Hi I have a water dragon and a green basilisk who have roomed together for over a year now and are best buddies. They follow each other and do everything together. I bought some frozen salad shrimp in a bag at the store and I put it in a dish of hot water and then put it in a dish in their viv and they guzzled it. I know it has a fair amount of salt so they only get it a couple of times a week. I just wondered if this would hurt them in any way and how often can you feed them baby pinkies. I usually give them one every 2 to 3 weeks. They eat supers, mealies, silkies, butters and horned worms. They also love the crickets. But the shrimp is dirt cheap compared to bugs although I know they need the bugs.

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I am by no means an expert but I cant imagine that shrimp would be good for them...maybe someone else can chime in here???
I dont know anything about basiliks but I did have a Chinese Water Dragon I dont think salt would be good. My dragon didnt eat pinkies I have read that they are high in fat. I thought they could be offered occasionally as a treat.
Can they be housed together?? I didnt think housing 2 species was a good idea?? Do they have the same requirements??
But I am not sure~~someone who has more knowledge should chime in here soon.
And BTW welcome

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Hi Lucy

Thankyou for your reply. I wonder if I boiled the shrimp if it would take alo of the salt out.

the shrimp I dont know much on but its ok to feed your dragons feeder fish like little golds and other small fish you would get at any pet store....mixing different reptiles is not the best but I can work sometimes... they both have somethings incommon like they eat the same foods and they both live in a tropical habitat....i would think if they grow up together when they were young, and they are about the same size and ones a male, the other female they would be fine.....but if their both male they could end up fighting...heh...hoped that helped you....

Shrimp from what I have read are very lox in calcium as they are crustaceans and have an exoskeleton that is actually not totally composed of calcium. The salt as you mentioned is obviously a problem, however shrimp like many benthic inverts (bottom dwelling marine invertebrates) tend to have equal salinity in their body as the water around them, so boiling them will not remove all the salt.

The only way to get the salt out of shrimp is to get freshwater shrimp or get live marsh shrimp and soak them in fresh water for a period of 6-12 hours, this will significantly reduce the salt content, but will not get rid of it.

My concern is the lack of calcium and the potential for high mercury content that are both not good for captive animals. I have heard of snakes and lizards eating grass shrimp in the wild, you can usually get them from bait shops and most fish oriented pet stores, they are fresh water and are easy to buy alive, and easy to keep alive. I will have to look into the nutrition content of them, I feed them sparingly to my fish because the high protein brings out the colors of the cichlids , but I am not totally sure that what they have to offer nutritionally to reptiles.

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TKE:TT:118

How about krill? Krill are oceanic crustaceans similar to shrimp. Whales eat them by the boatload. You can buy packs of frozen krill at pet stores, it's meant for large fish. I've fed it to my turtles before. I never thought about the salt content, I'll have to look into that. Either way I know shrimp and/or krill should only be offered occasionally and not make up a large portion of the diet.

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Krill are pelagic, and tend to have a lower salt content than their surroundings. They need to make sure that they maintain a lower salt content because they are essentially zooplankton, they are weak swimmers and depend on their ability to float in the water column to eat phytoplankton. The ones you buy usually have shell intact because there is not much to them other than shell.

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“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…'"
- Isaac Asimov



TKE:TT:118

What about sprinkling the shrimp with calcium.

''I Wonder how the reptiles manage in the Wild.!!!

In the wild, basilisks and water dragons don't eat shrimp or krill as part of their diet, so the issues surrounding the salt and nutritional levels don't come into play.

They do eat a wide variety of insects and vegetation though. The variety of insects in addition to the vegetation offers them all they need in reference to nutrition.

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In the wild they have access to an incredible diversity of foods such as would be impossible for us to supply.
Unless we lived in their home range.
This diversity, that they have evolved with, keeps them properly nourished. All we can do is to supply as much as we can with what is available to us.

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