# Frogs & Toads > Tree Frogs >  What else can I feed whites tree frogs?

## WhitesTreeFrog

I feed my whites tree frog crickets and mealworms. Can i feed it other bugs? i live in illinois and we have a lot of cicadas. what about cicadas? or like lettuce?

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## Bryce

Hi! White's Treefrogs can eat a wide variety of insects, but it is best if you only feed your frogs store-bought bugs to avoid passing parasites from wild insects to your frogs. They eat primarily invertebrates, hunting by movement. Good foods include roaches(Dubia roaches or turkestan roaches) of appropriate size, nightcrawler earthworms, hornworms, and maybe waxworms occasionally. Mealworms and superworms contain a lot of shell, so they're not the best feeder. Crickets with are nutritionally fine if supplemented with vitamin and calcium+d3 powder and/or gut loading, but giving your frog a varied diet can be fun and I like to think the frogs enjoy it. I hope thid helps!

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elly

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## elly

Adding that cicadas would probably be a bit too large.

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## WhitesTreeFrog

well to start i meant once my whites tree frog gets to be a few years older because they get HUGE! but yes itt helps a lot bryce so thanks

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## Bryce

No problem! I'm just glad elly added the thing about Cicadas being too big. I've never seen one and assumed they were a normal sized insect. They're pretty big bugs lol.

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## WhitesTreeFrog

is there anything like fruits or veggies tho? or maybe just worms i find in my backyard? i live in illinois i dont know what type of worms i can use. also a fully grown whites tree frog eating a cicada is like a 1yo wtf eating a medium/big cricket because the cicadas I'm talking about are the ones i find around my house which are like 3/4 of an inch tall maybe 1 inch and 1.5-2 inches long and 3/4-1 inch wide. the are like the size of two erasers stacked on top of ecahother

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## Bryce

Frogs generally only eat insects, with some larger species also eating small rodents, birds, and even snakes. Unfortunately fruits and veggies aren't something they can eat. Worms are usually pretty good food, though. I often feed nightcrawlers to my toads and African Bullfrog. An Adult WTF should be able to handle nightcrawlers, and smaller worms do exist that might make good food. Worms from the wild, like any typical wild insect prey, can carry parasites that are transferred to your frogs. Stores usually only carry nightcrawlers and a smaller species referred to as "Red Wigglers", or "Compost worms". They have a bad taste that some frogs hate. I had a frog that tried to eat one and never tried to eat another worm his whole life.

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## Cory

Hi, another couple worms that aren't to bad and are good to through in the diet if you can get them is Silk Worms and Phoenix Worms. Out Hornworms, wax worms, butter worms, silkies and phoenix worms, these 2 have the most protein and less fat from what I understand. I wish I could Phoenix worms but no one carries them. But all four of my frogs and my bearded dragon love Silkworms, my dragon absolutely goes bonkers for them.

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daybr4ke

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## Bryce

Aargh, I always forget the Silkworms, Waxworms, etc since I can't find them locally. I think I'm going to order some hornworms and maybe silkworms for my frogs soon. Maybe once I feed them to my frogs I won't forget all about them lol

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## elly

A good rule of thumb is to choose insects the distance from the frog's eye to the other eye. Earthworms can be longer of course, but it might help to cut them down some. 

Waxworms are supposedly high in fat relatively low in nutrition and sometimes frogs are reluctant to eat other insects after they had one, kind of like froggy donuts. Good for low weight animals though.

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## WhitesTreeFrog

wow this has helped a lot all these descriptions of eeach food. cicadas i find are like 1/3 of my frogs size and my frog is not that big. once it gets bigger if it can eat small rodents cicadas shouldnt be a problem. im going to think of a comparison to the size of the cicadas i find and you tell me how big my  frog should be before eating that like size. um actually i found one and measured it it is about 1.5 inches long and .75 inches wide and tall. how big should my frog be to eat that.

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## elly

Maybe if your frog grew up to be a very large on with a head width of about 1.5. That doesn't sound like a lot written down, but it would be a kind of big frog.

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## Bryce

If you want to feed them a cicada I'd try to find a small cicada, around maybe between 0.5-1 inch? Closer to 0.5 would be better. I dont know if they even emerge at that size, what species of cicada we're talking about, etc. I dont even know much about cicadas. Just for the record you do run the risk of transmitting parasites from wild insects to your frogs. Admittedly this is not the end of the world, but you'll probably have to deworm them eventually if you feed them wild insects. I feed my Woodhouse's toads wild bugs sometimes(grasshoppers, and some pillbugs) because I caught them in the wild. They really love termites and crane flies(mosquito hawks etc. Lots of names).

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## elly

I think some parasites can build up in soil, so if you have a permanent tank substrate that you don't want to change that's something to consider. In the wild, having some parasites can be fine but in a small enclosed tank they can keep infecting the same frog until it's carrying way too many and gets sick.

I fed my white's a wild caught grasshopper before I knew better and had to treat him for diarrhea caused by excessive protozoa. The grasshopper might have been the cause.

I don't know that feeders sold in stores are without parasites of their own, but if the bugs are brought up in captivity they're at least probably less likely to come into contact with say, hookworms. Some people get crickets from the wild and breed them a couple generations in a clean environment to try to reduce the amount of parasites, but breeding crickets is difficult and crickets are rather smelly.

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