Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey I heard many bad stories about dusting the food you feed pacmans. If you do too much of it, it could cause serious damage to the frog but too little it causes deficiencies in the frogs diet. So how much exactly do you give your horned frog? And what vitamin product do you guys use? I heard Reptivite by zoomed is good, what do you think? Thanks a lot ppl
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0.0 (beginner)

I heard you can use the human vitamin...someone suggested Centrum. Human vitamin contains more trace elements than any pet multivitamins. The vitamin supplement use for dogs and cats and birds is better than the reptile vitamins., but the human vitamin is much better than any of it. I don't think nobody knows exactly how much to give your frog...I don't think there is any studies done on this subject. I dust mine lightly once a week with equal amount of calcium supplement. I heard some people do it every two weeks from the book I've read. It's better to be a little under supplemented than to over supplement the frog. If there is any problem, it's much easier to fix. If you do get the human vitamins you can ground it up with mortar and pestal or a coffee grinder just prior to using.

One good way to know for sure the frog is getting all the essential nutrient is feed it varieties of food..inverts should be the main staple. You can catch like a little moths from the lamb outside, or other insects. Make sure the insects is not toxic and is not comtaminated with pesticide. Moths are not toxic though. i've fed it to my firedbellied toads. You can keep the bugs in the jar for 24 hours to see if it's acting wierd and dying from pesticide.

Many moths are toxic. However, at least where I live there are small tan ones in the grass that I've often fed to my herps because I've always seen the anoles outside eat them. Moths may be more toxic to mammals than herps, anyway. Who knows?...

I use Reptivite, and it seems to be working out great. Before I started using it, I had a frog who developed metabolic bone disease, due to improper diet (this was many, many moons ago.) But using it now, none of my frogs suffer from malnutrition. I use it about once a month. I would not think that using too much is bad, perhaps the excess is passed out as wastes, like if we eat too many vitamins? Not 100% sure on that note, maybe someone else on here can elaborate.
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*~Ginevive~*

That depends on whether the vitamin is fat or water soluable, just as in humans. Like, we can die from eating too much iron. We can be harmed from too much vitamin A,E, among others. Vitamin C and the like cannot really be overconsumed, though. I assume that it's the same way for the animals because the vitamins are stored and discarded the same way in their bodies. However, I don't know much about the calcium, because I *believe* that it's harmless in humans, but I dunno about herps

Well I highly doubt human vitamins are good for anything except humans. Just look at the labels on the vitamins, all of them say do not take more than reccommended dosage. That's there for a reason, they are very strong. I would just stick with herp vitamins for herps and human vitamains for humans.

It's the same thing as feeding it to herps. No one has ever done study on the amount needed, and these vitamins are for herps in general, not any particular kind...now, something tells me that the humans vitamins are better than for animals. A lot of these stuff is adapted from the humans vitamins...the animals' are probably in poor quality, whereas in humans' are made from quality ingredients because no one is going to spend that much on animals, at least for some.

I think the human vitamins are a much higher quality and definitely much more complete. But I think the danger lies in overdoing it with vitamins targeted towards humans over herps. I do add some human vitamins to the gut load for my crix and bugs, but since the frog gets so little of that, I want it to be strong. I'm still worried that it may be too much, but I doubt it.

I think the vitamin you have to worry about over-dosing is the fat-soluble vitamin A. Unlike most others, overdoses are stored in the liver and fat cells instead of being passed off and can cause liver damage. If it is in the form of carotenes, it does not do this, as there is a feed-back mechanism in the gut that changes carotenes to vitamin A only when it is needed. Human vitamins may have too much straight vitamin A for amphibians. I'm judging this on what occurs in mammals and don't know if the mechanism is the same in amphibians.
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Patty
Lost River, Idaho

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