Has anyone ever used one of these? I just saw it at my petstore, so it might just have come out. But it's a feeder dish that vibrates to make dead/canned insects look alive. Does this work at all?


Also, I tried buying some canned crickets and grasshoppers to see if my WD would take them and she won't. Anyone have any ideas on getting her to eat them? Thanks.

Is there a reason why you want to get her the canned insects specifically? My understanding was that they're not as healthy as live insects, but I could be wrong about that.

Water dragons are terribly picky eaters. I never succeeded in getting mine to eat anything that wasn't alive or freshly killed. Or vegetables of any kind. *sigh* (I ended up gutloading the crickets or mealworms with veggies and vitamins instead.) I occasionally tried to get him to eat something that was dried, but shaking it around or wiggling it never worked. I even tried tricking him once or twice, feeding him a live bug, then a dried one before he realized, but he'd spit it out.

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Right now she's eating a diet of gutloaded superworms, waxworms, and pinkies. I'd rather not get crickets because I know they'll escape and the roommate won't appriciate that very much, so I'm trying out canned crickets. I know if this doesn't work I'll have to go with live crickets for the sake of my water dragon, but I want to find alternatives. I've already gotten some live crickets and tried feeding her. She ate about 3 of the 6 and the others got away and are chirping away throughout the night. Ugh....

I'm going to try setting up a feeding tank in which the crickets will have no where to hide but I'm afraid moving her to the tank will stress her enough not to eat when she's in there, but we'll see. Like I said...canned crickets would be an easily thing to add to her current diet.

Most lizards will not eat dead insects. I have also heard from some keepers that the vibrating bowls actually frightened the lizard away from the food.

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That's what I would think they'd do. I don't see how it can vibrate without making noise, which would probably freak out the lizard, especially a timid one. Either way it's just bound to look more weird than natural.

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Welp, it wasn't too much money so I decided to give it a shot. Surprisingly enough, she snagged the first canned cricket I put on it. Unfortunately that was the only one she ate. It does draw her attention, but she's been very picky about what she eats lately. I'm going to give it a couple more tries. She actually hasn't been eating much lately. I can only get her to eat 3-4 food items a day, but she has been eating them each day. I might try waiting a day or two before feeding to see if she won't be so picky anymore. But yeah, I'll let you know how the vibrating dish works in the long run.

My Horned Frog will eat those vitamin enriched canned grasshoppers (I only got them because my usual supply place ran out of pinkies because of their supplier going under... bad time for about 2 weeks, of coarse that always happens when you get to the end of your reserve). I had to tie one leg to a string and dangle it so that it looked like it was creeping around and when he bit down, the leg broke off so that the string would come loose.

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TKE:TT:118

Give her time and variety. If you patiently present her with options every day, eventually she'll begin to eat again. It sounds like she may be nervous about something, though. Try checking her environment and making sure the temps, humidity, etc. is correct. If she's in a high traffic portion of the house, try moving her to a quieter area.

Be sure to at least present food to her every day. I'm not sure it's a great idea to wait days between offering her food. If you can, try to establish a time you can feed her each day. Like every day in the evening or morning. She may eat better at a certain time of the day. Once that is established, then sticking to that may encourage her to eat more.

I actually ended up having to hold Kono in my lap and hand feed him every day. If I just let him hunt the insects, he'd hardly eat. He was terribly spoiled, though.

__________________
"Let's eat, Grandpa!"
"Let's eat Grandpa!"

Punctuation. It saves lives.

She's got a quiet spot, since I'm at work all day and nothing else is going on in my room and I feed her within the same two hour period each night. Her humidity does fluctuate throughout the day though. It usually drops to 60% while I'm gone and I get it back up to 80 within 2 hours of getting home. I need to get something for monitoring and adjusting humidity automatically still. Otherwise the head gradient is pretty good inside the cage and she seems to move around actively throughout the day and goes to the top to sleep every night. I'll just stick with it and see if she gets better.

Okay. Well, she may just not be a big eater. As long as she's no losing weight or becoming lethargic, she should be fine. If it keeps up for a long time and she starts to behave differently than normal, I'd take her to a vet.

__________________
"Let's eat, Grandpa!"
"Let's eat Grandpa!"

Punctuation. It saves lives.