Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a question about liquid calcium. I have a hugh bottle for my ribbon snake. i still feed my geckos crickets every other week and i dust them with calcium but for my female who is laying eggs i add the liquid calcium. When i am making her CGD i usually put one big spray of liquid calcium in with the water i use to mix it up. Am i over dosing her or should everything be okay? Thank you.

as long as it doesn't have vitamin D3 in it, it should be fine.
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4.1 snakes, 4.6.1 crested geckos, 0.1 gargoyle gecko, 0.0.2 red-eyed tree frogs, 2.0 devon rex cats, 1.0 betta, 0.1 sun conure, 1.0 lovebird

wow ty for telling me that. it just so happens it is vit. d3 free. why is that dangerous?

yes, overdose of D3 can be just as damaging, if not more so, than a shortage of calcium. excess calcium, however, is just expelled by the body.
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4.1 snakes, 4.6.1 crested geckos, 0.1 gargoyle gecko, 0.0.2 red-eyed tree frogs, 2.0 devon rex cats, 1.0 betta, 0.1 sun conure, 1.0 lovebird

A note on liquid calcium: I hear they aren't as good as the calcium tablets or powder...I think they are weaker and you would have to use a lot of it compared to the powder. I buy the human calcium tablets and crush it myself with mortar and pestal. It has worked well for me. My vet told me to use human multivitamin, such as Centrum, and calcium supplement. She saids they're much better because they contain more trace elements than the multivitamin and calcium made for reptiles. You only have to use a little with these. My vet told me another option would be buying multivitamin and calcium supplement for dogs, cats and birds. Supposedly they are better than the reptiles and are a lot cheaper. The human ones are cheaper than the reptile, too, and you get more for your money.

my concern with this is that if you are feeding the crested gecko diet MRP, adding more vitamins and minerals would not necessarily be a good thing. how reputable is your vet? i took some reptiles in to a local exotics vet once who knew absolutely jack $#!^ about cresteds, and told me not to feed the MRP, but to feed baby food, that they needed UVB light, and that if i fed phoenix worms, be sure to gutload and dust them. she was full of crap. so just be wary of where your advice comes from.
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4.1 snakes, 4.6.1 crested geckos, 0.1 gargoyle gecko, 0.0.2 red-eyed tree frogs, 2.0 devon rex cats, 1.0 betta, 0.1 sun conure, 1.0 lovebird

It is from one of the vet list on Melissa Kaplan's site.

ok, i found mine on the list or ARAV members. when i went to the list from the site you mentioned, that vet wasn't on it, however, the one that is (and also happens to have a star by it) is not on the ARAV list, is an avian vet, and is also not on the AAV list. i'm so confused.
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4.1 snakes, 4.6.1 crested geckos, 0.1 gargoyle gecko, 0.0.2 red-eyed tree frogs, 2.0 devon rex cats, 1.0 betta, 0.1 sun conure, 1.0 lovebird

I wouldn't totally dismiss your vet's opinions here... Baby food (banana based or other fruit) mixed with calcium is a great supplement especially for breeding females. Granted many people have bred them for ages without this, but I've seen it work and they love it. As to UVB don't discredit this either, they may not NEED it, but it is certainly beneficial for them to have it. I agree that your vet was probably not the best out there, but I would not say she was full of it.
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lost in the jungle somewhere
Z

sorry, but i'll trust repashy over a vet who has no crested gecko experience any day. baby food is BAD unless you have a great deal of experience in getting the exact amount of supplements right, which is very difficult. CGD is as perfect as it can be at this point in time in and of itself, supplemented with some crickets or other insect perhaps. i also trust this vet:

http://forums.repashy.com/showthread.php?t=8114

also, she was pushing that the UVB was an absolute necessity for them. i know it doesn't hurt, but the big breeders raise these nocturnal geckos on the D3 in CGD alone and do fine.
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4.1 snakes, 4.6.1 crested geckos, 0.1 gargoyle gecko, 0.0.2 red-eyed tree frogs, 2.0 devon rex cats, 1.0 betta, 0.1 sun conure, 1.0 lovebird

I know it says in books and such that they don't Need UVB lighting and i don't supply it. On that note I should mention that my cresteds have access to indirect sunlight for 1.5 hours a day from an eastern direction and i have occasionally seen them laying in their tanks in such a way where they were exposed to the sunlight. I don't know if it was to bask or they were just there when the sun came up and too lazy to move but there may be something to it.

I don't want to get into the vet argument, I found "good" ones to be horrible sometimes too... but in regards to calcium and Centrum, my bottle here says only 8% calcium. That's pretty low %, IMHO. It's not high enough for women of the human species unless you live on a dairy farm.

I don't know that I would be adding in extra calcium in anyway that is forced. If you want to do something like for leos, a small bowl of powdered that would be fine, because it is the gecko's option.

But having a little girl myself that lays plenty of perfect eggs every year on CGD and nothing else, I'd say it has enough calcium in it without any supplementation. I would not be using the spray and I wouldn't be using human multivitamins, the balance is off.
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0.1 Albino Leo Gecko
0.1 Crested Gecko
1.0 Dear Boyfriend
Departed: Harvey and Spock

I'm not saying to supplement the CGD with the human multivitamin. That would throw off the balance in the food. I'm saying if you are going to dust the crickets or other prey item with it or using the baby food, using the human multivitamin and calcium supplement is better than the one made for reptiles. It's basically the same. The reptiles stuff is based on the human stuff. There is no study done on reptiles nutrition and all the stuff we assume is based on the human stuff. And, yes, the multivitamin alone doesn't contain enough calcium. You still need to supplement calcium is you are feeding you CG crickets and baby food.

Reptile Medicine and Surgery
by Douglas R. Mader (Editor)
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0.1 Albino Leo Gecko
0.1 Crested Gecko
1.0 Dear Boyfriend
Departed: Harvey and Spock

Still, the reptile multivitamin and calcium supplement is exactly the same as the human stuff except it is fill with more filler than the human. That's why my vet recommended the human stuff or the ones, which is also the same as the human stuff, made for dogs, cats, and birds.