Guide and Tips to Keeping Frogs as At-Home Pets

Keep frogs as at-home pets requires a little bit of patience and a little bit of knowledge but can ultimately be very rewarding.

As a former owner of various types of frogs as pets I'm here to share some basic tips about the challenges and day-to-day expectations of owning frogs at home.

Let's get to the tips:

Frog Owner Tip #1: Be careful with tape

Smaller frogs in an aquarium with half-water, half-rocks for them to sit on will often climb up near the top of the tank. Be careful that you don't have tape outlining the sides of the tank/aquarium or frogs can get stuck in there and eventually end up dying if you don't catch them soon enough.

Some people find this out the hard way, unfortunately.

Frog Owner Tip #2: They don't always play well with others

If you have an underwater frog, be sure not to place it with any large fish, crayfish or other aquarium pets. Frogs don't have many natural defenses, especially the water frogs like the albino claw frog that are so popular in stores these days.

They can get eaten up in the blink of an eye before they have a chance to grow large so keep them alone or with smaller fish like neon tetras before they get big enough to handle themselves. Even then, it's a risk to put them with other animals.

Frog Owner Tip# 3: Food Amounts and Feeding

Frogs that aren't completely underwater usually eat crickets. Depending on the size of the cricket, different frogs like different amounts. For the smaller common frogs usually about 3 small crickets twice per day will be enough. Frogs may sometimes seem like they're not eating a whole lot but they tend to eat at their own pace. If you have to you can kill a cricket yourself and then put it in front of a frog while teasing them with it a bit to see if they will eat it, if not then you may have an issue with the frog and it might even be sick.

For underwater frogs, shrimp pellets work for the most part but they aren't too fond of them. The best foods are live or frozen mini-worms that you can get at the pet store, although they are expensive in relation to some other pet foods for small animals.

They also might snack on the flake food you feed your fish at times.

Frog Owner Tip#4: Mixing Frogs

Many different types of frogs feed on their own kind both in captivity and in the wild so play it very safe when deciding whether or not to mix different species of frogs.

The best bet in most cases is to avoid mixing frogs as you could end up losing one of them in the blink of an eye.

Frog Owner Tip #5: How to Find a Pet Frog

The best kinds of frogs to keep as pets is in the eye of the beholder. Clawed frogs for fish tanks are popular as is the so-called "Pac-Man" frog for half-and-half tanks.

But if you have kids the best way to get a pet frog may in fact be to go into a nature preserve or park and catch a tadpole to put in a fish tank or to catch a few live frogs. It's a fun activity for the kids and gives them that special attachment to the frog that they might not get with similar other pets.

Frogs from the wild tend to do fairly well in captivity compared to other kinds of pets and only need to eat insects as they do in the wild and are fairly low-maintenance pets.

You may want to consult a published, more in-depth guide to frogs as pets for some of the trickier questions about water pH and care for sick frogs, however; thanks for reading.