Meadow plankton/ grass sweepings

[Molch]

Does anyone still collect "meadow plankton"?

When I was a kid, that's how I fed my terrestrial herps, and all the herp books recommended it: you sweep a fine-mesh net lightly across the grasses of an un-polluted meadow and you get a gazillion tiny bugs - flies, hemiptera, aphids, spiders etc....

 

[Greatwtehunter]

I still do for my dart frogs, E. longicauda, and E. lucifuga. I'm never one for passing up free food!

 

[FrogEyes]

I do, although I usually use aphid-infested thistles and goldenrods for my smaller frogs.

 

[Molch]

it's just amazing the sheer quantity and diversity of both terrestrial and aquatic inverts we get here in the north. It seems, the shorter the summer, the better the party

then again, maybe it only seems that way when you haven't seen so much as a housefly from October through May....