Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi i have been paying so much for crickets and am tired of raising them so i was thinking mealworms are super easy to deal with and are super cheap so i was just wanting to know if mealworms could be a full time diet for my tokay and will my tokay eat the beetles of the mealworms.......also how many to feed at a time.

No I wouldnt feed them as a staple diet. As treats they are ok. As for the beetles they might not even look at them. . some times if the food is that small they wont even look at it.

Blake

I have kept tokays for over 7 years now and all I feed is mealworms and superworms.

They seem to do well on them, just like other geckos.

>>I have kept tokays for over 7 years now and all I feed is mealworms and superworms.
>>
>>They seem to do well on them, just like other geckos.

I use them too! Seem to work fine for mine, I offer them other stuff to vary the diet a bit too.

Kevin
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No...I agree with Blake. Not as a staple.

Many people live off McDonalds for years too, but that doesn't make it a good food item to offer does it?

Mealworms are one of the least nutritous feeders on the market if you look at the numbers. They are extremely high in fat, phosphorus, sodium, chitin, and low in calcium. I don't care how much you gut load, you're still starting with a substandard and potentially dangerous food item if you are going to use it as a staple. They should be offered only as a treat.

Mealworms are responsible for more gut impaction deaths than probably any other insect feeder. If you don't pay attention and you feed too many, and/or your hydration slips a bit, you are asking for an impaction. Ideally, they should be size appropriate ( bigger is not better ), and freshly shed.

All that mealworm fat requires extra water to in the bowels to break it down, in order to pass thought the intestinal barrier and be put to use, or, be recombined in the blood and stored again as fat. This places extra burden on organ function, and water stores, and will slow metabolic rate eventually. That's especially bad for a herp that may be sick, or may not be getting the best care to begin with.

The way it was explained to me by a microbiologist/parasitology aquaintance; most invertebrate larvae are going to be poor nutritional content and less healthy than mature insect forms. The larvae is convering all the good stuff it takes in, into rapid growth and making it into growth, fat to sustain on through pupae, and expelling waste...Larvae are not maintaining a homeostasis of nutritious components in their body, as the mature invertebrate forms do.

I breed mealworms, but I refuse to push them and sell them as a staple food item the way that everyone else is. They're loved by herps, but they are just junk, can be dangerous, are unhealthy, and all that should be remembered.

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I used supers and mealies for years almost 10 years on a single pair and they were the best Tokays I have ever seen in my life.

I suction cup a deep deli cup to the glass of my tank and filled it with some at every feeding. I blame this feeding method on the fact that my Tokays had been prolific breeders and had gone from the typical petshop skinny Tokays to giants!

But your message does not discredit the science of the makeup of these larvae that I know to be fact. I have studied this in depth, and have spoken to biologists about it. I know about the carbon bonds in triglyceride fats, and the metabolic work it takes to break those bonds, to allow the constituents to pass through the intestinal barrier, and be used or recombined in the blood stream for storage. I know that the metabolism is slower for reptiles because they are ectothermic, and that such metabolic work for them to break carbon bonds consumes water stores and requires more heat of them, and it also draws metabolism down further, which may lead to other complications. I'm not saying that they should never be offered...but they are not healthy, because they are mostly fat, sodium, and chitin; and too many people think they are healthy all the time offerings.

I know too much about this to be swayed by anecdotal observations by lay persons. You don't know why your Tokays were large or good breeders. It could as much have had something to do with other food offerings, temps, humidity, lighting, supplementation, or just genetics. It could also be that your Tokays got the way they did in spite of being offered mealworms and superworms all the time.
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You seem to use the word may to offten for me to take anything that you say seriously. Im sure if the chances are so great for impactions and other health risks many keepers as myself would have encountered some porblems but the word "MAY" would make you think that there may be chances that thier are other factors to consider.

As far as not knowing why my Tokays were such healthy breeders, thats is very naive. I know exactly why and considering the offspring were just as healthy I would blame a good part of that on diet. The reason why I KNOW they were so healthy is because of great care. Its hard to find a full hardy Tokay from the start unless you got one that has been a long term captive, and I will admit that it did take a while for them, all of them to turn around.

BTW, I also suggest that even with feeding lots of Super worms and Meal worms that a varied diet of other insects and what not is the main key to great health while useing these types of worms as feeders!

By my count, I used "may" exactly once in my last message, but what does that have to do with anything? That I don't use the word "definitely", you don't take opinions to the contrary seriously? Makes little sense to me, but whatever.

Don't take it seriously if you don't want to. I really doubt you understand metabolic pathways enough to understand this. Your evidence is anecdotal and unsupported by data that the larvae had anything to do with your success. By your own admission, varied diet is the key. Well isn't that interesting; because it's exactly what I was saying to begin with.
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You win, the INTERNET bully with no friends is just so much more tough than myself with the keyboard. Sorry buddy but I fully understand metabolism and the fact that the Tokay is a very LARGE gecko with a VERY HIGH metabolic activity rate. That in mind I would assume that a husbandry habit of low temps and humidity would cause a low metabolic rate in which the gecko would maybe become impacted. Like I said, I never had any troubles EVER nor has anyone else I came across in this situation But you win, let everybody that don't come to this forum see how much more tough you are with the key strokes than I.
In fact I never ever had any reptile become impacted by meal worms and others of the type, I only saw healthy success. Maybe you should over view your husbandry if this is the problem you had yourself. Other wise I don't care what theories and cynical studies you proclaim, enough people with the experience along with my own are enough to keep me doing what I have been doing the right way!

What a joke!

Varied diet is the key yes but I really didnt see you say that, nor if you agreed you had no reason to try to flame me ( I never said I used it as a staple but you call me out with words such as lay person ). Isnt that something now? Besides that I still say that the majority of food was the worms, every feeding had the worms in the mix one way or another every other feeding had amounts of other foods. In turn I had healthy, robust, breedable Tokay geckos that looked the way they should. What sense do you make besides trying to just push someone over?

I feed crickets as well but all my tokays eat the heck out of superworms in a bowl.