A few supplement and diet questions!

I've had Stella for a week now, but I have a few questions about exactly how much I should be feeding her. I've been offering her 6-7 baby dubias and a few mealworms every day, and she devours EVERYTHING. She never even had relocation stress! So exactly how much should she be eating? As much as she wants, or should I limit it? She is 4 months old, and about 7" long and 23 grams.

I'm not 100% sure how much and what I should be supplementing her either. I have plain calcium, calcium w/ D3, and Herptivite vitamins. It looks like she has the start of some tiny bubbles under her armpits, and I read that was caused by oversupplementing? So should I give her less calcium, or are the bubbles OK for females since they need some extra calcium to lay eggs?

Thanks for the helps!

It sounds like your doing everything just fine. Ive read in numerous places as well the the bubbles in her armpits maybe a result of her becoming overweight. Could you post a picture of her that would help

Yup, here is one from a few days ago:



I hope I haven't made her fat already!
My beardie also has armpit pudge bubbles, and even though he is on a diet won't go away.

Stella looks to be in good health and shes really pretty. The tail looks good its not skinny so thats a plus. I cant really see the armpit bubbles in this picture but she definitely doesnt look over weight. With your feeding i would try maybe Feeding her the roaches one night then maybe skip a nite then feed her mealworms then skip a nite and back to the roaches and so on. My leos all though they are all adults they get feed about once every 2-3 days and i rotate dubia roaches and mealworms. Each of my leo tanks have 2 leos per so i usually put in about 12 feeders per feeding so they can each have 6 each.

Calcium deposits (bubble armpit) can be caused by too much D3, which in turn make them absorb too much calcium. If you are feeding her a lot, you will want to cut back the amount of dusting you are doing. Say if she eats 7 dubia roaches and a few mealworms, if every single one of them are loaded with multivitamin powder, then that's too much. Too much vitamins can kill your gecko, just as too much calcium + D3 can create calcium deposits you see.

If she's eating and pooping fine, then you are probably feeding her the right amount. But cut back on the dusting because of the amount you are feeding her, as that can really overload their system. Good luck, pretty gecko by the way

Something else to know about these bubbles is they are also caused by high protein diets. If you're only feeding dubs and mealies that's a lot of protein. Add a couple higher fat prey items to the diet such as butterworms, wax worms or silk worms to help balance out your fat to protein ratio.

I stand corrected, upon reading further even though most people call them calcium deposits, they are wrong. Finally found a few that did biopsies and said they were found to be liquid & protein. They are protein deposits, and are caused by overfeeding and/or over supplementing. So if you are feeding dubia roaches, dust a lot less or feed less will do the trick.

I have a female breeder that has those protein deposits, and I don't feed her dubia roaches. She eats mostly superworms and superworms are high in fat. I reduced her multivitamin dusting and it appears to be working.

I discovered they were protein bubbles when banana used to have them.. and I started giving her more waxworms and they disappeared

Thanks for the input everyone! Her previous owner fed pretty much entirely mealies, so maybe this is why she has bubbles.

So far, what I've been doing is dusting with plain calcium every day, cal w/ D3 1x a week, and vites 1x a week. And I've only been dusting one kind of feeder... So if her mealies are dusted, then I leave the roaches plain. Does that sound OK? Should I be giving her some crickets too, or are these 2 feeders enough?

I'll pick up some waxies for her tonight then, I'm sure she won't complain LOL! Are Phoenix worms a good feeder for them? I was going to see if I could trade some dubia for hornworms and Phoenix worms at the reptile store next week.