I have a Leopard Gecko and a herpetologist told me to use Calcium Powder without D3, but none of the pets stores in my area has it without D3. I want to know if D3 would hurt my leo or if I should go ahead and use it.
Also, does my leo need any other types of vitamin powder.
~Annet~
You can use the Calcium with d3 to lightly dust the feeder insects.
If you ask the pet shop owner they will order you a tub of calcium without the d3. Or you can order the stuff on line, I prefer the zoo med stuf myself but there are plenty of brands out there that will do the trick.
The calcium without d3 should be offered in a small dish inside the leos enclosure.
As for the need for additional vitamin powders, that depends on how well you feed the insects you offer to your leo. There are several trains of thought on this;
Mine is to give the insects a very good diet full of vitamins, minerals, etc. that way the nutrients are passed to the leo via. its food. I lightly dust with a calcium mixture at every feeding.
Other people dust with vitamins and calcium on a very set schedule they have found to work well for them.
Still others will feed a very high calcium diet to the insects for 18 to 24 hours prior to offering them to their leos which corrects the Ca
ratio, then dust with vitamins on a schedule that they have found to work well for them.
A smaller portion of people will feed a very diverse diet of insects, paying very close attention to the nutrient values of those insects to create a diet that is good for the leopard gecko.
When you boil it all down, you want to achieve a Calcium to Phosphorous ratio very close to 2:1, the rest is very subjective with regards to how much vitamins and minerals should be offered.
I prefer to provide vitamins and minerals other than calcium via the insects and adjust the final Ca
ratio with dusting, I feel this is safer for the leopard geckos and other critters I maintain. I worry more about over supplementing that anything else.
I believe that when the insect consumes a quality diet, it is doing most of the conversion of carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, vitamins and minerals into forms which are better used by our insect eating reptile charges.
It is my understanding that every vitamin and mineral works best when offered in proper combination with each other.
To me this means each meal should be balanced, and this is quite hard to to with a dust product when most vitamins and minerals are needed in very low quantities.
For me feeding the insects a diet that contains great nutrition works very well, but you must understand that I take great care in constructing my insect diets for this very purpose, it is an advanced care method.
Leopard geckos are very hardy geckos that can take quite a bit of error in feeding methods, a tiny pinch of vitamin dust added every 3 to 5 days to the calcium you use to dust the feeder insects with is not going to hurt and very likely will do them some good if you feed pet shop insects to your leo.
Maurice Pudlo
