Healthy, nutritious meals will improve your Pacman frog’s health & mood. Among the tasty insect snacks your frog can eat, Dubia roaches are a front-runner.
While the Pacman frog belongs to the South American region, the dubia roach insect is native & also found in Central America.
You can feed dubia roaches to Pacman frogs without any second thought. Their ancestors have been eating these Dubia roaches for thousands of years. It is important, however, to follow the minimum and maximum feeding ranges. Overfeeding these bugs can harm your lovely frog.
Let’s see how I break down A to Z about the dubia roaches as Pacman frogs’ meal in this short post.
What nutritional value do dubia roaches provide to Pacman frog’s diet?
This insect has a high nutritional value in terms of nutrition. Simply put, they are nutrition houses. Sometimes, I even wondered if humans can eat dubia roaches or not… pardon me, my mind wandered a bit too much. Let’s see below what value they add to your Pacman frogs diet…
Helps to hydrate your pet frog
Every living animal requires a certain amount of water for healthy development. Undoubtedly, water is one of the most vital nutrients. When dubia roaches eat food that holds high levels of water like fruits and vegetables like apples or carrots they not only get the nutrient.
They will also hold a good amount of water inside their gut which will eventually help your Pacman frog to deal with the problem of dehydration.
Chitin
Another good nutrient which provides around 3.5% nutritional value of the entire body weight of this insect. These nutrients are the main key to forming the hard exoskeleton of this bug. So it will add a lot of value to your Pacman frog’s food chart.
However, too much feeding of the dubia roaches can lead to gastric problems in your frog which you will not do for sure.
Vitamin & mineral
An ample amount of vitamins & minerals plays a key role in a good diet of a Pacman frog. Here the dubia roaches give good competition to many other food options. Because these little bugs are packed with a total of 1.3% of vitamins & minerals of their whole nutritional value which is great.
Protein
Protein is mandatory for the amphibian to continue their lifecycle healthily. From a dry matter basis scale, a single dubia roach carries almost 54% protein. So, you can imagine how powerful sources these bugs are. One more thing you should know is all this protein is lean protein which is crucial for survival.
Fat
Out of all nutrient, fat plays a big role for the amphibian as they prepare themselves for the winter and go into estivation. However, in captivity, your pet frog does not need much fat at a single time. Because you will give them on the normal scale for the whole year. In terms of fat content, this bug is loaded with a total of 8% fat which will add huge value to your favorite ambush frog.
Frequency, size, feeding pattern of dubia roach for Pacman frog
Without knowing the approximate amount, and how you are going to feed dubia roaches to your little amphibian buddy, you can mess things up.
So to kick out any confusion I am adding more info below which will help you a lot as a Pacman frog owner.
Frequency
Overeating anything would turn out to be backfired for your Pacman frog’s health. So you should be giving them 2 times a week 3–4 bugs in each feeding time.
This applies to adult frogs. For the baby frog, you can give ½ dubia roaches every other day or 3–4 times a week.
Size
You must ensure that the dubia roach’s length is shorter than the middle distance of the frog’s eyes. Anything longer than that would be a choking hazard for your amphibian master.
Feeding pattern: Live
For the best output and for the optimum benefit of the Pacman frog, you can provide live dubia roaches. It would help to trigger the hunting mood of your frog that would resemble their forest food hunting behavior.
How to gut load dubia roaches?
The best attribute of dubia roaches is that these creatures simply do anything that you provide them. However, as long as they are under your observation, you want to ensure they are getting a high-value diet that includes fresh fruits plus vegetables.
Due to their larger and longer intestines, they can hold much more nutrition, which makes them a great option for your Pacman frogs meal.
Moreover, don’t forget to dust calcium powder during gut load which will provide enormous benefits.
Side effects of dubia roaches
With all the good parts, dubia roaches can have some negative impact on your lovely frog’s health and appetite. Let’s see those…
Indigestion problem
In many ways, dubia roaches are a great meal; however, due to the chitin level of this bug, your Pacman frog may not be able to digest it properly. In rare cases, you might see undigested dubia roaches on the stool of your Pacman frog.
Loss of appetite
During gut loading, if you provide the dubia roaches citrus fruits like orange and tomato then your Pacman frog might lose its appetite.
Wrapping up
The final point I would like to add is not to make the dubia roaches the staple food for your Pacman frog. Include them often in their diet with the proper limitations to avoid certain health issues.
If this article adds value & weighs up your amphibian knowledge, that’s a big clap for both of us. Hopefully, I was able to answer ‘Can Pacman Frog eat dubia roaches?’
