My pacman & Giant Pixie babies

the over abundance of animal protein (fat) from mice and rats is what shortens their lif span. In the wild they have a varied diet of other amphibians, insects, mammals etc.

I agree with that as well. Im not loading them with fat any longer. I use a variety, rodents I feed smaller and rarely as treats.

After you knock out the mouse before you feed it to the frog you can use a feeding tube or something similiar to put multivitamins into the mouse before giving it to the frog.

Nicholas can you post more pics of your pixie?

I guess i can do that.

Hey guys, this is a nice topic maybe we can keep it going as there's not much posts on pixies. Anyway, I was wondering if there is anyway to tell if your pixie is a male or female at the juvenille stage? I'm planning to get a female pixie, but I need more information so I can purchase the right one. So far, I've heard that it is really hard to sex pixies in this stage of their life. But I've emailed a credible herp handler here in Ontario, and I was told that males will have a bit of yellow on their cheeks. Can anyone verify this with their juvenille pixies? Because if this is the case, then I have my answer.

Also, what do you guys think about feeding pixies actual meat such as sirloin steak? This is what I've been feeding my pixie in "rodent" sized proportions twice a week and also being dusted with calcium powder and multivitamin powder? Now to be clear, I don't just feed my pixie a whole chunk. It's rather a small chunk of meat 1" cubed lets say and I slice it out so that it becomes a flap of meat 2-3" long 1" wide. I also take out as much white fat as I can from these chunks, because as we all know fatty substances aren't good for these guys. I feed him at least three-four of these and I have usually 3 chunks with calcium and 1 chunk multivitamin. I'm not sure of the nutritional value of sirloin steak but I'm going to be having my pixie for a year in August and he seems healthy (still chases my finger when I waggle it in front of him just like the first day, but not inside the tank though). Also, here and there I feed him dusted crickets and dusted nightcrawlers that are dug up from my compost heap that range in the 3" range to almost 6" range (if I'm lucky at finding them.)

I want to feed my pixie mice soon, but I really want to avoid the fat issue. Or should I just stick to steak? Btw, the steak chunks are frozen so I just have to defrost and cut them up for my pixie. I would probably feed my frog chicken, but I don't want to get into issues of salmonella. Anyway, what do you guys think?

More Info: I have my pixie in a 20 gal. aquarium with a similar product to Bed-A-Beast and Eco-Earth and a nicely sized swimming pool aka his water dish. I'll post pictures soon. Temperatures and Humidity are fine. I have most of the tank covered with ceran wrap to keep in the humidity. I have a misting unit for the cool fog effect and I also have a 60W bulb in a reflecting lamp to keep the ambient air temperature to where it needs to be. I'm thinking of getting some live moss to put on a piece of firewood that I have cleaned and dryed myself and I'm also going to start raising my own crickets since I'll be having another pixie in the family.

I just found this link about sexing pixie frogs (http://forum.kingsnake.com/frog/messages/41693.html)and it deals with the size of the eardrum. Now, I'm assuming mine is a male because it is 6.5" long and females get around to 4-5" as I've read and also my pixie croaks every now and then at odd times of the day. Do you think he's just practicing or is he ready for mating?

1) males have a yellow or pale throat
2) steak is more fattening and less healthy then mice.
3)any bedding that is good for high humidity is good for pixies
4) live moss is tough because hell just dig it up anyway and try to get covered up by it.
5) most male frogs of all species vocalize for many reasons (dominance breeding, warning)
6) watch your fingers= their bite HURTS!!!!

Well thanks for the six pointers, but I think I'll need more of an explanation on #2 because if I take out all of the white fatty parts from steak, and I feed my frog red meat I should end up having a very healthy meal. I know caloric intakes of different foods can vary but those numbers are averaged to a generalized case. An example would be lets say a piece of steak that contains 10% fat could overall represent a larger portion (a marbelized steak) that you would buy from a butcher. So, if by point #2 is based on some number then it is correct perse, but in my case if the white fatty parts are taken out then the fat content HAS to be lowered down significantly.

I'm not meaning to be harsh on this post, it's just that point #2 seems a little sketchy and I would like an explanation behind it before I take it as any sort of fact. Essentially what a frog (or any of us) is doing by intaking any meal is absorbing nutrients and so, if one category of the meal (in our case, fat) is eliminated we can assume that it is also eliminated from what the frog is absorbing. Right?

However, one thing I just found out is that any red meat has a higher phosphorus level than cooked meat. Also beef retains its phosphorus content through cooking (http://www.hoptechno.com/book29o.htm). Anyway, I'm interested in finding out what is better now... feeding mice or feeding steak? According to this website (http://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu...hosphorus.html) 3.5oz of cooked steak has 218 mg of phosphorus. As we know a frogs diet already consists of enough phosphorous, so what does this all mean?

It means I have to get a small weight scale and weigh out red meat proportions and verify what I have been doing for so long to see if it's actually correct. I believe that my current method of feeding is really good for a low budget/dont have too get touchy with mice objective. Although this wasn't the case when I first purchased my pixie, the method seems to be working and my frog seems pretty healthy to me.

From what I under stand is that steak (cow meat) is natually fatter the rodents, contains steroids and other stuff that can hurt reptiles, and doesnt contain all the natual calcium and nutrients you get from feeding reptiles mice or rats. I will see if i can dig up the info I read on this.