Ok well I read all the great things about mazuri tortoise diet here for feeding cycluras, and although I own a green iguana, not a cyclura, I talked to Tom Crutchfield on the phone and he said it was a good choice to feed green iguanas too. I post here because the people on green iguana forums don't seem to know about this, only cyclura owners.



I went and bought a 1 pound bag, all sealed and a picture of a tortoise on the pretty bag, way overpriced, to test if my green iguana would eat it. He refused it dry but ate it soaked. In fact, he really liked it. So I decided that since he ate it to now buy bigger bags. I found a shop that stocked 25 pound bags but opened them and resealed them into 2 or 5 pound bags to sell. It was a lot cheaper.



So I bought a bag from them, and after leaving the shop, I looked closely, and there were MANY white WORMS crawling around in it! There were also some tiny beetle like insects that you sometimes see in bags of rice.



I took it back to the store and they were willing to exchange but they looked at the other bags they sealed on the shelves and they ALL had worms in them! They seemed sincere and eager to please the customer, so the boss told his employee to open a brand new 25Lbs bag and scoop me a new bag. This he really did, I saw him take out the new 25 pound bag. He gave me a new bag, and I inspected it closely and it looked normal with no insects, so I went on my merry way. However, I later inspected again after going home, and although it wasn't infested with worms like the first one, it still had a couple worms in there. I saw two or three in the 2 pound bag he scooped me.



My last option would be to order from overseas (I don't live in the USA), so I talked to a friend who owned a reptile shop and he said he can order, but asked me to go online and first ask people if these worms are common in the 25 pound bags, because once he orders on my behalf, that's it, I would have to accept it no matter what mazuri sent over. He said that he had another brand that was sealed but he left it in the store for a few weeks and there were MOTHS breeding in the SEALED bags! He said for me to check whether this is a common occurence.



1)So I want to ask, is it the norm for Mazuri tortoise diet 25 pound bags to maybe have a few insects inside? Or are they all vacuum sealed and completely free of insects? If they all have insects then maybe I will give up on this, because I don't want to order all the way airmail and then find out it is the same.



2)Also, is there any way I can use the bag I have? It was cheap and if I had to throw it away that's fine. But a friend of mine breeds snakes and he said that if you freeze something (in his case, rats) that the parasites inside die. I am not so much worried about 1 or 2 worms in the mazuri, but worried they may be carrying parasites. I just recently had some of my reptiles dewormed and don't want to go through that again.

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