So many worms!

Waxworms are the treat worm. I get that one.

But is it better to feed a gecko superworms or mealworms? And can you get mealworms and waxworms at the same places you can get superworms?

I also feed my gecko crickets, and have started to see if he likes superworms, which he loves. Is it better to just give him super/mealworms, just crickets, or the mix of the two/three? He's only about 6 months old, and eats 6-8 crickets at a time. Am I overfeeding him? Today I wanted to just try the superworms, and so far he's had 3. Too little? Too much?

Super's are better than mealies, because of size and chittin to meat ratio. Crickets are good, but people have a reservation about disease that crickets can carry. Waxworms are, like you said, a treat.

When I first fed supers, two days ago, each of my leo's put away 6 each. So, since mine are older than yours, I feel three is good but if you drop it and he eats it then he can have more, haha.

So I could stop feeding him the crickets? They die on me faster then I can feed them to him (not to mention we have to go to the pet store every 2-3 days to get more), and they're just plain creepy. I'm more comfortable with the worms, and he seems to enjoy them more.

Would it be better to sometimes dust the worms with calcium powder or get him a calcium dish?

Feeding strictly worms is perfectly fine, just make a variety by feeding supers and sometimes mealies. If you want to, wax worms as a treat to keep the rotation fresh.

I personally feel that doing both dusting and soda bottle cap full of calcium would be a good thing to do.

Yay! I'll finish off these nasty crickets then. Ew lol.

For the calcium dish, do I just use the dusting powder, or is there a specific type of calcium I need to buy?

You can do either as you please, I use a dusting powder for dusting and then I have pure calcium powder that I put in the bottle cap. But the dusting powder would work just the same.

Thank you so much!

No problem.

As far as the supplimentation goes... if you use an all in 1 suppliment such as repashy calcium plus icb or T-rex leopard gecko dust icb by sandfire foods you do not have to leave a dish of calcium in the viv just dust every day or every other day depending on the size age and condition of your leo. Once your leo reaches 6-7 months you can dust every other feeding. If you use a seperate vitimin suppliment and seperate calcium plus D3 then you can leave a capful of PLAIN calcium in the viv but make sure you're getting plenty of D3 to your leo or they could have problems absorbing and using all the calcium they're taking in which coud lead to psudo gout (calcium deposits in the joints).



As far as the diet goes, superworms are a better choice than mealies imo because they eat less worms, get less shell and better nutritional ratio. There is a sticky in the feeding section that goes over bug nutrition and supers versus mealies etc. Could be worth a read. Also feeding crickets can lead to more troubles than just the possibility for parasites... there's another post in teh feeding section titled "another reason to never feed crickets" which is def. worth a read. Those hostile jamacian crickets can really do a lot of damage to your leo if you're not careful.



When storing crickets they don't really need a substrait altho we always put a bit of paper towel in their keeper, then a toilet paper roll for them to climb on and to absorb excess moisture because every time a cricket exhales they also exhale a bit of moisture and the moisture is what will kill the crickets... not enough air and too much moisture. I usually don't have a problem with crickets dieing fast... when we used them for our bufo they would easily live a week or more with out much care. Just refresh the complete orange cube diet suppliment they were getting and they did fine.

I give them the yellow jelly stuff and crushed cereal. I was stupid and dusted some with calcium powder and didn't use them right away and they all died on me. Wasted about 20 crickets there.

Could I give the worms the jelly stuff too? I have a potato for them right now, and I read up on here that oranges, carrots, and apple slices (no seeds!) are good too.

Also, if you don't mind explaining, what is D3?

No I would not give the supers or mealies the jelly stuff for crickets. They get all the moisture they need out of the veggies you're gutloading with. Too much moisture in their keepers will kill them and the bedding will go mouldy. Yes you read right (my thread too I believe ) carrots, potato, apples, broad leafed greens such as collard greens romaine lettuce etc (avoid spinach tho it has a chemical that binds to calcium making it impossible to absorb for the leo). You can feed your worms pretty much any kitchen veggie scrap.

D3 is a vitimin suppliment that aides in the absorbtion of calcium... very crucial to herps. It is usually included in most multi vitimins as well as calcium plus D3 concotions available at most herp supply stores. D3 is also produced by UV lighting (or natural sun light) as a natural way for herps to absorb their calcium but leos usually do not generally benefit from that as they do not bask like say a bearded dragon or a monitor would. By using a D3 suppliment we are meerly replacing what our herps are missing by being in captivity and out of natural sunlight.

I'll just play with the jelly then. It's fun.

They love their potato.

You can put the jelly in your garden plants... it'll help retain mositure and the vitimins certainly can't hurt the plants there are no nitraits or sulfers in it so you should be good and calcium is excellent for plants.

Yay for extra uses! We always forget to water our plants.

Okay, so for supplements I need the calcium powder (which I have), and a vitamin powder?