PHYLLOMEDUSA BICOLOR

May 05, 2009

Cricket Farming

Breeding CricketsTrying my hand at the ole cricket breeding.

I constructed a screen-top 13X13X15" plastic habitat. The floor is covered in 1/2" Horticultural Vermiculite. Contained is a water feeder fashioned out of a plastic bottle and cup, a few cardboard tents, and a feeding dish. The breeding repository contains 100% natural Aged Douglas Fir Bark and Sphagnum Peat Moss, kept continually wet. A 60 watt incandescent lamp on the side of the container helps maintain a high temperature.

I'm keeping 25 adults. They are currently being fed a packaged Spirulina containing cricket food nightly.

Thus far they are making my studio sound like an evening in late June on a grassy prairie in Iowa.

May 12, 2009

Eats Shoots and Leaves

Phyllomedusa Bicolor - Giant Waxy Monkey FrogCorrection: Eats, Poops, and Talks...

Over the last two weeks I have witnessed two eatings, two droppings, and one rather chatty evening.

Watching the attack and consumption of a cricket is quite a spectacle. The stealth and poise with which Marcos strikes his prey is something to see.

He seems to do his business about once a week. The feces are surprisingly large given his body mass - about the size of a fresh garbanzo bean. They have a strange sac-like quality.

One evening last week I heard a number of distinct "ribbits" from the terrarium. Sometime in the future I will do my best to make a recording.

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