[Afelinus]

I would like to hear what product and how often do you use it on your Felinus.Be honest about both your good and bad experiences.Take care,Marcus.

[Marlies]

Marcus,

Again, Tariq on Marlies her account. We use 3 different products for our felinus. Some of them may not be known in the States but I would be happy to provide you with a table of contents if needed. The first one is calciumlactate, the second one is gistocal (a lot of dutch breeders use this product) and the last Mineral Outdoor. We don't dust our feeders very much actually for the felinus. They seem to do better without a lot of calcium than with a lot, in contrary to all our other animals. The calciumlactate and gistocal are used to provide them with calcium. The mineral outdoor for calcium and other metals.

We don't have a strict dusting regime to be honest. Sometimes the feeders are dusted once a week, sometimes twice a month. More, and the animals sometimes produce more urine with a lot a cristals in it (I could discribe this better in Dutch). We are considering getting these cristals analyzed. A good friend of ours is a chemical analyzer and has also done amazing work regarding the metal-phosphorus contents in feeders, both wild and captive bred. If this would be done we'de be happy to deliver the results to you. Granted, the cristals could be caused by our former water supply. Tapwater in the Netherlands have very high standards but not high enough for this species I think. Since we are using (active) carbon filtered water they don't appear that much. But untill these structures are not properely analyzed we have no way of knowing if they are caused by just water with a lot of calcium and heavy metals or by our supplementation products (or both!). Time to stop speculating and get some hard data! Maybe then we would be at least one step closer understanding a part of the biochemistry of these animals. Perhaps these kinds of tests are already done (?) so let me know if it is redundant.

Further more, we use a lot of different feederanimals. Blaptica dubia, crickets, waxmothlarvae and so forth. The Blaptica dubia are their favourites and we breed them our selves. All feeders are gutloaded ofcourse. They also love isopods, wich are always present in their enclosure. The calcium-phosphorus ratio of these tiny animals is (in some parts of the Netherlands) 12:1. No supplementation needed for these feeders. In spring and summer we catch a lot of insects in our gardens, woods and fields. The only thing we haven't tried yet are snails (Ca: P = 32:1). All our other animals love them but we haven't tried them yet for the felinus. Have you?

All in all, on this "regime" our animals seem to do good but they could always do better. All animals our housed solitary in heavily planted tanks. Two animals (males) are in our care for about two years now. All others (3) have been in our care since last september, one of the females has probaly laid a clutch of eggs. All animals orginated from you. I Hope this is of some use/help.

Tariq

[Riverside Reptiles]

Originally Posted by Marlies

The Blaptica dubia are their favourites and we breed them our selves.

That's interesting as I've had zero luck feeding dubia to felinus. They just show no interest in them at all. Mine eat mostly lateralis.


As for supplementation, I mostly just use mineral. Everyone gets it sparingly, but gravid females and growing juvies get it more often than others.

[tanala]

oh, felinus eat Blaptica? I have the same experiences as Ethan, no single Blaptica ever eaten, but they really like the lateralis....
Marlies, how big are the dubia you offer for adults??
regards
Sebastian

[Marlies]

Originally Posted by tanala

oh, felinus eat Blaptica? I have the same experiences as Ethan, no single Blaptica ever eaten, but they really like the lateralis....
Marlies, how big are the dubia you offer for adults??
regards
Sebastian

Hi Sebastian,

I wrote the post, not Marlies. I guess I'm to lazy to log in on my own account But to answer your question. The females eat fairly large dubia's, they eat everything from the smallest nimphs to 1-1,5 centimeters long roaches. The males eat somewhat smaller dubia's.

Tariq, will log in on his own account

[GenAureliano]

I use Tri-Cal about 1X per week. I only feed adults 2X per week, so basically every other feeding or so, but I don't pay that much attention to an exact regime. I have never seen calcium deficiencies in Cat geckos, nor can I say I have had problems with too much calcium/minerals either. I have never lost a WC adult and I don't think the babies I have lost were due to too much calcium, but it is possible that this was part of the problem. I generally fed babies Tri-Cal coated crickets every feeding.

[tanala]

hi Tariq, thats really interesting...think i will try it once more. But dubia have the big disadvantage that they hide themselves soon after they were put into a terrarium.......

[rodekuhr]

Hi,
I am going to be getting some Felinus really soon so im reading up on them now. Anyways for feeding dubia to all of my geckos I put them in a small plastic container and the geckos dive at them in the containers and it makes it easier for them to spot when the roaches are dusted.

[Riverside Reptiles]

Originally Posted by rodekuhr

Hi,
I am going to be getting some Felinus really soon so im reading up on them now. Anyways for feeding dubia to all of my geckos I put them in a small plastic container and the geckos dive at them in the containers and it makes it easier for them to spot when the roaches are dusted.

That technique works for me with feeding dubia to my U. Lineatus. But it didn't work with the felinus at all. The majority of my geckos will take dubia, but as I said above, I've had zero luck trying to get any of my felinus collection to eat them.

[Marlies]

Ethan, Sebastian,

My "techique" of feeding dubia to our felinus is not really special. Feeding trays have limited succes with felinus, that is also my experience. I feed them late at night and just drop one roach at the time in front of them. They're amazingly accurate and almost never miss their target. I have no idea why our felinus do eat dubia and yours don't to be honest. Maybe Marlies should make some pictures some time when they are feeding on dubia.

The lobster roaches sound ideal but we have very negative experiences with a similar kind of roach - Shelfordella tartara. Almost every animal in our collection loved eating them and they were very easy to breed. But, escaped individuals survived in our house en were even breeding. Some other Dutch hobbyists even kept these roaches outside - they survived even in very cold conditions (snow!). So, no more climbing roaches for us, hahaha.

But back on topic: supplementation regimens

Tariq