Efficacy of vitamin supplements?

From what i have read lately on vitamins, it seems that for human consumption at least, vitamins do more harm than good or nothing at all. My question is, is it then necessary to dust crickets or is a well balanced diet for crickets a far more effective way of keeping one's herps healthly?

I wonder where you heard this nonsense. Fabricated vitaminpills made for consumption are even more efficient than natural vitamins. Apart from hypervitaminosis, I don't think vitamins can do more 'harm than good'.

They can damage the liver but you have to comsume a big dose of vitamins for a extended period of time...
I´d say a balanced diet for the crickets is always best...what you can do is adding the vitamins to the crickets food...that way you improve the quality of them as food without fear of over-dusting them (it can be messy....). just a suggestion though...never heard of vitamin dust meaning any harm for animals...except some types with calcium(an excess of calcium can be dangerous too)

newtron said:

From what i have read lately on vitamins, it seems that for human consumption at least, vitamins do more harm than good or nothing at all.

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I have never heard this. For humans, I know of one strong counter-example. The majority of people living in northern climates are vitamin D-deficient in winter. This is scientific fact. And vitamin D deficiency is linked to the development of many cancers, multiple-sclerosis, etc etc., also fact. People who don't eat a lot of dairy products and don't go outdoors much are at particularly high risk of chronic deficiency. I think public health might be improved if everyone took a vitamin D supplement.

The effects of deficiencies of calcium and vitamins A and D are well-documented in reptiles. It's quite likely that these effects apply to amphibians too. Oversupplementing is a risk, this is true. But it seems to me that undersupplementing is a known risk, especially if using crickets as a staple food source.

We recently posted some data on calcium levels of common amphibian foods:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/foods2.shtml
Also, Ed is working on an article we will post with specific information about nutritional needs. One of the points he makes is that "gutloading" crickets is not sufficient to correct their calcium-to-phosphorous ratio.

With a balanced diet vitamins do not do anything and large doses, as you can buy everywhere now adays are harmfull. So eat healthy and if you use vitamins use normal amounts and not 100 times the adviced daily amount.

For newts and salamanders it is a bit different they get a relatively small amount of foodtypes and therefore a lack in certain vitamins or minerals is not unlikely. Supplements can help if this is the case.

On the other hand quite a few people rais their newts on only tubifex and these grow fast and look healthy. It probably differs between species and quality of your food.

Hi,

Although overdose is a theoretical possibility, it is worth noting that many current veterinary articles suggest that vitamin A deficiency is very common in pet amphibians (first studied in endangered Wyoming toads), and clinically I still see a high proportion of metabolic bone disease (a complicated issue, but simplistically this is due to vitamin D/calcium deficiency) in amphibian patients.

As Jennewt says, the deficiency problems are well-documented in reptiles, and I would regard the use, as exclusive diet, of unsupplemented shop-bought invertebrates as unacceptably poor care, certainly for reptiles.

herpvet said:

Hi,

Although overdose is a theoretical possibility, it is worth noting that many current veterinary articles suggest that vitamin A deficiency is very common in pet amphibians (first studied in endangered Wyoming toads), and clinically I still see a high proportion of metabolic bone disease (a complicated issue, but simplistically this is due to vitamin D/calcium deficiency) in amphibian patients.

As Jennewt says, the deficiency problems are well-documented in reptiles, and I would regard the use, as exclusive diet, of unsupplemented shop-bought invertebrates as unacceptably poor care, certainly for reptiles.

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Might you share your thoughts on the use of full-spectrum UV lighting for nocturnal amphibians, fossorial salamanders in specific. To convert vit D into its active form for calcium absorbtion, UV B radiation is necessary in many animal models. I have not been successful in finding documentation on this metabolic link in nocturnal amphibians, however, these animals do suffer from MBD, causation being multifactorial. In their natural settings, these animals are protected from direct UV light as they spend their time in burrows.

Regarding vit A, hypervitaminosis A has also been associated with MBD is some larger amphibians fed heavy rodent diets as it appears to interfere with the absorbtion and utilization of Vit D3. Are there recommendations on adequate intake of vit A and Vit D for nocturnal caudates?

Hi Jan,

jan said:

Might you share your thoughts on the use of full-spectrum UV lighting for nocturnal amphibians, fossorial salamanders in specific. To convert vit D into its active form for calcium absorbtion, UV B radiation is necessary in many animal models. I have not been successful in finding documentation on this metabolic link in nocturnal amphibians, however, these animals do suffer from MBD, causation being multifactorial. In their natural settings, these animals are protected from direct UV light as they spend their time in burrows.

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As far as I'm aware, there is very little hard data in amphibians. My view would be that availability of low levels of UV (A + B) is preferable for virtually all amphibians (excludings entirely cave-dwellers, etc) - the UV-A is important in stimulating activity and normal diurnal rythymns. However, it should not be such that they can't hide away from it adequately, which is difficult in many amphibian enclosures, and exposure to excessive or unavoidable bright lights is highly undesirable for nocturnal/crepuscular animals. So my somewhat sitting-on-the-fence reply : ) is that yes, I would recommend the use of full-spectrum lighting for these animals, but only if it can be arranged in such a way that their burrows/hides are completely protected from it.

[/QUOTE] Regarding vit A, hypervitaminosis A has also been associated with MBD is some larger amphibians fed heavy rodent diets as it appears to interfere with the absorbtion and utilization of Vit D3. Are there recommendations on adequate intake of vit A and Vit D for nocturnal caudates?[/QUOTE]

Again, I'm not aware of specific figures for salamanders - Wright and Whitaker's amphibian medicine book suggests a figure but doesn't recommend it. Based on my experience I would tend to recomend dusting all pinkies at least, and probably all rodents, lightly with powder, nutrobal and calcium carbonate - alternate feeds for growing animals, reducing to 1 feed nutrobal to 4 feeds calcium carbonate for adults. But that's very much an empirical dose, and certainly an area where we don't have all the answers by any means - not in reptiles, and certainly not in amphibians!

Thanks much Bruce, greatly appreciated your thoughts on these issues.