The Australian green tree frog ( Litoria caerulea ) is a popular amphibian known for its vibrant color and relatively easy care. Understanding their dietary needs is crucial for ensuring their health and well-being in captivity. This article provides a detailed overview of the Australian green tree frog's diet, encompassing both nutritional requirements and essential care practices.
Natural Diet and Nutritional Needs
In their natural habitat, Australian green tree frogs are opportunistic carnivores, consuming a wide variety of invertebrates. Their diet primarily consists of insects, but they may also consume other small animals.
Variety of Food Sources
Both adults and juveniles are insectivores and eat various live insects in the wild. Appropriate insects include crickets, cockroaches, earthworms, silkworms, slugs, moths, mealworms and wax worms. Australian Green Tree Frogs may also eat lizards, smaller frogs, and even mice!
Hunting Behavior
Tree frogs don’t stalk their prey. Instead, they wait for insects and small animals to walk by, then snap! Out shoots their tongue. While tree frogs have small teeth, they can’t chew their food. Their teeth are used to hold prey in place. So anything they eat must be swallowed whole. Additionally, tree frogs use motion to detect their prey. Therefore, tree frogs must be fed live insects.
Creating a Balanced Diet in Captivity
While a varied diet is ideal, providing a wide range of insects can be challenging in captivity. Therefore, it’s important to focus on providing a balanced diet with appropriate supplementation.
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Staple Insects
The most commercially available insects that are suitable for feeding Green tree frogs include crickets and wood roaches. These can be purchased from most reptile and pet stores. Dubia roaches and mealworms are excellent additions to a healthy tree frog diet. Roaches in particular are great because of their nutrition and gut load-ability.
Feeding Frequency and Portion Size
Adults should be provided 10-20% of their body weight each week in 2-3 separate feedings (i.e., offer insects every 2-3 days).
A recommended diet for Green tree frogs is:
- Young frogs: 2-3 crickets/wood roaches fed daily
- Adult frogs: 2-3 crickets/wood roaches fed 2-3 times per week.
Tree frogs are notorious for becoming obese when kept as pets. The best way to prevent this is to keep track of how much you feed. How many bugs your tree frog needs to stay a healthy weight will depend on the species and age. Make sure you know the number of insects your tree frog should eat to avoid obesity and health complications.
Supplementation
Like most captive insectivores, pet tree frogs need supplements to their diet. Best practice is to dust their bugs with calcium and multivitamin powder a couple times a week. All insects should be treated with calcium via gut-loading and or dusting before being fed. This is to prevent nutritional diseases such as metabolic bone disease resulting from chronically low calcium diets.
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Why do tree frogs need supplements? It comes back to “what do tree frogs eat?” In the wild, tree frogs may eat dozens - or even hundreds - of different bugs each day. Pet tree frog owners do their best to provide variety. But it’s just not practical to source so many different types of prey. Giving supplements to your tree frog is the easiest way to make sure they’re getting the nutrients they need.
Gut Loading
Gut loading is another way to provide variety to your tree frog’s diet. Gut loading is simply feeding the bugs nutrient dense food. When your tree frog eats the bugs, it also gets the nutrients from whatever the insects ate! Gut-loading diets are fortified with vitamins and minerals to help provide optimal nutrition to the reptiles that feed on them. To gut-load prey, pet parents need to place insects in a container with a gut-loading diet that the bugs can gorge on.
Avoiding Wild-Caught Insects
We’ve talked a lot about “what do tree frogs eat” in this article. And in many cases, tree frogs eat bugs that you can find in your backyard. It can be tempting to just go outside and catch grasshoppers. Or to get rid of the fruit flies in your kitchen by giving them to your frog. But don’t feed these bugs to your tree frog. It’s not worth it. Wild insects can have diseases and parasites that could cause serious harm to your tree frog. They could also carry insecticides and weed killers.
Essential Care Practices
In addition to a proper diet, several other care practices are essential for maintaining the health of Australian green tree frogs in captivity.
Water Quality
Water is essential to all amphibians and must be provided at all times. However untreated tap water should never be used as it can prove harmful to amphibians due to the chemicals it often contains including chlorine, fluoride and copper. Tap water often contains chlorine and heavy metal additives that can be dangerous to frogs.
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The two common ways to provide safe clean water that is free of harmful chemicals for a captive Green tree frog are discussed below. However, regardless of which of the two systems that is used, it should be ensured that the frog is provided with access to a water body containing clean, conditioned/filtered water at all times. It is advised that if you are keeping frogs that you invest in a relatively inexpensive counter top water filter that can be purchased from a hardware store to remove any potentially harmful chemical compounds from the water.
When purchasing a “counter top” water filter it is essential that it does not filter the water through reverse osmosis as this water can be too pure and can cause the death of the amphibian.
Water can be provided in a bowl or container such as a plastic food container, plastic plant saucer or similar that is large enough for the frog to submerge in and contains still water. This method does not require an aquarium filter and can therefore be easier to set up and makes changing the water easy as you can just remove it from the enclosure and tip it out. However, if water is provided in this way, it should be emptied and changed daily. Otherwise pollutants such as urine and faeces can cause the water quality to decrease. As the frogs are likely to swim, hydrate, urinate and defecate in the water, it’s essential that it is changed daily. Even if the water does look clean, it should still be changed as it could contain an amount of invisible pollutants such urine.
A water body that is cycled through an aquarium filter should be treated the same as keeping a fish in an aquarium with regular testing of water quality such as pH, ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels (a good quality water testing kit from a Aquarium store should be used for this). Water changes need to be also performed regularly with a general rule of a 10% water change completed on a weekly basis. The easiest way to do this is to use a siphon to empty the desired amount of water out of the enclosure and then topping it up with water that has passed through a counter-top water filter. There are numerous types of aquarium filters suitable for this purpose available in aquarium shops including canister filters. When purchasing a filter, it should be ensured it is of an appropriate size to the amount of water it is filtering. A good guide to this would be the filter cycling the water through the filter 4 to 6 times per hour. This system is harder to set up but may be more aesthetically pleasing for the humans viewing the frog but doesn’t really have a greater benefit to the frog over the first method discussed.
Habitat and Environment
A 15-gallon glass tank is the minimum recommended habitat size for up to four adult frogs. Enclosures should be tall with plenty of vertical space to allow for climbing. All habitats should be well-ventilated and secured with a screened lid to prevent the frog from escaping. Green tree frogs are naturally social and can be housed together in small groups if the habitat is large enough. Frogs should be introduced to each other gradually and under close supervision to ensure they are compatible.
Frogs need a thermal gradient in their enclosure so they can warm up and cool down as needed. At nighttime, a green tree frog’s habitat should be 65-68 F; during the day, temperatures should be between 72-80 F. Pet parents must check the temperatures of their frog’s habitat daily. Two thermometers-one in the warm area and one in the cool area-should be placed in the enclosure so that both zones can be checked at once.
Although green tree frogs are nocturnal, they still need regular light exposure to maintain a healthy day/night cycle. Pet parents should provide 10-12 hours of light each day with the help of a fluorescent bulb. The wattage needed for the heat bulb will vary depending on the size of the enclosure, the distance of the bulb from the frog, and the ambient temperature of the room in which the enclosure is kept. Note: Some light bulbs provide not only light to the tank, but also heat and/or ultraviolet (UV) light. Large rocks should be placed over under-tank heating pads to absorb heat and create an area for frogs to rest. Studies show that daily exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light can improve frogs’ immune system function and promote normal behavior.
Humidity levels should be maintained between 70-90% and monitored with a hygrometer (humidity gauge). At all times, frogs should have a shallow bowl of dechlorinated water in their habitat that’s wide enough for them to soak in. The water inside the bowl should be about 1-2 inches deep. Do not use gravel or pieces of bark that are small enough to be swallowed by a frog.
To boost humidity levels, mist your frog’s habitat once or twice a day using either a gentle misting spray bottle or a humidifier designed for terrariums. Green tree frogs have delicate skin that needs to stay moist. Regular misting of their enclosure keeps frogs moist enough to stay hydrated.
When decorating a green tree frog’s habitat, don’t overcrowd the tank. Green tree frogs love to climb! Pet parents should arrange live or artificial plants, driftwood, cork bark, or other types of branches at a diagonal to create places for their frog to leap from and climb. Cover the outside of the habitat’s rear wall with dark green paper or slabs of cork bark (secured with suction cups). Frogs need at least two hiding areas in their habitat-one kept on the warmer side of the enclosure and one on the cooler side.
Hygiene and Maintenance
Spot-clean your frog’s habitat daily, removing any discarded food or droppings. A frog’s habitat needs to be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected at least once a month with either an amphibian-safe habitat cleaner or a 3% bleach solution. Using moistened latex gloves, move the frog to a secure habitat. Scrub the empty tank and any furnishings with an amphibian-safe habitat cleaner or 3% bleach solution. The bleach solution should stay on the habitat for at least 10 minutes to ensure that the surfaces are properly disinfected. Return the frog to the clean habitat.
Handling
Green tree frogs should only be handled when necessary. Pet parents should always use moistened, powder-free latex gloves when handling their frog. Frogs have glands in their skin that can secrete toxins. It is technically safe to touch green tree frogs, but doing so can transmit Salmonella. If you do touch one, be sure to thoroughly wash your hands afterward. Additionally, green tree frogs don’t generally enjoy being handled, so it isn’t recommended to do so except when necessary.
Veterinary Care
Green tree frogs should be seen by a veterinarian once annually. A secure transport carrier can be purchased from major pet stores that would be an appropriate size for a frog.
Shedding
Amphibians shed, or “slough,” their skin regularly. Some frogs will shed their skin daily, while others will shed every few weeks. Younger frogs that are actively growing tend to shed more frequently than adults. A frog's skin may turn cloudy or milky in color when the animal is ready to shed.
Green Tree Frog Facts
The green tree frog is usually a beautiful bright green, though, depending on the mood of the frog, this may sometimes fade to a dark khaki green. Some specimens also have white spots that are outlined in darker colours. The underside is creamy-white. In its adult stage, a female green tree frog may reach almost 12cm in length. Males are much smaller and less robust than the females. The green tree frogs can climb smooth surfaces by clinging with their belly skin and the pads on their toes. Their call is an extremely distinctive ‘wark-wark-wark’, which is only produced by the males. Both males and females will produce a loud, high-pitched scream if taken by a predator that may surprise it into dropping the frog.
The main danger to the green tree frog is the destruction of its habitat through wetland clearance and drainage. Disease has also become an important factor, particularly a type of fungus called a chytrid fungus that attacks the frog’s skin. Researchers are currently examining the effects and spread of this pathogen very closely as it appears to have caused the decline of several species of frog both in Australia and South America.
The green tree frog is distributed through the eastern and northern parts of Australia. It prefers cool damp places and, particularly in more arid areas, will often use human habitation for shelter. It is well known for its habit of hiding under the rim of outback toilet bowls!
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