I have 2 Leo's in the same 20L since March 04, They have been on mealworms at the breeder and I have continued with mealies. I used to give them 1 or 2 wax worms a month and every 2 weeks superworms and an occassional cricket.

For the past 2 months they would not touch a cricket. I buy them and they die before they are eaten. I have not given them mealies since 10/6, so they would be hungry. A few days ago I got some superworms and they would not even touch them.

I broke down last night and dropped a few mealies in the tank and one leo got 3 of them and the other just 1.

I would like to get them to accept other food besides mealies, just because I think variety is best for them. Mealies will remain the staple.

But they won't touch anything else even after12 days of fasting!!!

They are healthy and have fat tails, should I put them on a diet and try every day or so to introduce another food item to them? How can I get them to accept crix or superworms again??

hello bitten,

first off, there really is nothing wrong with having your leo on an all mealie diet, as long as you gut load your mealies and supplement with calcium. i know, from rumor only, that tremper, [ www.leopardgecko.com ] feeds only mealworms to his geckos.

second-ly , if you want to feed them variety, i will make a wild guess here and suggest you put a couple of superworms in your mealie bowl, so as to 'trick' them into eating them, just to get used to the taste of them. add a couple of more in a few days...and a couple less mealies. if you want to throw a couple of crix in there, you should break off their jumping legs and just put them right in with the mealworms. they might not stay there, but they might stay long enough. maybe your geks will give them another shot.

but I wouldn't worry about a variety so much...

lola

Thanks for the response Lola. I know it is OK to give mealies only. I want the variety, they don't. LOL
They have eaten both supers and crix in the past, but not anymore.

I guess I won't worry about it!! They are spoiled lazy and just don't want to hunt anymore!! LOL

Ed
SE Michigan

Actually it's not a rumour. It sais or used to say he fed his Leopard Geckos only meal worms from a pet store.

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The more you whine, the worse it will get.

If you can I'd get them on a more varied diet. A diet with only one food source isn't as good for them in the long run, and mealies aren't as nutritionally balanced as crickets or silkworms, either of which could be used as a suitable staple feeder. Mealies are also really high in chitin, the tough material that makes up their exoskeletons and is also difficult to digest. In some instances lizards have suffered impactions from too much chitin in the diet. Ideally, I'd switch them to crickets as the main part of the diet if you can. Maybe pulling the back legs off the crix would work? It may be the smell of them, or it could just be the way they move around, who knows. I know several leo breeders use a diet of strictly mealies, but after doing a lot of research on nutrition requirements and the nutritional content of various feeders, I'd have to say its a bad idea. I wish I had the actual numbers here, but they're on my computer back home.

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+5 bonus points to whoever finds me a job!

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

http://canadianfeeders.com/faq.shtml

Near the bottom it has nutritional info on feeders. Silkworms are best, but they are rather expensive in the short and long run. I still say a diet mainly on mealworms. Is fine and dandy. Ofcoarse a varied diet is best. But the chittin in mealworms rarely cause any impaction that really endangers the leo. It's more like very temporary constipation. Ofcoarse you can get small baby or the smaller but still lenghthier than a meal worm, superworms.

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The more you whine, the worse it will get.

This is still dangerous and unhealthy for the leo Moldy,. I wouldn't like to suffer from unneccessary constipation!

IMO a varied diet is best for any animal where possible, however it isn't always neccessary. We feed our Leopard Geckos a staple of black crickets, but they will also occassionally receive mini mealworms, wax worms, brown crix and locusts. They are only young and are already obviously spoiled - they don't make much effort to hunt! In fact they wouldn't survive an hour in the wild - they watch the cricket intently, begin slowly creeping towards it as it moves and then miss it because it runs off and they are too slow

As well as pulling the jumping legs off of the crickets, and placing them in the meal worm dish, what supplement do you use? One of our bearded dragons prefers her crickets with supplement on them and will hardly entertain them when they are just plain! (Spoiled animals!! ) .. perhaps they will like them with supplement better than without? We put the crickets in a bag and shake them up with the supplement,. this also stuns them slightly and makes them slower as they are immediately in the tank, which gives the lizard more time to catch them. Also, our Bearded Dragons used to refuse their crickets - it was because we were feeding them too many locusts and they preferred the expensive food items to the cheaper ones so we cut back dramatically on their locust intake and after a while they started gulping down the crickets like they had never been fed!! Just some ideas.. i hope you find something that works for you!

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"If you know everything you may as well blow your brains out because the reason for existence is to learn more everyday." - Mark O'Shea, 2004

OK,

I will try again!! I agree that a varied diet is best for my leo's!!

I had them on a fast for 10 days and they still wouldn't eat anything, I have since relented and they both ate mealworms. I guess I'll give them a couple of days and try the superworms again. After that crix!!

Thanks everyone!!