Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My meal worm's diet is so freaking good, it's amazing. Potatoes, carrots, bannana squash...it's amazing. How silly are they to think they'll survive that stage!

Does giving meal worms diffrent foods, mean diffrent vitamins for your leos?

Because if thats true, your leos are in for a healthy surprise. LOL Didnt that sound corny...
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Normal - Male - Ninja
High Yellow - Female - Ninjete

The "gut load" is a significant source of nutrition for your leos. With crickets, for instance, failure to gut load means you're feeding your leos on crickets that have probably eaten other starving crickets. Probably alot like trying to live on popcorn I would imagine.

I notice a huge difference in the "juicyness" of my mealworms when you feed them carrots, potatoes, etc. When my leos bite down on them they literally ooze with nutrition.

The more nutritious the "gut load" the more nutritious the mealworms would be I imagine.

For mine, they live on oat bran (which I'm assuming they consume) and carrot slices. I occasionally sprinkle some cichlid food in there with them.

Should I be giving them more "gutload" or is this okay??
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-Kristin

0.2.2 Leopard Geckos
(Kumquat, Tamale, Jujube, and Nougat)

Mine really seem to love potatoes, but they eat carrots like crazy too. I'm trying to get my own colony going, that just seems to be the trend so far.

Try soaking the carrots in water for a day or two, too, they absorb more moisture. My crickets live well off grapes..they're gone in an hour or two!

I put a few scraps from dinner preparation on a yogurt lid for them last night. In addition to the carrots and cichlid pellets, they have a small slice of apple and a few chunks of green pepper.

If there is any vegetable that I should be wary of "serving" to my geckos (via the mealworms of course) please let me know so I don't hurt my babies.
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-Kristin

0.2.2 Leopard Geckos
(Kumquat, Tamale, Jujube, and Nougat)

I don't know if anything you feed the mealies fruit/vege wise can hurt the gecko..I didn't really think of that for some reason. Anyone have any experience with this?

The only reason I ask is because in my toxicology class I learned that a lot of times plants produce their own toxins that just don't really do much to humans (usually). I took the peppers out because even though bells are "hot" they are still related to other peppers that DO produce toxins (Capsaicin - that wonderful spicy feeling we like so much). I'm just going to stick with extremely mild fruits and veggies. And fish food for protein.

I'm sure that if any of the plants were "toxic" that the mealworm would probably die off before the geckos had a chance at 'em.
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-Kristin

0.2.2 Leopard Geckos
(Kumquat, Tamale, Jujube, and Nougat)

check out:

http://www.beautifuldragons.com

This site is geared toward Beardies, but it has a great section on vegie nutrition. Anything they don't recomend for Beardies, I wouldn't use to gut load mealies...

Good luck,
Indiana_Dan