# Frogs & Toads > Dart Frogs (Dendrobatidae) > Beginner Discussion >  Dart Frogs and feeding

## JeffX

Some day I'd like to get some Dart Frogs.  The food supply would be the most difficult for me, and I was trying to think of alternative ways to get them food instead of solely using fruit flies or culturing them myself.  

So I had this idea of setting up the tank and putting in some female crickets in there, and letting them lay their eggs and removing them later.  Assuming I kept doing this, and I could figure out the time frame from laying the eggs to them hatching could this supply say two or three Dart Frogs with an adequate food source?

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## Kurt

The problem with that is that crickets alone are not nutritionally sound. Thats why we dust them with supplements. Darts can easily suffer frog a vitamin A deficency and waste away. So dusting is very important with these guys, maybe more so than it is with other frogs.

Culturing fruit flies isn't all that hard. Also you can buy small crickets. I bought a 1000 count case of 1/8" last week.

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## Tom

Springtails are good they sell them and culturing media at 
Fruit flies, Springtails & Rice Flour Beetles

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## JeffX

> The problem with that is that crickets alone are not nutritionally sound. Thats why we dust them with supplements. Darts can easily suffer frog a vitamin A deficency and waste away. So dusting is very important with these guys, maybe more so than it is with other frogs.
> 
> Culturing fruit flies isn't all that hard. Also you can buy small crickets. I bought a 1000 count case of 1/8" last week.


I didn't even think about dusting them.

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## Tom

Small Dart frogs and babies love springtails. And they are considered easy to culture. The darts will probably die if you forget to dust their food

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## Kurt

> The darts will probably die if you forget to dust their food


Probably? I can practically gurantee that to happen if their food is not dusted.

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## nx2ured

Culturing fruit flies is a necessary evil if you want to keep darts as is dusting.

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## Mike

Although variety is best, it is possible to raise many dart frog species just on crickets and without fruit flies.  Even the smaller species will eat crickets if they are young enough.

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## deengo1975

If I came up with a contraption that the crickets can get in and out of with the vitamine dust inside, but the frogs can not get into inside the terrarium will that work?

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## merk199

Fruit flies and springtails are extremely easy to breed and feed.  In the beginning get premixed FF media and use that till you are comfortable.  Other alternatives are pea aphids, bean beetles, termites, and for larger darts roaches.

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## Mark

Fruit flies are very easy to breed in large quantities, I used to breed thousands when I was teaching genetics, the problem was stopping them!

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