Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I replied to a post you made down below. I found an old post on the Rhac forum that sparked my interest in the subject. Just follow the link.

Old post about gutloaded vs. dusting

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Bill DiFabio
Azteclizard.com
Email Me

Interesting. The information I had came from a fellow who did nutritional breakdowns on feeder insects. His site was down the last time I checked it, hopefully it will return, as it was the only one of its type I've been able to find. He cited a much higher calcium to phosphorous ratio in crickets gutloaded with a high calcium commercial cricket gutload formula, as opposed to crickets that were dusted--the combo of gutloading WITH dusting resulted in a good (close to, but not quite at ideal) cal/phos ratio in the crickets. As you mentioned, these high calcium gutload formulas will kill the crickets, so you need to feed them off after you load them.

I would say that which of the two you believe is relatively unimportant--both gutloading with calcium and dusting are required to come close to an ideal cal/phos ratio in crickets, which is something that both sources seem to agree on.

I think that if you have a nutritious gutload and provide a dish of vitamin/mineral supplement in the tank at all times, it is not necessary to dust the insects that often (once a week?).
A question to the forum: How many times do you dust your feeder insects for adult leos? Every feeding? Every other? Once a week? Not at all?

Cleo
1:1 leos...soon to be 1:5!!!