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WHAT IS THE BEST SUBSTRATE FOR A BLUE TEGU? aLSO WHAT IS EVERYONE CURRENTLY FEEDING THERE BLUE TEGUS?

I can only speak for my 2-3 month old little arg b/w but I use Cypress Mulch for substrate, and he eats superworms, boiled egg, mashed potato, pinkies, feeder fish and just about anything that moves!! Hope this helps.

Leyla x

When you say feeder fish do you mean gold fish? I used to feed mine gold fish quite a bit when they were around 2' long. They loved munching them! But they grew up fast and I was sick of having to be picky about getting the biggest ones in the pet stores tanks. Another thing that I started considering was about my tegus getting parasites from the fish. People also say that gold fish have some bad enzime or something. I don't know if any of it's true. I tried switching my tegus over to smelt and sardines but they didn't really like them after they figured out they weren't the same as gold fish. I guess I'm hopeing someone will say you can get BIG frozen gold fish from somewhere.com or that live minnows are parasite free. Or I could maybe buy minnows and freeze them would that kill any parasites?

I am talking about the little reds that you can buy at a dollar a dozen or so, I built a shallow pond into his enclosure and he likes to chase and eat those, and a few tadpoles too!!! It also encourages him to go into the water, aiding healthy shedding. Forgot to mention in his updates that he has already had his first complete shed, and is looking beautiful.

It would be a good thing if we could buy them frozen, but I havent found a website that sells them yet.....will keep looking

Ley x

Just to set the message/record straight, As Meego's daddy, I BUILT THE POND!!! ;E

Also............

I noticed that there were a few Anoles that started hanging out in Meego's encloure, they have since been no-shows.........

I also out a couple hundred cuban tree frog tadpoles in there, and they vanished a few days later.

So far, he is a great eater, and will eat just about anything edible............
PRIdESIGN - Broadband design for a High Speed Future...... BABY!!!!!

As an owner of a few carnivorous fish, such as Oscars, Dempseys, Pacus, etc, feeding live goldfish to anything is very risky. I'd say over 60% will hold a disease of some sort, be it ick or other parasites. If you raise your own feeder fish, then I don't see why it would not be a problem considering you take extra special care in keeping them healthy. Aside from that, as an avid reptile and fish collector, i'd stay away from the live fish. A favorite of my Tegu is a mixture of collared greens and mustard greens with a touch of cat food to simulate his appetite. Hope this was of some help.

We have found that good quality aspen bedding works great for tegus...they love to dig through the stuff and when they defecate, it compacts in a small area whereas with cypress mulch, urates dissipate through all levels of cypress making it very difficult to adequately clean (just something to consider). We soak our tegus twice weekly and we mist the aspen down once daily and they do great. Hope this helps,

Rob Carmichael, Director/Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center
City of Lake Forest Parks & Recreation (IL)

most people prefer to use cyprus mulch but i don't like it for a few reasons. first is that i live in souther california and it is dificult to get except at pet stores which is way wat too expensive, it makes too much dust (gets all over the bulbs and cage making it dirty and not visible), it burrows well but the burros do not seem to hold well. i have decided to use actually dirt or bed-a-beast for when they are young. the dirt holds burrow better and is easier too dig in. the only problem is that it is hard to find some good dirt to use. i don't want to make the mulch sound horrible because lots of people have great succes with it its just that i don't like it that much and thats my opinion.