Maggots as a food source

Hey I like to feed a varied diet to my amphibians and I was wondering does anyone use the fishing bait maggots as food. I know maggots are listed on the caudata culture feeder list but I don’t really know what the numbers mean so are they a good food source and are they something that could be fed regularly (used once or twice a fortnight) or a treat time (once a month)

I've fed them and the only problem I've seen is that the maggots are much tougher for the animals to handle than waxworms, hence smaller caudates can have difficulty swallowing them.

So it might be worth pinning* them first

It's likely i'll only feed them to the tiger salamanders, toads and maybe my fire salamanders if they are interested.



(*pinning is where you use a small sharp object such as a pin to create a small whole in the livefoods skin/shell to aid digestion sorry if everyone already knows this i didnt know if the phase was used on this forum)

I use them about once a month i get the white ones all my newts eat them.

Bait shop maggot the ones for fishing are some times fed dried cow/pig urine and raw chicken carcases so there is a possible risk of salamela and other things.
So it would be better to try and raise your own in a tin of dod food at the end of your garden.

I had some nightcrawlers die only to find alot of black nats and their larvae in the container. My small T. granulosas loved the maggots. Speaking of maggots I just had a guy come to the hospital because he had foot surgery and the stiches ripped open. He sat around for a week with a bloody bandage. They took it off only to find maggots eating away at dead tissue. What an idiot

Ewwwwww! That's gross!

I found some fly eggs on the cats food today, so I've nabbed them along with the rest of the cat food, put them in a cricket container inside my frogs tank. I'm hoping they can't escape from there! They will be food for my little froggies!

keep the cat food moist but not wet and you should have plenty of maggots in a few days. I have done that by accident a few times feeding my outside cat when she didn' t come around to eat. Only to find it full of maggots a few days later

I just found about 2 inches of maggots on a catfish carcass I threw in my garden. My paddletail newts loved them and so did my red efts.

spendday said:

Hey I like to feed a varied diet to my amphibians and I was wondering does anyone use the fishing bait maggots as food. I know maggots are listed on the caudata culture feeder list but I don’t really know what the numbers mean so are they a good food source and are they something that could be fed regularly (used once or twice a fortnight) or a treat time (once a month)

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Yo I use maggots alot buy the white ones no dyes added to them, however I must throw a MILLION in the water when I go fishing and the fish don't go belly up but it's best not to risk it.Put maggots in the small tupperware containers [for salt etc] and place in your viv when they turn into flies the amphibs love em however put some sawdust in the container ,it stops them sweating and a hole in the lid big enough for the flies to get out but nothing can climb in. Watch how many you pput in your vivs' I have had plague like proportions in some vivs. If you put flies in the fridge in a jar for afew mins it really slows them down DON'T LET THE WIFE/MOTHER /BOYFRIEND SEE YOU or you will be in BIG TROUBLE. Most big aquatic amphibs will take maggots and treefrogs etc love the flies plus they are really cheap compared to crickets :happy:
HAVE FUN

After fishing this past wknd I buried the discards in a wood pot that a small tree in my backyard is growing out of. A few days ago I went out there to throw away more discards and as I dug up the old remains, I thought "Oohh! Newt food!" so I quickly started digging around and found a TON of maggots! I ended up removing some old fish bones (with a lot of flesh on it still) and got a bunch of maggots out of it. Same with a squeezed lemon I threw in there. I put them in a small container but it smells SO bad! I'm trying to gutload them now. I'm not sure if it's possible to 'clean' them out so they at least don't smell. It could also just be the dirt I threw in the container too. Ugh... anyone know if these maggots can be prepped any better before feeding?

Ive been washing them off with some water before I toss them in with my noto's and paddletail newts. Both these newts love flie maggots. I've been catching catfish and tossing them in the woods where I fish. About 50 yards away so I don't smell them. When I return the next week they are full of maggots that I just toss in a jar. I was thinking of feeding them moist shrimp pellets with some rep cal in it but right now I just use them as is. Full of good fish fats and vitamins. Some of my other salamanders have been eating them also. Turns out this is the easiest free food I have come across. You can culture these very easy. All you would need is to get some ground meat, mixed with some rep cal or other vitamins and place it in a an old large mayo jar. Leave the lid off let flies land on it for a dayor two . Add a 4 table spoons of water, Place the lid back on with alot of tiny pins holes and place in a shady spot far away from the house. The smell will be bad but you get about 300-500 maggots to feed to your animals!!!!