Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Zu preem makes a canned monitor diet, does anyone use it, and is it any better then using canned cat or dog food? Also has anyone ever used feeder goldfish for smaller monitors. If so should feeding goldfish be species specific?

I wouldn't feed my monitors any of that. My Argus gets mice, hissers and once a month a little turkey/scrambled egg. My three Ackies get crickets, sm. hissers, weekly pinkies, and monthly turkey/scrambled eggs. I think with anything less you will eventually end up with a deficiency of some sort. Which in turn causes your critter needless pain and suffering, potentionaly death. Maybe even rather large vet bills to get your critter well again. So the money you saved by skimping on the diet will be handed over to the vet, your monitor may be beyond help, and you have a cupboard full of Alpo. Save yourself some trouble, send me your monitor, buy a pug, and the vet will get by on his own. No hard feelings, thats just my thoughts on that kind of diet. What kind of monitor did you say you had? Clint

no pug for me thanks, i have 3 argus/flavi crosses 1 BT adn 1 savannah. I dont use the canned monitor diet as a staple, however it is part of the total diet of mostly gutloaded crickets and mice, as well as cockroaches and superworms, i just give them all canned diet once in a while as a variance.

I used zupreem for a short period of time with whole animals as the entire rest of that monitors diet (80% or more), it doesnt seem to do any harm at least over a short time but I wouldnt use it as any basis of a diet. Stick with whole rodents, birds, insects its so much more nutritious and less expensive. Dog food and cat food is just as the label says for dogs and for cats, although most of those foods are questionable to be any good for them, after all there is an ingredient list but there are no laws which state that list has to be true as in the case with human food, note why dog and cat food states "not for human consumption", that covers them legally for not being responible for whats in it. The same goes for the zupreem, is it in fact whats in it? I cant tell you because I didnt make it, and company employees of pet food manufacturers probably sign non disclosure agreements to work for them. Id trust a food you know whats in it, whole rodents, birds and insects.

Where does one go to find the nutritional content of goldfish?

A crocodilian that was being fed fish and nothing else when tiny especially goldfish, they dont grow much at all, and are all twisted and rubbery (MBD). Theres a website with nutritional values for feeder animals somewhere around. Non the less stick with a diet that works.

I did a bit of research on carp, and it appears that they are high in phosphorus. Of course, people aren't eating the bones. But fish in general might have a bad calcium/phosphorus ratio. So maybe that's what happened to those crocodiles.

Carp, 1 fillet (6 oz.) (169.8g) (cooked, dry heat)
Calories: 275
Protein: 38.9g
Carbohydrate: 0.0g
Total Fat: 12.2g
Fiber: 0.0g
*Excellent source of: Potassium (726mg), Selenium (27.5mcg), Vitamin B12 (2.5mcg), and Vitamin E (15.3 IU)
*Good source of: Magnesium (64.6mg)

*Foods that are an “excellent source” of a particular nutrient provide 20% or more of the Recommended Daily Value, based upon United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines. Foods that are a “good source” of a particular nutrient provide between 10 and 20% of the USDA Recommended Daily Value. Nutritional information and daily nutritional guidelines may vary in different countries. Please consult the appropriate organization in your country for specific nutritional values and the recommended daily guidelines.
Link

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Eryx - All the fun of a boa in a convenient pocket size!

based on the content of its diet(i.e whats in its stomach at the time of consumption). This goes for mice and rats or any other item we use to give our animals their fill. So to say that they have no nutritional value with out adding diet into the equation is in my oppinion an unclear statement. See, you can feed all the whole prey you want to your monitors but if those that you feed aren't healthy nor will your monitor be. Which is why i choose to breed a majority of what i feed to my animals, so i know what im feeding is nutritional. But i also would never feed goldfish to anything other than an oscar, parona or the like. Just my thoughts.
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Jaye- " When you try of all your forces to make your own way, you will help some of others and will be helped by others. As long as you do not make your own way, you cannot help anybody, and nobody can help you. " (Shunryu Suzuki)

Until they were started on supplemented insects and then on rodents they stayed so tiny, size of a hatchling, but the owner didnt want to hear that was the cause, he insisted that fish were a niles food, and common died after 6 months and never grew (it also had MBD), the ornate started eating chicken peep parts then grew fast after which it eats rodents and peeps today, its over 3 ft, a bit small for its age but looks good. Ive used bulk frozen rodents and peeps from Rodent Pro for years with great sucess, and I dont need to supplement them.
Ive seen many caiman, and other crocodilians that ate fish for so long with MBD, and they didnt grow or very very slowly.

They get their nutrients from hair, feathers, skin, fat, bones, guts, etc. After all if you ate nothing but rabbit meat you would die of malnutrition or also called "rabbit starvation", but if you ate the whole rabbit you would never have those problems.

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Jaye- " When you try of all your forces to make your own way, you will help some of others and will be helped by others. As long as you do not make your own way, you cannot help anybody, and nobody can help you. " (Shunryu Suzuki)

Why do you think the animal's health has so much to do with it? I mean I can understand if they were dwarfed so they had less bones, or had all their hair fall out, or their liver was abnormally small or something, but overall their health has little to do with the whole prey item. I mean tons of monitors eat carrion - how sickly and diseased do you think that stuff is/was ebfore it died? Also, if an animal is frozen and thawed before feeding to something else, any disease, etc would die off...

They like it stinky and seasoned I guess. My old timor still prefers quail that way after so long, and hes rubbed off on his mate. My friend told me today about their eating habits now, glad to see he never changed. The nutrients found throughout the whole prey item in guts, hair etc are where almost every needed vitamin and mineral comes from. Its good to feed a good diet to your feeders, but I cant imagine an average bulk rodent fed a good diet as a feeder compared to a feeder that eats an excellent diet and is gut loaded makes too much of a difference overall, Im sure its better in a small way. By all means keep doing so it has worked so far for you.

i know mmonitors in the wild are well adapted to eating prey with all sorts of diseases such as carrion for instance. But they also pick up some of these bacterias as well. All im saying is in cativity its better safe than sry. I've had a bad experience with feeding sickly petstore mice in the past and its something i'd rather not repeat. Now granted back then i was new to herps and didnt know some of the things i know now. So it couldve been a number of things. So i guess if the animals are kept in optimal conditions the health of the prey may or may not be of that much importance but understand these conditions are rarely met by most who post here. Thus why i added to SHvars post. In the case that other requirements aren't being met, healthy prey could mean a world of difference. But like i said in my previous post this is only my oppinion, which may or may not be factual at all.

PEACE OUT!
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Jaye- " When you try of all your forces to make your own way, you will help some of others and will be helped by others. As long as you do not make your own way, you cannot help anybody, and nobody can help you. " (Shunryu Suzuki)

Good point about husbandry. A monitor won't be able to digest and pass a lot of stuff without the high temps they really like so much. And I'm sure it also has something to do with their immunity to that nasty stuff they like so much.