That Reptile Blog – Reptile, Amphibian and Exotic Pet Care and Information

Many items marketed for tropical fish are of great value to reptile and amphibian enthusiasts. Please see: Caring for Reptiles and Amphibians: Useful Foods, Medications and other Products from the Aquarium Trade – Introduction and Feeding Accessories for background information and notes on other products.

Frozen Foods for Turtles

Frozen silversides, krill, beef heart, sand eels, mussels and similar foods provide a convenient means of increasing dietary variety for many reptile and amphibian pets.  They are readily accepted by nearly all aquatic turtles, including soft-shells, sliders, cooters, map turtles, snake-necks and musk turtles.

Diamondback Terrapins – Estuarine Specialists

Marine foods, such as sand eels, should not be used as a dietary staple for freshwater turtles, but rather as a supplement each 7-14 days.  However, diamondback terrapins, which inhabit estuaries and other brackish environments, should be offered mussels, krill and other such foods at most meals.

These gorgeous, variably-patterned turtles have an undeserved reputation as difficult captives.  Indeed, when kept in what is the proper manner for, let’s say, a painted turtle, a diamondback will usually fail to thrive.  However, when kept in brackish water and fed shellfish, krill, marine fishes and other natural food items, they make active, long-lived pets.

Other Salt Marsh Turtles

Snapping turtles often enter brackish environments…indeed some populations are specifically adapted to such.  I have had good success in raising snapper hatchlings on diets composed of approximately 50% marine-based organisms.

The eastern mud turtle (Kinosternon subrubrum) is another “freshwater” turtle that is often associated with estuarine environments.  In New York State, it occurs only on Long Island and Staten Island, where it is almost always found in salt marshes.  Mud turtles also fare well on a diet high in marine foods such as mussels and krill.

A Note Concerning Krill

Krill are shrimp-like creatures native to marine environments.  As such, I would normally recommend they be used in the diets of fresh water turtles on an occasional basis only (except for the estuarine species mentioned above).  However, some years ago a colleague raised a group of Blanding’s turtle (Emydoidea blandingii) hatchlings on a diet composed entirely of freeze dried krill and Reptomin Food Sticks.  The turtles grew quickly, matured into adults with perfectly-formed shells, and have, I believe, reproduced.

Since then, I have used frozen and freeze dried krill as a substantial part of the diet of spiny soft-shelled turtles, a number of Australian snake-necked turtle species, red-headed side-necked turtles, midland painted turtles, axolotls, tiger salamander larvae, red-spotted newts, sharp-ribbed newts, African clawed frogs and many others…with fine results in each case.  I heartily recommend that you include krill as part of the diets of your aquatic reptile and amphibian pets.

Frozen Foods for Large and Small Aquatic Salamanders

Amphiumas, mudpuppies and sirens will accept most of the aforementioned items, and newts of all types relish krill.

Beef heart was long used as a staple diet for laboratory colonies of Mexican axolotls and African clawed frogs, and countless generations were raised and bred on this food item alone.  Although I favor a more varied diet for these creatures, certainly frozen beef heart is a very useful food that should be offered regularly.

Click here to read the 2nd part of this article.

Box and wood turtles are well-known for both their suitability as pets and the unusual degree of intelligence that they display.  Unfortunately, they often put their brain power to use in thwarting their owners’ efforts to provide them with a balanced diet.  More so than most other species, box turtles (and, to a lesser degree, wood turtles) very often become fixated upon certain foods, and can be very stubborn about switching.  As a result, they sometimes end up living on inappropriate diets composed of 1 or 2 favored items, such as strawberries and cooked chicken.

Prepared Box Turtle Diets

Prepared foods formulated specifically for box turtles, supplemented with a variety of natural foods, provide the best means of assuring that captive box turtles are consuming a balanced, nutritious diet.  Zoo Med’s Canned  or Pelleted Box Turtle Food, or Bug Company’s Box Turtle Pellets should form the bulk of your pet’s diet. Taste is a big factor with box turtles, and each of these foods has a different fruit-base and taste, so be sure to experiment a bit.

Tricking Your Turtle

Keeping turtles a bit hungry is useful when attempting substitutions, but most captives carry plenty of reserve fat and so can usually wait out their owners.  There are a few tricks that can be used to increase the palatability of prepared box turtle diets.

Especially effective is spreading blueberry or strawberry jelly over the prepared diet.  The fruits themselves can also be used, but turtles tend to be very good at picking out only what they want and leaving the rest…covering the food with jelly forces the turtle to consume everything.

Canned Snails and Insects

Canned insects and invertebrates offer an excellent means of increasing dietary variety while adding to the attractiveness of commercial turtle foods.  We’ll take a look at using canned and live invertebrates, as well as the importance of fruits and vegetables, in Part II of this article.

Further Reading

Please see my article Providing a Balanced Diet to Reptile and Amphibian Pets  for further information on reptile and amphibian nutrition.

The robust African bullfrog shares with the fire salamander and Chinese/Japanese giant salamanders the distinction of being the longest lived of all captive amphibians. I personally know of 2 specimens that lived for 21 years in captivity, both owned by the same person (interestingly, although housed separately, they died within a few days of one other). The unpublished longevity record for the species is 50 years.

Ammonia – an Ever-Present Threat
However, one easily-overlooked point – terrarium hygiene – can very quickly end their potentially long lives. In my experience, a lack of attention to this critical point is the most common cause of African bullfrog deaths in captivity. Despite their burly, somewhat tank-like exteriors, African bullfrogs are extremely sensitive to ammonia toxicity…tiny metamorphs and huge, decades-old adults are equally vulnerable.

These frogs usually (but absolutely not “always”!) defecate in their water bowl. The bowl should be cleaned at least once daily, even if it does not appear fouled. Frogs soaking in fouled water will absorb ammonia through their skin and can die in short order.

Daily care while you are on vacation or otherwise absent from home is a must…a day or so of missed cleanings can easily kill a treasured old pet (think of how you’d feel then!).

Useful Products and Techniques
R-Zilla Terrarium Cleaner is safe to use on water bowls and terrariums, but wherever amphibians are concerned it is essential that all surfaces are rinsed thoroughly after being disinfected. Be sure to use a water conditioner  to de-chlorinate water used in the bowl and in spraying the substrate.

A very useful product of which I was made aware recently is Hagen Cycle. It is contains huge populations of live beneficial aerobic bacteria, is being increasingly used in laboratory frog colonies, both for aquatic species and in the water bowls of others. I believe it is an important product to consider when keeping large frogs, which produce copious amounts of nitrogenous wastes (it is not, however, a substitute for water changes).

As your frog may also defecate outside of the water bowl, it is important that the entire terrarium can be easily cleaned. Simple set-ups are therefore preferable for African bullfrogs (when designing planted zoo exhibits, I always allow for a floor drain and false bottom, so that the substrate can be hosed down without removing the frog). Washable terrarium liners are very useful in African bullfrog enclosures.

Further Reading
You can read more about African bullfrog natural history and captive husbandry in the following articles on this blog: The African Bullfrog – Devoted Parent, An Appetite for Cobras , and Feeding African Bullfrogs.

Browsing the pages of Herpetologica and other journals over the years, I several times came across field studies indicating that certain populations of savannah monitors consumed diets composed entirely of invertebrates.  In certain seasons, the lizards gorged on either locusts or land snails exclusively for months on end.  When some captives fed largely upon rodents showed evidence of kidney and liver damage and intestinal impactions, articles in popular magazines began calling for insect-based diets.

Canned Diets

Savannah monitors may approach 5 feet in length, and thus an insect-based diet is difficult to arrange…thousands would be needed weekly in some cases.  Zoo Med’s Canned Tegu and Monitor Diet provides a handy solution.  Formulated with these lizards in mind, it is readily accepted by most individuals.

After reading the aforementioned articles, I took a moderate position as regarded the savannah monitors under my care in public collections, using canned food as 60-75% of the diet.  I supplemented the food of adults

once weekly with vitamin/mineral powder  and that of juveniles 3-4 times weekly.

Invertebrate and Vertebrate Food Items

The easiest way to supplement canned food without using mice is to establish a breeding colony of Madagascar hissing roaches (even the well-armored adults are readily accepted) and nightcrawlers.  Crayfish, if available to you, are a great monitor food.  Other useful food items are land snails (available in seafood markets), tomato hornworms, hard boiled eggs (in moderation, i.e. once monthly) and canned grasshoppers , silkworms  and snails.  Pink and fuzzy mice (these are preferable to adult mice and rats) may be offered every 10-14 days.

My Observations of Wild Black and White Tegus

My observations of black and white tegus in Venezuela leads me to believe that, at least in llanos habitat, these lizards consume far more large insects, turtle eggs and frogs than rodents.  Mammals are taken when available, mainly as carrion or unearthed rodent nests.

I have kept tegus for lengthy periods on rodent-based diets but now counsel more variety…I suggest feeding as described above, but with canned food comprising a smaller portion (i.e. 25-50%) of the diet, and rodents, preferably pink and fuzzy mice, being offered once weekly.  If your tegu will accept whole fish (i.e. large shiners), use these in place of mice.

An interesting article on savannah monitor natural history and diet in the wild is posted at http://www.mampam.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=76

A common drawback in dealing with pathogen outbreaks among captive amphibians is the great sensitivity of most species to available medications.  Drugs formulated for fish, used as a soak or bath, have great potential.  However, amphibians absorb liquids over a much greater surface area than do fishes – in some cases with the entire skin surface – and it is therefore difficult to ascertain proper dosages.  Dose reduction is largely a hit-and-miss prospect, as each amphibian differs in absorption ability – medication failure and patient death are all too frequent.

A Malaria Medicine Rescues Stranded Tadpoles

Methylene Blue, a compound that found favor in 1891 as a human anti-malarial agent (and subsequently lost favor due to its propensity to turn the urine green and the whites of the eyes blue!) is one of the safest medications to use with amphibians.  It is widely used as a fish medication, but often overlooked by those working with amphibians.  I was first impressed by its benign nature when called to rescue several hundred American bullfrog tadpoles from the bottom of a recently drained pond in NYC.  The tadpoles had been flopping about for over an hour by the time I arrived, and were all cut up and bleeding.

Without much hope of success, I transferred the tadpoles to several plastic garbage cans and added Methylene Blue at a concentration a bit higher than recommended for fish.  Normal procedure would have been to use ½ fish strength and gradually increase the dosage while observing the tadpoles’ reactions, but such takes time and these fellows had little of that.  I was surprised to see no signs of stress, and astonished the next morning when most looked quite well.  Eventually, a great many recovered.

Use Methylene Blue

I have since used Methylene Blue in private and public collections for a range of amphibians, including Argentine horned frogs, spotted salamanders and Surinam toads.  It has been successful against fungus (most likely Saprolegnia) and certain bacteria associated with wounds and “red leg”.  I’ve had mixed success in using it to combat fungus on amphibian eggs (smoky jungle frog, bell frogs, poison frogs) – the results likely depend upon the species of fungus involved.  I begin with ½ the fish dose and a soak time of approximately 1 hour – gradually increasing both if necessary.  For eggs, I dilute the Methylene Blue in water and then use an eye dropper to place it on the eggs (approximately 1 drop per 2 inch square of egg mass).

Treated amphibians will be stained blue for awhile (as will your hands if you do not wear gloves), but results have been very good.  Where the compound has not worked, it at least caused no harm, and therefore lent the option of using alternative medications.

Drug resistant strains of malaria have researchers once again investigating the use of Methylene Blue as a treatment option for people.  An interesting article regarding this is posted at:

http://www.malariajournal.com/content/4/1/45