Can Dart Frogs Eat Springtails?

Can a Dart Frog Eat Springtails?

Yes — and for dart frogs springtails are not a curiosity, they are a staple. Along with fruit flies they are what most dart frogs actually live on, and they are one of the few foods small enough for froglets.

Springtails are tiny soil arthropods, named for the furcula — a forked appendage folded under the abdomen that snaps down to fling the animal away from danger. That is the spring, and it is why a disturbed culture looks like it is popping.

What Springtails Actually Do

Springtails eat decomposing organic matter, mould and fungus. In a bioactive enclosure — one with live plants and a living substrate rather than paper towel — that makes them the maintenance crew.

• They eat mould before it establishes, which is the single most common problem in a humid enclosure
• They break down waste and shed skin in the substrate
• They keep the soil alive, which is what makes a bioactive setup work at all
• They are harmless — they do not bite, do not damage plants, and do not bother the animal

They are usually run alongside isopods, which handle the coarser material springtails cannot. The pair is the standard bioactive cleanup crew.

Getting a Culture Going

Seed the substrate and leave them alone. They need moisture — a substrate that dries out completely will lose the colony — and they feed on what the enclosure produces. A population takes a few weeks to build to the point where you notice it doing anything.

More in the springtail collection.

Feeding is one part of it. The rest is in the poison dart frog diet guide.