine shrimps, fruit flies, bloodworms, etc. As they develop, their diet grows more diverse too.
During the larval stage, i.e., when they’re still tadpoles, they are herbivores feeding on aquatic plants. They like to munch on algae and other under water plants.
Do Frogs Eat Plants?
Adult frogs usually don’t eat plant matter. Although they’re opportunistic eaters, they stick to a strictly carnivorous diet.
Tadpoles, however, live in the water and eat algae and other aquatic plant species. Their diet changes completely once they turn into frogs.
Wrap Up
Regardless of what tree frog species you have as pets, the diet should be more or less the same.
A full-grown frog needs a regular supply of insects or other live prey to survive healthily. Now that you know what your frogs can eat, I hope you won’t have much trouble feeding them.
Thank you for reading!
