Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just wanted to address your reply below and help clarify a bit.
you wrote:
"Many of the ingredients listed are plant products. It doesn't
make sense to skip a step in the food chain and feed those products directly to the geckos when the
insects are physiologically better-suited for the job."
You are right about several of the ingredients being plant based, but if you look at the first ingredient it is Calcium casienate. This is a very high quality source of protien that makes the formula a min. of 25% protien by dry mass. This is greater than a cricket in most cases. I'm not understanding what you wrote about skipping a step in the food chain. I think what needs to be understood is tha nutrients are nutrients. I does not matter if they come from a cricket, a powder, or a powder you dust on your cricket, they all go though the same enzymatic reactions in the geckos body. Again, I was never suggesting that yours or anyone else's guloading routine is wrong, I'm just offering another way of achieving the same goal. I use a basic gutload formula for my mealies and use the t-rex formula to fill in the nutritional "gaps".This has worked incredably well for me this past season, and I plan to continue using the same method of nutrient delivery for my colony and it's offspring. Here are 2 links from the Rhac forum that relate to the gutloading vs. dusting subject both were written by Repashy, the person who formulated the diets:

http://forum.kingsnake.com/rhac/messages/4415.html

http://forum.kingsnake.com/rhac/messages/4421.html

Make no mistake, the t-rex leo formula is a complete food, and though a have witnessed my leos lapping it up often I don't know many that will eat a pile of it. This is why I dust the mealies with it and leave some at the bottom of the feeding dish. I hope this helps anyone interested in the t-rex dusts. Have a happy holiday

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Bill DiFabio
Azteclizard.com
Email Me

how did you know the song???? i didn't put it up there...... but since you said that guess this one (from them)

"and if you believe there's not a chance tonight"

even thought theres ****A BIG HINT**** at the end guess what song
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Hello peoples

Dispite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage. - Billy Corgan ,Smashing Pumpkins

Tonight, Tonight.

How do I know? I've probably been a Pumpkins fan longer than you have.
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chickabowwow

3.2.3 leopard geckos (Rosie, Locke, Lisa, Caesar, Tommy)

i have been listening to them since A little after kish(96) (sp? on last two) came out (97) so i highly dought that you have been lastening longer and remember i have a 21 year old brother that has cd's

well i luv 1979 and tonight tonight
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Hello peoples

Dispite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage. - Billy Corgan ,Smashing Pumpkins

shoot i been listening to the "punkins" since i was 16... hmmmmmmm 13 years now... ermm since 1990...... im dating mayself here
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-robin struck
Geckoheads And Geeks

Remember, I'm older than you. lol

But it's a good thing you're listening to your brother's CDs. I do that with my older brother, too. In fact, he's the one who got me listening to SP.
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chickabowwow

3.2.3 leopard geckos (Rosie, Locke, Lisa, Caesar, Tommy)

I followed the links and noticed this line in the first post: "Also, the cricket quickly processes and degrades many of the vitamins in the loading formula, so only the first part of the gut contains value." I'm assuming he's talking about the foregut of the crickets. So according to him, the only nutritional value of the crickets is in the food that hasn't even begun to be processed; it's just sitting there in the stomach, being broken down to smaller pieces but not actually being digested.

I'm no expert in cricket digestive physiology, but isn't the whole point of gutloading to allow the feeder insects to assimilate the food that they are eating and not just physically store it for whatever they're being fed to? What's wrong if they do have digestive enzymes that break down the fat, carbohydrates, and proteins of the gutload formula? They also have enzymes to eliminate plant toxins. The nutrients still get absorbed into their bodies, except now it's located in animal tissue, which is easier for simple digestive systems to break down.

Nutrients are nutrients, but where they are derived from makes a big difference. Since leopard geckos are carnivorous, it doesn't seem like they would be able to digest the plant-based ingredients as well as omnivorous insects do. It doesn't seem like even if the gecko can get to the gutload in the foregut, it wouldn't be able to efficiently digest the contents.
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chickabowwow

3.2.3 leopard geckos (Rosie, Locke, Lisa, Caesar, Tommy)

Xelda, from what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) the purpose of gutloading is to get the nutrient - rich contents of the Cricket's gut, into the leo. We don't neccesarily need the crickt to digest them - because they break down what we give them. The contents of their GUT becomes further nutrition for the leo.

I'm becoming more and more convinced about the Leopard Gecko dust. I'll be using it on all my juvi's this year, and possibly some select adults - sort of my own personal set of trials.

Fresh minds - new ideas. it's always good to keep one's mind open to new ways of doing things. Plus, I was getting sick of searching all over Mankato for my select ingredients for my mealworm custom feed. LOL
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Monte Meyer
Powergeckos
Email

No Fru-Fru morphs in the herp room

generally after feeding yout bugs or gut loading them you should wait a minimum of 8 hours for all the bugs to get a chance at eating, before feeding to your geckos. if you wait too long after feeding your bugs you need to feed them again to achieve maximum nutritional value. the term guyloading explains its self... loading the gut with essential vitamins and nutriets..... like bill said a nutrient is a nutrient regardless of fresh or pwrders shoot of even wet...
leos i will say are prolly more omnivoroud in the wild than we think.... maybe not a true monivore but i bet they eat more plants than we think.... one would think that if you feed a carnivorous animals too much plant based material.. it would in essense upset the tummy and either cause them to vomit (to rid it from it's system) and rid via the hershey hiway, resulting in diareaha..... when a food item is not acceptable in any animal these are the two places it is purged at. i feed my bugs all kindsa plant based stuff, some fresh some powered and to this point in time... neither of the two vomiting or diareaha has happened, and i have been using my same gutlloading techniques for more than two years

these are just my experiences and opinions though
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-robin struck
Geckoheads And Geeks

all of my typos
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-robin struck
Geckoheads And Geeks

That's a funny way to put it. It's also an interesting observation. But I don't think leos are omnivorous because they lack the teeth for chewing plants and also lack the interest in non-moving food targets.

I feed my bugs TONS of veggies and grains. I didn't even consider that they would upset the stomachs of the leos. The reason why I'm so skeptical about the Sandfire Superfood line is because even though the nutrients are all there in the formula, how well can leos obtain all of them when they have a simple digestive system that is meant for processing animal tissue not plants? If somebody can clear that up for me, I would appreciate it.
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chickabowwow

3.2.3 leopard geckos (Rosie, Locke, Lisa, Caesar, Tommy)

Allen mentioned that the different versions of the ICB series were really for marketing purposes but any of them work. But how can a formula for chameleons and tortoises work the same for leopard geckos? The diet demands are different, and once again, some of those herps can eat plants and others can't.
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chickabowwow

3.2.3 leopard geckos (Rosie, Locke, Lisa, Caesar, Tommy)

The ICB series is was formulated for dusting on insects and rounding out there nutrients. thats why they all can be the same. He explains that in his post. The tortoise diet is furmulated for veggies.
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Bill DiFabio
Azteclizard.com
Email Me