What is a good dry mix for dubai?
- Thread starter solfire
- Start date
redheadedstepchild
New member
I use the Repashy gutload and Flukers cricket gutload.
MauricesExoticPets
New member
The Flukers cricket gutload is utter trash, its ingredients are not only mainly filler material they are poorly ground and of little nutritional value.
There are a few factors about gutloads you need to understand;
Gutloads are not the cure all for neglected feeder insects. I use a three bin three diet system; breeding bin, maintenance bin (a weeks worth of feeders), gutload bin (a days worth of feeders).
Gutloads should contain around 8% calcium, calcium carbonate is only 40% calcium so 20% by weight does the trick.
The remainder of the gutload should concentrate on delivering water soluble vitamins, and amino acids.
Fat soluable vitamins can be fed to the insects prior to gutloading that is a great subject for another post.
I tend to advise the following as a good start for a 24hr Gutload.
It provides trace nutrients, calcium, complete amino acid profile, but does not support the life cycle of the roaches because of the high calcium content.
You want to add as much calcium to the insect as is possible and use the remainder of the diet to pack in some extra nutrition that might not be found in the insect simply by virtue of its biological makeup.
Calcium first:
20% calcium carbonate by weight is required to make an impact on the calcium to phosphorous ratio of most insects, roaches included. You need so much because calcium carbonate is only 40% calcium.
Amino acids next:
10% nutritional yeast by weight provides a plethora of concentrated amino acids you simply can not get in any other ingredient.
Water soluble vitamins and minerals:
Here we are speaking of everything but A, D, E and K. Most vitamin premixes contain these fat soluble vitamins so you are somewhat limited to adding individual vitamins or by picking high quality ingredients in the first place that contain them naturally.
I use fenugreek seed and lentils, both are very nutritionally dense along with whole wheat to form the base of my gut load.
These three ingredients contain minimal quantities of fat soluble vitamins and high levels of water soluble vitamins, thus are my choice for gut loading.
33% whole wheat
23% lentils
13% fenugreek seed
Will get you close to where you want to be thus far.
The remaining 1% of the diet should include a concentrated protein such as whey protein isolate, soy protein isolate, or other very high protein food.
This gutload works best when combined with a maintenance diet which contains your fat soluble vitamins that is fed to insects for a week or so prior to being gutloaded.
Breeding colonies of insects need very little by way of diet complexity. Keep it simple and cheap, your not feeding these guys off your breeding them to maintain a suitable number of feeder insects. Roaches have very basic dietary needs, and they can eat alot of food when you have a sizeable colony going.
Maurice Pudlo
MauricesExoticPets
New member
How about this link?
Fat-Soluble Vitamins
A a general rule keeping the entire package of suplemental vitamins to 1% of the diet by weight is fine.
Unless otherwise required and at the direction of a veterinarian I don't add anything beyond this one percent rule.
I'll go ahead and predict the next question; how much of each do we need?
I'm working on putting to words my understanding of what works well as a base line.
Maurice Pudlo
Since this is my first posting here I am looking for a decent food for my feeder roaches without going broke. I know cat food is good and some chick scratch mixed with the powered form of the cat chow, how do I get all the cat food ground up to a powder form and so on? It does not appear that my roaches really enjoy large pieces of the cat food. Any ideas here? Please send to me via email. Thank you!