Mealies ok yet sand NOT?

[ryanrex]

Here's the thing, the previous post brought this issue to mind. If everyone here on this forum is dead set against sand as used as a substrate, save for a few others, why is everyone not against the use of Mealworms in your leopard's diet? I've read through several posts where people don't use sand for fear of impaction with the argument "why take the risk?". Well, the shells on the mealworms your feeding your gecko contain high levels of chitlin. The high levels of chitlin are known to cause impaction and can be fatal. So if your on tile then I must be correct in assuming that you don't feed Mealworms as well???

 

[LeapinLizards]

I have all of my leos either on paper towel or on tile. I got started with leopard geckos by adopting an 8 year old gecko, then quickly got a couple babies, both from different places, but both kept on sand. I'm not kidding when I say they were literally pooping with traces of sand (first one was a straight sand log) for a week.

I have not had any experience with a gecko becoming impacted due to the CHITIN ("chitlin" as you spelled it is a southern delicacy lol jk). I can understand how it could happen, but if you are feeding the correct size of meal worms to your gecko, I think the chance of that happening is slim to none...MUCH less than the chance of impaction when hatchlings are kept on sand.

The few hatchlings I've had have started out on crickets, and prefer crickets to meal worms when given the choice. It will be interesting to hear some breeder's opinions...as their volume of hatchlings they've had experience with is 100 times my own.

I think what it comes down to is that impaction due to sand is 10+ times more common than impaction due to not being able to digest meal worms.

 

[Grinning Geckos]

I've seen x-rays of geckos impacted with sand...I've yet to see one impacted by mealworms. Sand is, for the large part, silica and it's not digestible in any way. Even the calci-sand has far too much calcium content to be properly disolved and digested. The chitin, on the other hand, gets digested quite well when the geckos have ample heat for digestion. I'd only worry about geckos without proper heat.