Pet Bullfrogs
While the idea of buying a Bullfrog and keeping it in your home as a pet
may sound exotic and “different,” it can also end up being more troublesome than you think.
Adult Bullfrogs are aggressive, carnivorous, cannibalistic and loners. They don’t get along well with other
pets, even with other frogs. In fact, an adult Bullfrog will eat anything it can fit into its mouth, even a smaller
frog from a different species, even a smaller Bullfrog.
Bullfrogs are not expensive. You can buy them for a few affordable dollars at most pet stores. However, it may
prove costly to find and pay for the proper tank. In fact, an adult Bullfrog needs to be put into a tank that is at
least 100 gallons large or even larger. That’s a big tank and it could be costly. It could also be difficult to
find a suitable place to keep it in your home.
Once you’ve purchased the Bullfrog and its new home, you will need to “dress it up” by segmenting it into two
different sections that kind of replicates the Bullfrog’s environment in the wild.
The huge tank should be segmented in the following way: one-third to one-half of it should be “land,” filled
with soil, bark and fake or live plants. A small section of plastic or some similar material should be used to
separate this soil section from the remainder of the tank which needs to be filled with water.
You can “dress up” the water section with gravel or larger rocks and, importantly, arrange this section so that
your Bullfrog can enter and exit the water easily. You can also add a few live plants to this section and you
should add Amphibian water conditioner, as well.
That’s the easy part. Feeding your pet Bullfrog may not be as pleasant as you want. Bullfrogs are carnivorous
and need to eat the same things they consume in the wild. So you will have to buy such “food” items as crickets,
earthworms, spiders, minnows, smaller frogs of competing species, other types of bugs, even an occasional baby
mouse. And you will have to feed these items to your pet Bullfrog.
It is also a good idea to feed vitamin supplements to your pet Bullfrog. You can do this by sprinkling “Prime”
on the crickets or other bugs you drop into the tank. Remember: don’t give your pet Bullfrog a friend to share the
tank. It is predatory and aggressive and it will eat anything it finds in the tank. It is a loner, a cannibal and
it has no friends.
So does a Bullfrog make a good pet? The answer to that question rests with you. If you don’t mind buying strange
food items and feeding them to your Bullfrog, it can be a good pet. Of course, you can’t take a Bullfrog out for a
walk in the park. You can’t play with a Bullfrog, can’t do much of anything but watch it eat. In a way, it’s the
same thing you would do if you bought fish and an aquarium.
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