Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After feeding crickets since '88, this year in May I switched to mealworms after terrible cricket survival rates. It seems that growth rates of hatchlings cut literally in half. This is with over 200 leopard geckos and fatties, not just a few animals. No other changes were made. The mealies were fed on wheat bran, oatmeal, carrots, apple. The only explanation I have is maybe it was too low in fat. The breeders, however plumped up great, I believe much faster than on cricks. Any thoughts or experiences to share ??

I have seen the same thing.But i still feed 80% crickets.I have talked to people and they said they see more bad eggs ,when the females eat only mealworms.Some thing to keep a eye on.

I have no experience with watching what feeders promote faster growth rates among hatchlings, but from a biological standpoint, crickets seem to be the better option over mealworms.

For one thing, they're more close to what leos would eat in the wild. If leos were burrowers, then a worm/beetle larvae diet would make more sense. But since leos aren't true burrowers, it doesn't seem likely they would even encounter any worm or beetle larvae in the wild unless they happened to be digging a nest. I think this adversely affects their health more than people realize. I used to wonder how geckos could survive in the wild without vitamin & mineral supplementation, but the reason is pretty simple. Nature prescribed a certain type of diet for them so that it would not be nutritionally lacking. Basically, with mealworms you need to supplement because they're not very nutritious. They don't supply a complete diet for leos, so it's necessary to fill in the blanks by supplementation.

Branching onto a slightly related topic, I think people over-supplement their leos due to the pioneers of the leopard gecko hobby feeding mealworms exclusively.

Now, I'm only speculating on this and I do plan to research urinalysis to test my theory with a microscope, but I've noticed that the white urates of my adult geckos tend to be more crystalized when I feed mealworms. Sometimes the crystals would cover up to half of the solid urate. This was originally brought to my attention about a month ago by gothra, but it concerns me that people tend to think this is normal. Excessive crystallization is a bad sign of kidney trouble but can also cause problems itself by blockages and toxicity.

At that time, I was feeding crickets and mealworms, and depending on their individual preferences, roaches and superworms. I also fed my non-breeding adults about every other day and dusted every other feeding with calcium. What I've done since then is eliminate mealworms from their diets altogether and reduce calcium dusting to only once every 1-2 weeks. I've noticed no adverse effects hinting towards any kind of deficiency, and the crystals in the urates have been reduced substantially.

Right now I'm trying to figure out if it was the mealworms or the supplementation that caused the crystallization, but I think it was a combination of both. I plan to analyze some samples of the crystallized urates myself so I can find what minerals they're composed of.

Hopefully my rambling didn't bore anybody!
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chickabowwow

Thanx a million Xelda. If the cricket shipments arrive alive in cooler weather they do last much longer as opposed to summer. I have a colony of roaches going but will have them tested for nasties before using as feeders. You can never be too careful. I did have my best seasons when I kept mice and fed crickets supplemented with pinkies.

That's great Xelda

My geckos also showed urate crystals which can be linked to mealworms my female i've had for 4 years and recently within the year she's been eating mealworms and the crystals have appeared in both of my leos. Previously she had been exclusively fed on crix (lived in a small town with no other petstores, these crickets were dusted at EVERY meal... dont' ask me why, i am just plain stupid.

However currently, when i decrease the calc supplement like once every 2 weeks the crystals go away without any change in behavior.

I totally agree with you that the crystals are not normal and i will be monitoring their stools more closely, i also agree with your mealworm and increases supplement correlation theory.
Could it also be higher amounts of chitin in mealies and over supplementation leading to urates? A particular combo of meali chitin vs crix.

anyways for those who have no idea what i'm rambling about, i think Variety is key. No such thing as a staple

I haven't noticed any crystals in my older gex that I have kept for 6 or 7 years. He was fed on a cricket diet perviously not dusted but more recently I have been dusting. I also use sand though, so the droping do tend to get sand ON them, I haven't noticed sand IN them as many people complain. My gex is acually an African-Fat tailed Gecko and my vet informed me that almost all of these geckos are wild caught espcially is they are full grown, mainly because they lack a large set of breeders. He refused to geat any worms before but recently has taken to them. I think this might be because he was likely a wild capture, this is the same reason I use sand. I do dust with every feeding and feed almost everyday but that is because he is a little underweight. Before his heating rock got unpluged (probably because it was next to the video games) and he didn't have a good diet. So now i'm using the T-Rex dust and feeding extra to try and build up his weight, which is working great. He also got a humid hide in the last couple years. The pet store I got him fomr (no longer around) didn't tell me or know that they need sucj hides, so he is laking a few toes. They also didn't tell me they were nocternal and i didn't figure that out for a few years.
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~Akira
1.0 African Fat-tailed Gecko
0.0.1 Leopard Gecko (hypo tangrine circle-back?)
0.0.2 Red Ear Slider

I have a female (Nana) that had a lot of crystal in her urate about a month ago, she was fed 6-8 dusted supers every second day. Nana also tends to 'poop' only once every 4-5 days. Since then, I decreased her dusting to once a week, turned the temperature up a bit, changed the humid hid substrate from paper towel to sphagnum moss (holds moisture better). And after 1 to 2 weeks, most of the crystals are gone.

I also find that my leos that ate crickets as staple hardly get those crystals in their urate, even when I supplemented them 3 times a week (cut that down to once a week now).