Pea aphids - Snack food for Ranitomeya

Although the main food source for our Ranitomeya frogs is cultivated fruit flies and springtails, there are other options too. About two years ago, I started cultivating pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) as a little snack for my frogs.

Pea aphids

They absolutely love it!

Once you get the hang of the cultivation routine, it fits nicely into the weekly cycle of setting up fruit fly cultures.

It took a bit of trial and error to get it working, but here’s the recipe.

Get a large box with a lid and plenty of ventilation holes covered with fine insect mesh. I use lids from commercial fruit fly pots.

The box needs to be big enough to fit 3 cycles (3 weeks) of pots or trays.

Ventilation is key—too much moisture and the aphids will die.

Place the box in natural daylight (but not direct sun) or use a small LED light for artificial daylight. Keep the temperature between 18 and 26 degrees Celsius.

Large box with three weeks of cultures and LED daylight

Soak a bunch of dried peas in water for 12-24 hours (max). They’ll swell to about three times their size. Rinse them thoroughly with cold water three times and put them in a small plastic box or pot. I prefer low boxes (10 cm wide x 7 cm deep x 5 cm high) because the peas will grow above the box, and I can easily shake the aphids into my vivarium.

For the substrate, I use 1 - 1.5 cm of moist cocopeat with the rinsed peas on top.

After a week, the peas start sprouting, and that’s when I move the plastic boxes into the larger box. I shake some aphids from older cultures onto the new peas and leave them to it. In a week, the aphids multiply like mad, and after two weeks, they start producing lots of mature aphids. By the third week, the peas die off, and I replace them with the new cultures.

Cultures after one, two en three weeks old.

Pea aphids to feed

In the vivarium, the aphids wander about looking for peas (their only host plant), and because they’re bright green, my frogs spot them straight away and gobble them up.