You’re wandering through a Swamp biome and watch a frog go after a small slime. One flick of its tongue later, the slime is gone and a slimeball drops. It looks like the frog would swallow just about anything that hops past, but its diet is a lot pickier than that, and knowing it is the key to turning frogs into a source of froglights.
Today, we’ll look at which mobs a frog will actually go after and what each meal leaves behind. Then, we’ll take a frog to the Nether for a froglight of your own, before covering what to feed a frog and a couple of mods that smooth out the feeding and add more to collect.
Now, let’s see what’s on the menu!
The Two Mobs on a Frog's Menu
Frogs eat two mobs: slimes and magma cubes. The catch is size, because a frog only targets the smallest ones. It ignores every bigger size – medium, large, and the semi-large slimes that come out of trial spawners – even when one is bouncing right beside it.
Small slimes and small magma cubes can spawn on their own, and you can make more by killing bigger ones. A large slime splits into two to four medium ones when it dies, and each medium one splits into two to four small ones. Magma cubes split the same way.
A frog attacks with its long tongue, pulling its prey into its mouth, and the meal vanishes on the spot with no death animation. Slimes and magma cubes only ever attack players and iron golems, so they cannot hurt a frog, whatever their size.
Wondering how to breed frogs instead? Check out our detailed guide on how to breed frogs in Minecraft.
What a Frog's Meal Leaves Behind
Every frog meal leaves something behind, and the prey decides what it is. Eating a small slime always gets you exactly one slimeball, while froglights – light-emitting blocks – only ever come from magma cubes.
| Frog Variant | Frog Color | Froglight |
|---|---|---|
| Temperate | Orange | Ochre froglight |
| Warm | White | Pearlescent froglight |
| Cold | Green | Verdant froglight |
Froglights drop when the frog eats a small magma cube, with the color of the froglight depending on the frog's color. As shown in the table above, the different variants come from the biome the frog spawned in, or the biome the tadpole was in when it grew into a frog.
How to Get a Frog to Eat a Magma Cube
Small magma cubes live in the Nether, so the plan is to bring a frog to them. Here are the steps:
- Choose a frog variant that makes the froglight color you want using the table above. Temperate frogs spawn in swamps and warm frogs in mangrove swamps, while cold frogs only turn up in a Swamp or Mangrove Swamp that borders a cold biome.
- Bring the frog with you, either on a lead or by holding a slimeball within 6 blocks of it. If you use a lead, keep in mind that it breaks when the mob on it walks into a Nether portal. The lead drops as an item on the other side, so you can pick it up and re-attach it.
- Head to the Nether and look for magma cubes in the Basalt Deltas biome or around Nether fortresses.
- Kill the large and medium magma cubes yourself so they split into smaller magma cubes, and let the frog be the one to eat those. If you or anything else kills a small magma cube, it drops no froglight.
- Collect the froglight once the frog has eaten the magma cube.
From there on out, you can repeat the trip with a frog of each variant to collect all three colors.
Feeding Frogs and Tadpoles With Slimeballs
Small slimes and magma cubes are what frogs hunt, but slimeballs are what you offer them directly. If you give two frogs a slimeball each, both enter love mode – the state that enables them to breed.
Tadpoles take slimeballs as well, and each slimeball you feed a tadpole shaves 10% off its remaining growth time.
Fireflies and Other Things Frogs Won't Eat
A Minecraft frog is a lot pickier than a real one, so fish, insects, and other mobs are safe from its tongue. Here is where the most common guesses land:
- Frogs were originally meant to eat fireflies, but the idea was scrapped because some real-world fireflies are poisonous to some frogs. The fireflies you see in the game today are only particles that firefly bushes give off in the dark.
- Axolotls hunt tadpoles, while frogs leave them alone.
- The sulfur cube – a passive mob that jumps around like slimes and magma cubes – does not count as frog food either.
Frog Mods for Enhanced Breeding and New Drops
Two mods take frog feeding further. One shows the items mobs need to breed right inside a recipe viewer, and the other adds new frog variants that drop their own loot after a meal.
Just Enough Breeding
“Just Enough Breeding” puts the answer to "What do I feed this?" inside a recipe viewer mod – a searchable screen for looking up recipes and items. It adds breeding pages that show the items mobs need to breed, so you can confirm that a frog wants slimeballs without ever leaving the game.
Those breeding pages appear inside “Just Enough Items”, “Roughly Enough Items”, or “EMI”, so the mod has nothing to show until you install one of them. Each page also shows the mob's spawn egg, which makes the mob easy to look up.
More Frogs 2
“More Frogs 2” turns a frog's meal into more than a slimeball or a froglight. It adds a lot of new frog variants, and each one now comes with its own drops when it eats a slime or a magma cube, so the frog you bring along ultimately decides what you collect.
If you would rather fine-tune the loot yourself, you can change each frog’s possible drops from the mod’s configuration file. You can also write your own data pack – an add-on file that changes how parts of the game work – to move most of the new frogs to different biomes or to change which mobs count as frog food.
How to Install Minecraft Mods
You can install the above mods automatically using the CurseForge app or manually by placing the mod files within your game's mods folder. Both methods allow you to easily add custom features and enhancements into your Minecraft experience.
If you want to learn more, you can read our detailed guide on how to install Minecraft mods.
Common Issues and Quick Fixes
My frog ignores the slime right next to it
Size is the usual reason. Frogs only hunt the smallest slimes and magma cubes, and anything larger will not interest them.
We recommend killing the bigger one yourself so it splits. A large one breaks into medium ones, and those need to split again, because only the smallest pieces count as food for the frog.
I didn't get a froglight from my frog
Check for two things. First, what the frog ate: a slime gives a slimeball, and froglights only come from magma cubes. Second, who made the kill: if you or anything else kills the small magma cube before the frog does, it drops no froglight.
I got the wrong froglight color
A froglight's color follows the variant of the frog that ate the magma cube, so the answer lies with the frog itself. We recommend swapping in a frog of the variant you want, referencing the table above to match each frog to its color.
My game crashes on startup after installing mods
A startup crash usually means one of three things:
- The mod file does not match your Minecraft version.
- The mod was made for a different loader.
- A required dependency is missing.
Check that you installed the correct Forge, Fabric, Quilt, or NeoForge file for your profile, then look at the mod page for any required files, especially for Fabric API on Fabric profiles and for Quilted Fabric API on Quilt profiles.