Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all, newbie to the forums here. Had a leopard gecko for a couple of years now, and I've never been able to get her to take mealworms that have either been powdered or sprayed with calcium supplement. She'll bite them, then immediately spit them out and start wiping her chin on the substrate of her aquarium. Any ideas on how I can get her to take some sort of supplement?

the only advice i can give is what worked with me, because i had the same sort of problem. however, your gecko sounds a little more stubborn. Anyway, what i did was i tricked him. i gave him 3 or 4 crickets or worms WITHOUT the dust, and then threw in one WITH the dust, and he ate it. fortunately, he started eating the dusted ones without getting tricked into it. good luck with yours!

I've got one like that, although she will take supplement from the dish if she needs it. I add calcium powder to my gutload for the feeder insects, as well as using a high-calcium veggie, such as collard greens or spinach, as the water source for my insects. Good luck!
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0.3.0 leos, Geo, Tang, Ginger
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink Indigo (Indy)
0.1.1 frogs Buffy the Cricket Slayer, Butrose Butrose Froggy
0.0.5 firebelly newts Wayne Newton, Isaac Newton, Fig Newton, Juice Newton & Olivia Newton John
1.1.0 cats Gus & Mena

Spinach isn't good for gut-loading when it comes to calcium. I'm not sure if the calcium amount is low or high, but it supposedly has a high enough phosphorus ratio that it causes problems.

I wouldn't think anything of it, except that I can vouch for its inadequacy when it comes to getting enough calcium in an animal's system. I raised tadpoles for a good while and encountered problems with ones that I fed spinach near morphing-time. Their legs were rubbery and needed a lot of time and calcium in their first few weeks to get them normal... and they didn't grow the same, either.
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Got hips like Cinderella / Must be having a good shame / Talking sweet about nothing / Cookie I think you're Tame

np
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chickabowwow

3.2 leopard geckos (Rosie, Locke, Lisa, Caesar, Tommy)
and 3 eggs a' cookin'

That's good to know. I was just going on the nutritional analysis of spinach in the book at the grocery store. I think it's a difficult gutload to use as it wilts so quickly.
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0.3.0 leos, Geo, Tang, Ginger
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink Indigo (Indy)
0.1.1 frogs Buffy the Cricket Slayer, Butrose Butrose Froggy
0.0.5 firebelly newts Wayne Newton, Isaac Newton, Fig Newton, Juice Newton & Olivia Newton John
1.1.0 cats Gus & Mena

I tried gutloading the other day with veggie scraps my mom gave me. It's called choy sum in Chinese and dubbed something like Flowering Chinese Cabbage at the store. (It's a dark green leafy vegetable with yellow flowering buds.) Well, you know how after you put some veggies in, and after the mealies are done eating it, you still find scraps and dried up pieces that never got eaten? Within hours, my mealies and superworms had devoured ALL of the choy sum. It was the first time I'd ever seen them do that with any veggie before, and I've fed them stuff like collard greens and baby bok choy. If you can find some of the really leafy Asian vegetables, they're supposed to be low on the oxalic acid.
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chickabowwow

3.2 leopard geckos (Rosie, Locke, Lisa, Caesar, Tommy)
and 3 eggs a' cookin'