Thanks for your interest. How often the animal needs to eat depends upon its age (youngsters need more frequent meals than adults), condition and weight and, most importantly, temperature. In winter, they fast for 4-5 months, depending upon location; and in cool weather they may feed only once each 10-14 days. Please send some details and I’ll be able to provide more specific info.

Best regards, Frank Indiviglio.

Thanks for your interest in our blog and the observations. Interesting that you hit on sowbugs as a puffer-food; sowbugs are crustaceans, and puffers have unique teeth that adapt them for a largely crab/shrimp diet…so I’m sure they relist the sowbugs (maybe sowbugs left the sea and evolved into land animals due to puffer predation – wouldn’t that be ironic!).

Good luck and please keep me posted.

Best regards, Frank Indiviglio.

Thanks for your interest in our blog and for the most useful post.

I agree concerning Cuban treefrogs. They seem to have particularly high calcium requirements…I wouldn’t be surprised if their extra-thick, boney skulls had something to do with that. Isopods are an ideal calcium source for these and similarly-sized frogs.

Using coconut fiber as a rearing substrate is a fine idea, and your diet seems a good mix of healthful ingredients.

Cuban treefrogs are well-established in southern Florida and elsewhere in the American southeast. Some years ago, a friend suggested to me that the Miami population be dubbed “Telephone Booth Tree Frogs”, as he found them in booths more often than elsewhere (this before the advent of cell phones, and the demise of public phone booths). Sure enough, on a quick trip to downtown Miami, I found Cuban treefrogs in the majority of the booths I checked…a convenient source of trapped insects, higher humidity?

Thanks very much for passing along your observations.

Best regards, Frank Indiviglio.

I breed local isopods year round in 16oz deli cups 3/4 filled with moist cocofiber.

In spring and summer I feed them a mixture of ground mixed beans, soy flour, and fruit baby food, moistened with water to form a paste.

In fall and winter I add fallen oak leaves to the diet.

Their waste makes a good soil addative in the garden when I plant in the spring.

Maurice

Best regards, Frank Indiviglio.

Got them back successfully and did some preliminary experiments. It turns out the shrimp are highly sexually dimorphic with the males being larger than the females. They will feed on small particles in the water, seems like they even ate fishfood. They also ate the other amphipods they were with, as well as each other occasionally(it is hard to tell if they actually killed one another or if they were merely taking advantage of a weak/dead fellow). They took ok to plastic plants, though it is difficult to force them from one substrate to another.

I think they might work for culturing in small numbers for a hobbyist who needs something special and isn’t satisfied with normal amphipods. They are very clumsy swimmers and I’ve heard their jerky motions are irresistible to fish.

Perhaps more to be added later!
~Joseph