Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hello all, i have a few questions pertaining to my juvinile (15" female (i think) CWD.

her main source of food is crickets of corse, which are fed to her every other day. she generally seems to prefer crickets over any other type of food, especially meal worms. once she's filled up on meal worms she'll always be able to choke down a couple of crickets. The crickets are dusted more often with JurassiCal (pure calcium with no phosphorus) and sometimes dusted with JurassiVite (general vitamin supplament).

on her off days i'll toss a meal worm or three at her and that'll hold her over till the next day. (was rather concerned about a post pertaining to overfeeding that i read a while back so i generally try to keep her only slightly filled out rather than obesce)

She is allowed treats occasionally, such as pinkys (every 1-2 months) and wax worms (every other month for about a week), and most recently my wife brought home some pickled grasshoppers that she seems to love (theyre produced by zoomed "can o' grasshoppers" and lastly night crawlers which are given to her somewhat rarely since it seems that she has digestive problems with them. She wont seem to take any vegetables or fish.

the questions i have are as follows, any advice would be greatly appreciated:

1: is it possible for a CWD to have too much calcium?
2: i'm looking for a better vitamin supplement since a majority of the JurassiVite doesnt seem to stick to live prey (i believe its really intended for use on herbavours), anyone have any trade secrets specificly something with D3?
3: i'm also looking to introduce Superworms into her diet as i've heard that they can be a fairly decent staple, are they different than kingworms, just large mealworms?
4: lastly, the frequency of "treats". i want to vary her diet as much as possible for her, but this seems impossible due to the increase in grossly fatty foods. Also, living in tucson, really the grasshoppers were the most exotic food we've been able to find. I've heard of people offering roaches or spiders but unfortunately theyre not sold out here. any ideas?

Again thanks for any advice.

I think you are overly concerned with her being overweight, juvinile dragons cannot be overfed. They should be fed everyday as much as they want. Once they are adults they can become overweight, but not normally, only if fed a very high fat diet and kept in a cage that doesn't allow proper movement.

Dragons can have too much calcium. I never heard of the brand you are using, I used Rep-Cal.

Superworms and Kingworms are not the same thing, they are different species of worms. Superworms are great but they do smell terrible.

You can buy roaches online too. Soon she may stop eating crickets, adult dragons usually turn up their nose at them since they are so small. Mine ate nightcrawlers and fuzzy mice as adults. They can have loose stools after eating nightcrawlers, but that won't hurt them any. Nightcrawlers are surprisingly good for them. Fuzzy mice are older so they have a higher calcium content and lower fat content then pinky mice.
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i think that she might benefit from more mice, i find that mice play an important role in growing an animal {wd's, snakes, and anything that will prey on them(as far as reptiles go, ie not cats)} up to adult hood. pinkies are not the highest in calcium content but as mice get bigger so does their calcium %. so with rapid growth that wd's experience when growing up, they need alot of calcium, i dont think any powder can compare to what theyre actually getting out of their food, so try giving her a pinkie once a week, i know that many wd owners feed mice as a staple to their wd's (when theyre adults) one of them happens to be doug mader, and he has pretty much wrote the book when it comes to these animals.

p.s. maybe try dusting pinkies in the calcium as well, and make sure ur wd gets exposed to some natural sunlight.

sounds like your doing a great job keep it up
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CHONG188

More fuzzies or pinkies, Pinkies are lower in calcium but have a slightly better calcium to phosphorus ratio, so really either is good. Generally the problem with calcium is with the ratio of it to phosphorus in the diet and not the quantity, 2:1 is best. Pinkies are close to 2:1 and fuzzies and adult mice, slightly more phosphorus. Crickets are especially high in phosphorus and you should switch to something better as soon as you can. Superworms(zoophobas) are better and have a thinner chitonous shell then regular mealworms(Tenibrio molitor), but you should still use a suppliment. King mealworms, or Giant mealworms are regular mealworms after being fed a hormone, so don't feed those. Some places mix up the common names so look for the latin name Zoophobas, those are the good ones. Silkworms are better but are harder to keep, since they eat so much.