Keeping a spring peeper as pet?
Yesterday my boyfriend caught a little spring peeper in his yard. We would like to keep him as a pet but I can't find a lot of information about what it needs for a healthy habitat and diet. Right now we have bluegill and a bullhead that we feed live bugs so catching food is not a problem but I don't know what it can and will eat.
Comments
Pseudacris crucifer is a North American songster that delights all who await spring! This frog is distinguished by the 'X' seen on his back. A tiny but vibrant little frog, (grows only 3/4" to 1-3/8") he prefers boggy creek areas that are heavily treed, and shrub edges as home. One of the first frogs to begin breeding after the snows break.
Peepers breed in southern areas of the country from November through March. In northern states, they breed March through June, with start of warming rains.
Setup
The Spring peeper needs a 10 to 20 gallon tank that includes a pool with plants around the edge. Place a sponge type filter on the water pool as peepers do love soaking in it. Screened tight-fitting top (very small openings in screen) with fluorescent day-strength lighting. For substrate, use dichondra, organic foam or live moss. Scatter slate rocks on one side of tank for shelter.
Temps range between 75° to 80° in summer and fall seasons to 65 ° in winter and spring. The hygrometer should stay moderate throughout the year, ranging between 55% to 70%.
Clean the tank once a week by lightly spraying the substrate to remove ammonia buildup. Remove any frog feces you find. Do not house this frog with any other species! Because he is non-aggressive as well as small, he will become prey. Keep fish and snails out of his vivarium.
Once a month carefully locate the frog(s) inside the tank, then gently place a glass container over them. This will allow you to thoroughly clean the entire tank without having to remove them. Spray Quat antifungal throughout now. Remove any dying moss or other plants and replace. If you have used a sponge filter, then instead of daily water changes, you can change 1/2 the water every few days, scrubbing the pool with clean brush to remove scum. Replace water with treated water only.
Springtails, pinhead crickets, tiny red earthworms, fruit flies, termites, fly maggots, white flies as a staple.
Do not handle this anuran unless absolutely necessary, and then use Proper procedures.
The size of your frog will help dictate to you what you can include in their diet. Smaller frogs, like spring peepers, will need insects that they can easily consume. Keep the food a bit smaller than the frog's mouth. Imagine you trying to eat...an entire head of cabbage in one gulp! Now that may sound funny, but it would be the same situation you would be putting your frog in if you offer a peeper a full-grown cricket! The insect would end up crawling all over your frog (as if in jest!) and could even hurt your frog with those sharp spurs on the back of his jumping legs! So remember, size of food must be relevant to the size of your frog.
Frogs need live food offered to them. They will not focus on dead bugs, only those that move. (There are exceptions to this rule, but they are rare) Giving them a rich assortment of insects and worms, etc. is the healthiest course you can take.
Wingless flies, sterile fly maggots, springtails, big green flies, cutworms, termites, roaches, brown slugs, earthworms, crickets (at various stages of life) pillbugs, cabbage worms, bollworms, caterpillars, fat grubs, aphids, some moth species and tent worms (or 'bag worms') are all great choices and the basis of a good varied diet for most frogs.
Good Luck!
Hope this helped!
Peeper Frog
One spring peeper, brown X on back, apparently a H. Crucifer just dropped out of a tree onto snow today in central Wisconsin in front of me deer hunting. I picked the peeper up and put it in a plastic bag with a wet leaf today November 23, 2014 and put it bag and all into the refrigerator and thought it would freeze to death in the woods on the spot it dropped onto. I put it into the refrigerator to keep slow its metabolism until I researched how to keep it alive until spring. It seems you have a long list of food it could eat. Today it was 45 degrees after 2 weeks of below freezing temperatures so the refrigerator temperature of 45 degrees matches today's temperature. Any suggestions for care?
Well, spring peepers can be a little tricky to take care of, and if you only have 1 it may not be a good idea to keep it. But if you want it to be your new pet, here's what you do.
I am housing spring peepers for one of my experiments, and i also have 2 fire bellied toads which live in a 10 gallon glass terrarium just fine, but my peepers live in a 54 gallon bin. Just so you know, they are very loud, and i recommend you keep them in a more isolated area with a closed door, because trust me, they WILL keep you up all night. You want to have more than 1 too, because they are very vocal and social frogs. So its always good for them to have some buddies around.
You're also gonna need a really secure tank. What i do is place a layer of screen (like screen you'd use on a window or door) and place the lid on top so it's nice and tight. These frogs are also very small in size 3/4" to 1 1/2 at max. So if one escapes, you're gonna have to get really lucky to find it. They can also climb, since they're tree frogs, and chorus frogs. So have a tight fitting lid with an extra protection layer with very small holes.
You have to feed your frogs with all sorts of foods. It's good to give your frog variety of diets. Since spring peepers are so small, you have to feed them smaller foods. Meal worms are a good option, but they have hard skin which can make them hard to digest. I recommend crickets. Their easy on their digestive system and can also train the frogs better hunting skills. But don't catch crickets in the wild! They could have pesticides,chemicals, or bacteria on their bodies that could make your frog sick, or possibly even kill it. You can buy crickets form a pet store such as Petsmart or Petco. Make sure to buy the smaller crickets though so the frogs can eat them, the bigger crickets may be too large for them to consume.
To set up their habitat, you will not need a 54 gallon tank, their NOT cheap. You can easily house 2-4 spring peepers in a 10 gallon tank. Next, get fake plants, or moss and decorate their terrarium with cool plants and lots of hiding places. Try to make their are half land, and half water, or make the entire thing water but make islands or areas where there's dry land for them. I also recommend buying plants from pet stores, because you can get really cool exotic ones that bring out their cage for like $0.99. But you can also use rocks and other things from your yard if you wash them off with hot water.
If you want to handle your frog, it usually isn't a great idea. Frogs in general aren't really the pet that you can play with. They're like fish, but do more than that. If you do handle them to clean their tank or just to hold it, wear latex, or clean rubber gloves, as for your hands have oils that irritate the frog's skin.
You should clean your frog's cage once a week, and sometimes every other week. If you want to spend 20 extra bucks to buy a filter, you can clean the cage once a month and be fine. But if you don't have a filter, then take out all decor and terrain, and rinse it off with warm water. If you used substrate or gravel, throw away and replace the substrate, or rinse the rocks off in warm water.
I hope this helps, and good luck with your new froggy friend!
you should never remove an animal from the wild to make it your pet, if it chooses to cohabitate with you it's one thing, but to intentionally remove it from your ecosystem is bad, not just for you but for your local wildlife, especially large predators. Please respect the foodweb. Domestic animals have lived with humans a long time, enjoy one of these wonderful creautures, if you want interesting get a ferret. Also, please do not get exotic pets, short of dogs and cats, there is always a chance they could escape and wreak havoc on your local ecosystem as so many have done without natural predators. Please do not