A Pacman frog is a round-shaped, colorful amphibian named after the classic arcade game character Pacman. That’s because these frogs not only look like the arcade game characters, but they also eat like them, gobbling up anything in their way.
If you are on the lookout for a low-maintenance pet, give Pacmans a chance to be a part of your home.
Why Does a Pacman Frog Make an Excellent Pet?
Horned frogs make for good beginner-friendly pets. Albino, Tri-color, and Fantasy are the popular types of horned frogs adopted as first pets. Apart from the lighting for an albino, the care routine for all these sub-species is more or less the same. They do well in captivity and quickly adjust to their new surroundings.
These frogs can get territorial and tend to bite. It is recommended that once you buy a Pacman, you leave it alone in the enclosure for the first 2-3 days. That would give your new pet enough time to get accustomed to their enclosure.
Reasons that make Pacman a good pet are:
- They are low maintenance. Once a Pacman finds a spot to burrow in its enclosure, it will spend most of its day buried under it.
- A baby Pacman can be initially housed in a small reptile holder.
- An adult male Pacman grows up to 2 to 4 inches while an adult female Pacman grows up to 4 to 7 inches. A 10-gallon aquarium or terrarium will be an ideal housing option for a grown Pacman.
- Pacman eats about anything. You can feed your pet crickets, roaches, and worms. They will enjoy eating all of them equally.
- If you take good care of your Pacman, they do well in captivity and can live up to 15 years.
How to House Your Pacman?
While housing a Pacman, you need to take care of a few factors like humidity, substrate, lighting, temperature, and enclosure type and size.
Pacmans need 50% to 80% humidity to stay healthy. You need to get the humidity levels right either manually or through an automated system, as too little can lead to respiratory issues, and too much can lead to infections.
Pacman frogs love to burrow, so you can use ground coconut, bark, leaves, and moss as substrates so they can easily burrow through it. A damp substrate, two to three inches deep, would be an ideal choice.
Use a UVB light fixture to simulate natural sunlight and keep the temperatures around 75°F to 85°F during the day and drop it down to 65°F to 75°F during the night.
What to Feed Your Pacman?
From insects, worms, to small fishes, your Pacman will eat them all. You can include crickets and roaches as part of the staple diet. Earthworms, small fishes, mice can be fed as snacks.
Feed them 4 to 5 crickets or roaches in a day. You could also gut load the insects to get the right nutrients to your Pacman. Adult frogs can be mice or feeder fish every other day.
Safety Tips on Caring for your Pacman
- Adult Pacman’s have a bite force equal to that of mammalian predators. You need to be careful when handling these frogs.
- A Pacman can get territorial. It is best to house adult frogs in separate enclosures as they might very well try to eat each other.
- Hold your Pacman only when necessary, and while doing so, ensure your hands are clean as the skin of these frogs is thin, and they can easily absorb toxins.
Once you have the right setup in place and are fine with not holding your pets all day long, a Pacman frog can make for a good pet. They are colorful, cute to look at, and fun when they sneak out from their hiding spots. With good care, you can enjoy these frogs for many years.
