Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was looking at products on one of those reptile supply store websites & came across the vitamins... it said that you should not be using a calcium supplement with D3 in it if you plan to let your reptile have natural sun. I use Herptivite & Rep-Cal (with D3) for all my lizards & I let them all have natural sun at least 1-2 times a week, plus they all have a UVB bulb in their tank that is on 8-10 hours/day (except the leos). Should I not be using the calcium with D3 in it? Can someone explain?
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Danielle
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1.0 Chinese water dragon, 0.3 leos, 1.0 adopted iguana, 0.0.2 beardies, 2.0 green anoles, 1.0 blue anole and 2.2 bettas ~My Pets~

If your iguana gets both natural sunlight and of course light from UVB bulbs and is healthy it shouldn't need the D3 supplements since those are what makes the D3. Some even say that the D3 in vitamin supplements is useless and believe the iguanas body can't use it so it just stays in the body or is eventually filtered out with other wastes. There have been some cases where it is believed the synthetic D3 in vitamins have caused problems in the iguana such as kidney failure and can lead to their death. These are just things I have read and I hope it can be of help. I personally have had no negative problems with D3. We rescue iguanas and have had many with MBD. We always provide both natural sunlight and UVB bulbs. We also dust once during the weekend with calcium D3 and once in the middle of the week with calcium that has no D3. We have had no adverse affects and from their bloodwork they are all doing great!!

Hope this helps, someone else might have other first hand stories of problems but I don't.

Stephanie

All that you wrote is true, as far as anyone knows right now. It's interesting. It does seem that igs can't utilize exogenous Vit.D., and I think no one really understands bio-chemistry of it. When an ig is given vit D and D^3 supplements, but are given no UVB, they go ahead and get MBD. Somewhere in Melissa Kaplan's huge collection of articles is a discussion of the danger of givng Vit D to an ig sick with advanced MBD; it seems that this can tip the ig into sudden fatal serum calcium deficiency. Maybe that happens with injected doses. I'll try to find that article.

Beginners fall into the trap of over-supplementing, especially with iguanas. That causes probems. I supplemented when I was a beginner and probably over-did it. Many ig keepers don't supplement at all and have good outcomes (but a rescue with MBD is another story).

Other lizards such as monitors can be supplemented a lot with seemingly no problem. I frequently see posts from people who regularly dust prey animals with supplements, apparently without problems.

Roger