Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My rhino is about 6 months old now and he is steadly eating mostly collard greens, turnup greens, and mustard greens with either snap peas or winter squash each day. I don't really feed him any fruit besides the canned mango fruit for iguanas mabey once every few weeks. I use the repashy vitamins and the small iguana rep cal pellets for toppers. The repashy is suppose to have the right calcium/phosphate mixture in it.

Would it be a better idea to add in some Mazuri pellets in the mixture? He is bulking up at a decent rate but I just don't know that much about the pellets.

Another question I had was I see people on here talking about the Mazuri tortoise pellets that they are feeding. I went to the website and the have tortoise pellets and iguana pellets, why not use the iguana?

Thanks

Tim

Make sure you use the Veggie Dust and not the Calcium Plus.... They are not the same thing. I think the Veggies Dust is supposed to round the nutritional value of the veggies. The Calcium Plus is designed to be used on insects.

And, also, I've heard a lot of good thing about Mazuri. A lot of tortoise keepers are using it and as a result, safe many tortoises' lives.... I wouldn't mine using their iguana pellets either.

It is the veggie dust.

The questions though was why the turtle over the iguana mazuri? Like I said I read on this Cyclura and Ctenosaura forum and people talk about using turtle stuff to feed their iguana, haven't seen anyone talk about iguana feed.

I'm not exactly sure...but I think the iguana stuff has more protein. I could be wrong, (so someone correct me if I'm wrong).... That's better for them and they can handle it better than tortoises. Young growing Tortoises will paramide badly if they eat too much protein. I always try to include high protein veggies in my green's salad because the leafy green veggies are not as nutritious as the hard ones. When mine was young I use to put some alfalfa in his salad. I used the rabbit pellets and I made sure alfalfa is the number one ingredient and made sure there are no added animal protein. If you use the alfalfa tea leaves, they tend to eat the salad better because you don't have to use as much. the leaf is what you want. The rabbit pellets usually have other stuff mixed into it, so you have to use more. Some iguana will not touch the salad if it smell too strongly of alfalfa. They feed alfalfa to horses because they have large muscles, so they need it for building strong muscles...like a body builder...and bones. Green iguanas climb, so I guess they need strong muscles and bones.....

I know this Answer!!!!

Mazuri iguana is just powder...Its like an alfafa based powder.. and gets everywhere. My really really really old greenies used to eat it with baby food because thier stomachs were shutting down because they were acienct.

I didn't know that.... I guess any Mazuri food made for that animal will work in my mind. lol

I always assumed the tortoise and iguana diet were the same thing, just different size pellets, I was told that by one of there salesman. I have read all these posts about the Mazuri diet and my feeling are that I would never give it to them dry and if there are bugs in it, it is probably old. I see the moths flying around my bird cage and they will find the food eventually, it's just a matter of time, I make sure the bag is closed and try to use it up within a month, my parrot food is kept in the fridge to keep the moths out, I was told not to freeze it because it can damage the nutritional value (seeds). The Mazuri diet is easy to waste because it goes bad in less than a day at room temp after it's moistened, I do keep some wet in the fridge for convenience, good for a little longer. An other thing I was told was not to use supplements when using the chow. My guys eat greens (too many to list), home grown fruit and Mazuri, a few will not eat the Mazuri but they will eat Marrion Zoological chow, unfortunately it's ridiculously expensive but the best to get a fussy eater going.KB

I have used all three. Ty gave me a bag of Marion, and I liked it, but is difficult to get and the shipping makes it very expensive. Mazuri caused my cyclura to have some runny and funky smelling stools. Zoo Med so far has worked the best. The iguanas seem to like it more, firmer stools (which make my facility smell like a horse farm at crap time-lol), and it is easy for me to get 50lbs sacks which I pick up from zoo med when I go down to southern cali.

Zoo med iguana diet? or the turtle diet?

Is this what you are talking about?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Zoo-Med-Natural-Adult-Iguana-Food-10-oz-/140471834822?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20b4c618c6

Also, since this has supplements in it should i still use the repashy veggie dust still on the greens or just stop with that?

I don't think that anyone would or should be feeding "turtle" diet to an iguana because the nutritional value would be high in proteins. I would expect that what we are comparing are the Iguana and "tortoise" diets.

I feed both the Iguana and “tortoise” diets.

Well the iguana feed is like a powder, they are not really pellets, that is why I thought most people just used the turtle. Maybe I will just use the zoomed iguana soft pellets and skip this whole turtle food stuff. So many different opinions its hard to make a valid choice.

tim...
You only have one cyclura right? just feed him a produce diet. it the best diet for him.
If you have access to fresh greens go with it. Most use the tortoise chow out of convenience. What you are doing is great and will continue to work his whole life. I have been making daily salads for 30yrs. I dont even think about it its just part of my life.
Its nice to have a "chow" on hand, any of them, when you run out or cant get to the supermarket but your diet no is fine.

jf

I agree. Fresh produce is best!

I do give him fresh produce every day, but he likes to eat about 2 or 3 pellets(mazuri tortise) with the greens. I feed him mustard greens, collard greens, squash, green peppers, carrots, and parsnips mixture with the replashy powder for supplements. I also sprinkle some of the salad toppers for iguanas. Hes quite small but he eats more than my full grown bearded dragon. I just want to make sure hes getting enough solid foods, leafy greens I don't think they would give all his needs. I just want to make sure I am starting off strong with him as a juvenile so he will live a long healthy life. His stools are really firm, so I think thats a decent start.