Gecko Diet!

[alana10]

Hello everyone! My first post here as a member!

I purchased Jamie as a hatchling and she is now about 5 months old. I have always read "Feed them as much as they'll eat with in 15 minutes" when I did all my research pre-purchase. Well, Jamie is a fatty, and eats A TON. She can eat as much as 3 dozen large crickets a week PLUS 8-12 meal worms a day. Her meal worms are placed in a dish with her Repti Calcium w/out D3. I don't have a scale (yet!) but I am pretty sure she's too big.

Keep in mind she is laying down, not standing.
http://flickr.com/gp/68355600@N05/717463

Anyway, I was curious, how much *should* she be getting? I was thinking of cutting her down to feedings only every other day of 6-8 crickets and rotating out with meal worms. That will cut her food consumption by a good 1/2.

Otherwise she is perfectly healthy (from what I can tell anyway!) She has a WONDERFUL temperament and disposition. I can put my hand on the floor of her tank and she willingly crawls into it, she's so tame! It's kinda spooky.

Thanks guys!
-Alana

 

[katie_]

Your plans sound good, as she is a little chunky. Thats not always a bad thing , I prefer mine to be a little on the heavy side .Shes cute.

 

[OnlineGeckos]

She's pretty chunky for a 5 month old, but she's healthy and does not look skinny and ill treated like some other people's geckos. At 5 months old she's still growing rapidly, I would keep feeding her everyday. If you want less fat in her diet, just cut out the mealworms from her diet for awhile, feed strictly low fat diet like crickets, dubia roaches, silkworms, phoenix works, etc..

While they are growing they need to eat, so I wouldn't go every other day. Keep feeding her every day, just cut out the higher fat feeders like mealworms/superworms, and feed her more low fat feeders for awhile. That will allow her to continue to grow, but she would be gaining good weight, not just fat weight.

Hope that helps

 

[alana10]

Thanks! I primarily feed her crickets with worms as more a 'filler' when she's done eating her crickets. She's never had wax worms or super worms since they're pretty fatty. Sadly, I can't do the roaches since I live in FL and they're banned here.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know the fat content/ratio between crickets and meal worms? I get the meal worms super cheap from my job, and they're already gut loaded too!

 

[OnlineGeckos]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know the fat content/ratio between crickets and meal worms? I get the meal worms super cheap from my job, and they're already gut loaded too!

Here's a chart from Grubco:

http://www.grubco.com/nutritional_information.cfm

 

[alana10]

Thank you!

 

[mudskipper]

She's adorable!