Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i was wondering if it was okay to feed a basilisk hard boiled egg? or minnows? or canned dog food?

I've never heard of anyone feeding those types of food to anything this size. As far as the dog food is concerned, i dont know why you'd want to feed that to em as dog food isnt really good food for dogs. My wife and I recently purchased a German Shepherd and found all kinds of horror stories about alot of the brand name foods. One of the biggest complaints many people had about dog food when feeding it to dogs was that the supplements were not evenly distributed throughout the food. Meaning that in some bags/cans of food supplement levels may be too high even possibly leathal (several documented stories) as opposed to other bags having scarcely detectable supplement levels. We wound up spending a bit more for a human grade food which is quite a bit safer; however, that type of food is built for the needs of a much larger and less fragile animal. Intuitively I'd lean twards the idea that a bassie wouldent eat it or wouldnt be as potentialy healthy as it would digesting supplemented insects. There is a much larger disscussion about this on the monitor forum but keep in mind, the monitors are much larger than bassies and would be more able to process larger quantities of toxins and supplements.
As far as the minows are concerned, I'd be a little leary of parasites. I'm kinda interested to see what Rick Gordon writes about that and the eggs. But as far as the dog food, that's not something I'd try.

hard boiled eggs are good, the whites are pure protien and the egg yolks are full of vitamins, but are also high in fat, so moderation is called for, it's certainly should not be a staple part of the diet, more of a treat. I agree that dog food is bad, first its high in fillers and ash, and fat soluble vitamins like A, and D that are going to cause problems. In my experience, Herps don't do well on processed foods, even the ones designed for lizards, the side effects of such foods are calcium imbalances, an increase in waste production, obesity and general low health. Minnows are the best choice of the three above, nutrition wise they are good enough to be use as a staple food item, but I agree that you do have to aware of the risks of parsites. Never feed a live minnow or gold fish that appears to be unhealthy shows any signs of injury or cysts. Freezing will kill most parasites, and also denatures the enzyme in their gut that neutralizes vitamin b, that enzyme goes to work soon after the fish is dead and is why you never should feed dead minnows to your lizard that have not been frozen alive.

Rick, as usual, is an amazing source of new information. I won't feed fish to my herd because of the parasite risk (or earthworms) but I didn't know about the Vit. B thing in dead fish. As always, many thanks for the in depth reply. BTW, I have my wetland filter set-up (third attempt-tries #1 and #2 leaked. I think that both the dragons and myself are satisfied with this weekend's effort. I'm sure the plants will be trampled but for right now they are leaving them alone. I added some liquid starter to help give the benefical bacteria a jump start and I kept my pondmaster dual stage filter/pump. Water looks great, but I'm still not planning on drinking it myself! LOL
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dianedfisher@yahoo.com

My 3 CWD-Avanyu, Tripod and Drago

If it's working right, you could drink it, but I don't think that anyone would think it was cool if you did!