Interesting...what do you think?

http://forum.kingsnake.com/newt/messages/32436.html

I read this post, where the individual has been using mostly eartworms with occasional crickets as the diet for her tiger salamander. The second individual seemed very certain that supplements were required. On here, many times, we've talked about vitimn supplements not being required if a good variety of feeders are used and the crickets are gutloaded properly. I think the person with the tiger was doing a pretty good job as long as she was feeding the worms and/or crickets some good gutloads before feeding.

The person in the message above would disagree.

What does everyone think? Was just curious about opinions on that post.

Rob

Just my personal experience with raising up cb Salamandra and other terrestrial salamanders(hatchling Aneides): a good percentage of the animals showed signs of calcium deficiency(arching spine,crooked tails, etc...) at about 1 year of age on a diet of GUT LOADED crickets, waxworms and earthworms.

With just a little calcium supplementation(as little as once per month) I resolved the problem completely. Also animals which showed signs of deficiency, improved with weekly supplementation to the point that the deformities were not noticeable anymore.

I would guess that animals aquired as adults would require very little extra supplementation. It may be just the growing juveniles that really need it. I use rep-cal and herpta vite about 1-2x a month with good results. Just my experience.....

Erik

I personally have only used a supplment on my crickets once, and I use a calcium enriched (as well as other things) gutload. I also created my own frozen food for my young which had alot of extra vitiamns in it (using a receipe similar to the one presented on here).

Interesting to know about your calcium deficiency though. Anyone else have an opinion?

I've raised many Ambystomids from eggs/larvae/metamorphs to adults on a diet of 90-100% (depending on species) WalMart nightcrawlers and 10% crickets/waxworms and have never experienced any deficiency of any kind.

Calcium deficiencies (metabolic bone disease, secondary hyperparathyroidism)have been documented in salamanders fed a variety of food items. It is possible for adult salamanders to develope this problem (as has been shown in axolotls).
The problem with the phrase gut loading is that it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone (it can mean anything from feeding a good diet to the future food items to trying to adjust their calcium phosphorus ratio by adding calcium to the diet. A difficult and problematic task.)
Earthworms if they are calcium balanced are the only commonly used invertebrate food that is a balanced diet. The calcium can be adjusted by adding some calci-sand in the soil where the worms are kept. If the worms are in soil (and not peat or shredded newspaper or sphagnum moss) then they are probably alrady pretty close to having a good balance. (This said, earthworms have been linked to muscle degeneration in bullfrogs when fed as a majority of the diet).
The best way to look at it is from a conservative point of view, an occasional addition of a GOOD supplement will not hurt and can only help.
Ed

Rob,
The problem with the original poster was that she was not providing a variety of foods and she probably was not fortifying her crickets in any way. That is exactly why I recommended supplements. And to be honest, I was concerned about the health of her animal if she did not even know about supplements and vitamins being necessary for most other reptiles and amphibians. I figured if she was clueless about that, she could be clueless about some other vital part of husbandry, hence the sentence "I suggest you look up more information on amphibian husbandry ".

And building on what Ed was talking about, gut loading is not all what it is cracked up to be. Many people are too willing to use the commercial crickets feeds that are high in calcium. According to the Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry book, the author states that a diet high in calcium is lethal to crickets. Besides most adult crickets eat very little and probably would not benefit from this type of gut loading. The best way to gut load is to feed fresh vegetables and fruits.

I admit that I am much more well versed in the captive husbandry of frogs then I am in salamanders, but I do not understand why salamanders are exempt from the supplementation protocol used on most all other reptiles and amphibians. For the costs and effort involved, I do not understand why anybody would want to not} supplement their foods.

Ed,
Could you provide the literature source for the information on muscle degeneration and bullfrogs? I would appreciate it.

Hey K. Steele,

In no way was I saying you were wrong or trying to stir the pot. I thought it was an interesting topic and I wanted to see how everyone else felt on the topic. I hope you haven't taken this as an attack against what you said. I agree that some should be used as well as a varied diet, but I had heard people before say supplementing shouldn't be required if <fill>. I was curious what everyone thought.

Anybody have any multivitimns/calcium supplements that they recommend for salamanders and newts?

Hi Kory,
Another point that has been missed is that in some amphibians feeding insects that have been gut loaded with calcium still does not cause a higher level of serum calcium (the amphibs are unable to pick up the calcium).
here is the reference for the bull frogs
Modzelewski, E.H., Culley, D.D. Jr., 1974, Growth responses of the bull frog Rana catesbiana fed various live foods. Herpetologica 30(4): 396-405

Thanks for the reference, that will go out to interlibrary loan ASAP.

So what do you think about the commercial cricket diets boasting high calcium for the benefit of the herp? I have specifically recommended against them because of what was published in Wright's book. I especially despise those gels that are supposed to feed and water cricket that the same time. I can't help but to think that some of the reptile and amphibian industry is based upon the principles naive people put on these animals whose behavior and biology is most often the exact opposite of cats and dogs.

Hi Kory,
If you track down the articles that Kevin used for the book (some were published in the Vivarium), others were published by Frye in his book and I think a couple were published in Zoo Journals. I have them all around here somewhere I just can't put my hands on them at the moment.) you are able to see the difficulties related to this topic. The major problem relating to crickets is that you tend to only be able to get a positive calcium to phosphorus ratio in pinhead crickets. It just doesn't seem to work well in older crickets. Additionally the calcium loading diet increases the mortality of the crickets by a signifcant amount. The crickets cannot be without water for any length of time as the high calcium levels will kill the crickets. And finally the crickets cannot be offered any other food items as they will then refuse to eat the calcium loading diet and will eat almost anything else instead.
As for the gel calcium supplement/water sources some of the early ones were made from polyacrylamide (can any one confirm if this is still the case?) gels. If the polyacrylimide isn't fully reacted or is old (Or exposed to heat) then it begins to degrade to acrylamide which is a poisonous if ingested (If I rememeber corretly its a neurotoxin). Because of this I have a hard time recommeding their use when a slice of orange works much better.
Ed

Great information Ed, I am picking up a lot here (for regurgitation on other forums as well). I was unaware that crickets will favor any other food over the calcium diets. That is awfully surprising about the gel. Acrylamide IS a serious neurotoxin, I did experiments in my Cell Biology class with electrophorisis and remember being warned numerous times about the health hazard (fume hood only!)

Hi Kory,
That is why I asked if anyone could confirm that this is still the gelling material in these items.
However we shouldn't think that dusting is the perfect solution to the supplement issue (but I think its a better choice then trying to calcium gutload many inverts (although earthworms are pretty easy).
The main drawbacks to dusting are that the insects will groom it off their bodies within a relatively short period of time and it is pretty useless as a delivery system for any aquatic animal. Also many mixes made for dusting do not come with experation dates so they may be poor choices for the animals any way.
Ed

Is it necessary to supplement bloodworm. My subadult paramesotriton will not eat anything bu tbloodsworm. If so, how do you do it without the supplement washing off. I am worried they may get sick after what has been said about growing animals.
Also, for any one interestwd, I once got a calcium deficient newt which would not eat back to full health by putting it in shallow water with a hiding place. I then poured some 'liquid calcium supplement' (can't remeber proper name off-hand) into the water. After about 2 wks of soaking, the newt had enough calcium to want to eat, and it recoverred.
From Chris
P.S. I didn't allow the newt to get sick - I bought it from the pet store to rescue it. That normally doesn't work, but this newt was lucky!

Just to clear this up, what do you guys recommend feeding crickets, and how do you recommend giving the proper nutrition to the animals eating them?

Hi Chris, and Raphael,
Chris as for the bloodworms there seems to be some slightly different nutritional needs for aquatic versus terrestrial animals but if you are concerned enough to want to add some vitamins for your newts you can do one of two things,
1) soak the bloodworms in a fish vitamin solution or 2) make a gel diet with the bloodowrms but have the vitamins and minerals mixed into the gel diet. However I have not had a problem nor heard of a problem (as of yet) from feeding a diet of bloodowrms.
Raphael,
A good general diet for your crickets would be quality ground dried dog or cat food, and oranges for water. There are many different ways to do this, some people use dry fish foods, or poultry mashes or nonsweetened cereals for people (like cheerios). Basically as long as there is a good base diet and some form of water supply (I use oranges as it adds a little vitamin C to the crickets.) such as a water bowl with a sponge to potato slices they are all good diets. This way the crickets are not deficient in general fats, protiens, and general minerals (they are not calcium to phosphorus balanced).
If you are feeding terrestrial animals then one of the good vitamin-mineral supplements will cover the bases as far as any nutritional support is needed. The current anecdotal evidence is that salamanders do not need to be supplemented at the rate of many other herps. The upper end safe side would be to dust your crickets once/twice a week although many people seem to only dust infrequently depending upon the food source (I dust twice a week at work as per our nutrionist) used.

Thanks very much for that info.

As far feeding crickets, I prefer to give a plate full of vegetables and fruits. I use finely chopped carrots, apples, sweet potatoes, green leaf lettuce, tomatoes etc, and they will clean the plate in a matter of hours. Avoid broccoli, rhubarb and spinach as they have oxalates that can cause calcium deficiencies (Ed knows the mechanism, I'm sure).

vegetables and fruits. I use finely chopped carrots, apples, sweet potatoes, green leaf lettuce, tomatoes etc, and they will clean the plate in a matter of hours. Avoid broccoli, rhubarb and spinach as they have oxalates that can cause calcium deficiencies (Ed knows the mechanism, I'm sure).

Hi Kory,
Actually broccoli is not as much a problem as the others you listed, the problem with broccoli and other brassicasius species is that they can cause goiters when consumed in large quantities. THis group is anything in the mustard family, broccoli, broccoli raab for soem examples. There are also this sort of problems with cabbages. They are perfectly okay to use in small amounts but I would not recommend using them as the staple.
I would recommend staying away from rhubarb as only the stems are edible and the leaves contain enough oxalic acid to be considered toxic (much like dieffenbachia aka dumb cane). Spinach would be okay in small amounts. As for the mechanism the oxalic acid creates calcium oxalate a very insoluble salt (The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics does not list a solubility constant here) preventing the uptake of calcium.
Ed

Just out of curiosity, where have you guys found all this information? Finding info online isn't always specific, and it's pretty difficult.
just a thought so maybe next time I don't have to ask obvious questions.

Hi Raphael,
This information isn't online as far as I know as of yet (unless some one has transcribed Mader's Book as well as some other sources).
Ed