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Feeding Frogs any good?

I will discuss a common believes that snakeheads love frogs. This is a misconception that most people have about snakeheads. This believes derived from frogs being the No. 1 choice traditionally for snakehead fisherman. The main reason local fisherman uses frogs as bait to fish snakeheads is the environment of the snakeheads habitat. Most time they lived in weedy or tangled parts of the water. Malaysian Snakeheads fisherman mainly targets Channa Striata, Channa Marulioides and Channa Lucius that happened to live most timed in the swallow part of the lake with conditions like these. Fisherman uses frog as bait because of the way the frog is rigged that allows weedless casting. This way you can cast into the weed area without getting your bait snagged.


Popular local weedless frog rig (http://www.umpan.com.my/korang-tanya-umpan-jawab-s2s1-teknik-pancing-haruan/katak/)

I have personally tested when circumstances allowing it, I cast a live tilapia with the hook on its mouth not weedless. The catch is always faster as compared to frogs. This not being a popular choice mainly it's quite impossible to cast into weedy area and the live fish will quickly dies and not move naturally.

From this experiment,  it is quite clear that snakeheads would prefer fishes as to frogs, but the perception that snakehead love frogs are forever stucked in peoples mind.

Lets come to feeding frogs to snakeheads, is it good or bad? well as in any natural food yes it is good. Natural as in wild caught paddy frogs, now snakeheads are smart to a certain extend. I've been in situation where I've ran out of frogs and the fish is still plenty, I've tried using toad rigged in the same manner and so far I've not got any catch. I've also tried using green tree frogs with the same negative results. And I've also used bull frogs, this is not that bad, the catch is lower as compared to paddy frogs. 

So you see our snakeheads are picky eaters, their first choice of frogs will be the common paddy frogs aka field frogs. But when in the aquarium they are domesticated and will eat almost anything we throw in. Paddy frogs are not easy to come by nowadays and most lfs can only offers you bull frogs. I will not feed any of my fishes bull frogs. Not that bull frogs are bad, but farm raised bull frogs most time comes with bacteria. Bull frogs are raised in shallow waters, you will notice they're kept in half an inch of water and these waters are terribly contaminated. Bull frogs have adapted their lives capable to withstand bacteria and fungus infection and most time are carrier themselves.

Feeding bull frogs to your fishes is a high risk business. Almost a game of Russian roulette. Is it worth the effort? This you've to ask yourself. Bull frogs are pellet fed, antibiotics and maybe steroids. 

Wild caught paddy frogs on the other hand is natural and I do believe them to have a higher nutritional value. Selecting wild caught paddy frogs, you need to catch them with your own hands. I've been doing this for years mainly for fishing. Choose only those that will struggle, the harder they fight and trying to kick their way out the healthier they are. Do not select those that are weak and let you handles them however you choose. Those will only die in a day or 2.

How to keep paddy frogs alive? Use a guppy tank, put in peat soil (black soil) you can plant some pothos in it. Put a bowl of water and hang a piece of banana in the guppy tank. Change the water daily. The banana will attract fruit flies that your frog needs for food. Do not put them in direct sunlight, keep them in a cool shady area, bathroom is best. I can keep them up to a month easily this way.

They you go about frog feeding summary.


Paddy Frogs or Field Frogs (http://www.wildherps.com/species/F.limnocharis.html) is your choice of frogs for your fishes.


Bull Frogs (http://herpsofnc.org/american-bullfrog/) try your best to stay away from his.




Comments

  1. UnknownApril 4, 2021 at 10:23 PM

    this is very informative, all this time I've been feeding bullfrogs because they were bigger and I wont have to buy as many paddy frogs

    ReplyDelete

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