Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My girlfriend's basilisk is now about a year old. It is good size and we feel we're underfeeding it. We started feeding it about 6 pinkies a week along with 15 crickets per day. He decided now he no longer likes crickets and practically tears our hand off to get the mice. My question: how many pinkies per week should we be giving him?

Post a picture and we will give you our opinion on whether or not he looks underfed, otherwise 6 pinkies a week should be ample for one Basilisk.

this picture is a couple months old, he is bigger now. I will take a new one tonite when I get home.

If it is the animal pictured in the other post, it looks really good and healthy.
But you are everything but underfeeding it.
Definitely you are overfeeding!
So many pinkies dramtically raise the risk for the animal to develop gout and/or kidney failure.
One mouse per week is ample!
You should add like 10-15 medium sized insects PER WEEK to the single pinkie and thats it.
More will be detrimental on the long run!
Believe me!
Take care to well supplement the food and offer a variety of at least 4 to 5 feedrr species on a regular schedule. Roaches, Zophobas, locusts and the like in addition to the crickets are fine.

Ci@o

Ingo

I feed my water dragons 2- 3 fuzzies a week. Pinkies can be quite small, so I would necessarily say that you are over feeding, but would add that feeding less will lengthen his life. Lizards will rarely act as if they are full, and are design to put away as much food as they can. In the wild a great deal of activity is envolved in catching prey, so they eat alot an burn it off quick. Most captive lizards are the equivelant of pot bellied couch potatoes, and end up dieing of obesity related diseases. My rule of thumb is if you can't the seperation of muscles in the tail or the hip bones, then you need to cut back on the food.