I hope your Japanese is better than mine...

[monitor]

I came across a seemingly new type of feeder insect, Google Translate and was wondering if anyone could provide further information on it. My Japanese is non-existant and I only have the Google translation to go on, and as anyone who's used Google translate will know, their translations aren't alway entirely accurate:roll: Anyhow, I'm specifically interested in the Latin name of this worm. I've done several searches for Flower Beetle, but haven't been able to narrow it down to a specific family of insects.

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[monitor]

I've just clicked on the link and it doesn't take you straight to the specific worm I'm asking about, those are the ones on the bottom of the page described as Flower Beetle grubs.

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[bjoern rolfes]

Hi,

maybe google for Pachnoda marginata.
That´s the most common bred flower beetle i think.
Regards

Bjoern

 

[monitor]

Many thanks for your reply. I did think that the grubs looked similiar to Pachodna sp. grubs I had tried before, but I couldn't find any reference to Pachodna as being Flower Beetles. In the UK they're called either Fruit or Sun Beetle grubs, but I'm willing to defer to your experience here.

I have used Pachodna grubs before, but I'm not too keen on the idea of trying these again though, in the case of these grubs once bitten really is twice shy! Little blighter drew blood when it bit me and I couldn't get it off of my finger.

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[ninajp]

maybe this is it?

I searched for the worms you are looking for on Japanese Wikipedia under the name mentioned on the website (which ironically is the site of the place I shop at). In western style writing the name of the worm is "hanamuguri" and Wikipedia lists this as "Cetonia（Eucetonia）pilifera". According to Wikipedia, there are 4 subspecies. I hope this helps, but if not, let me know and I'll try to find out more.

 

[monitor]

I searched for the worms you are looking for on Japanese Wikipedia under the name mentioned on the website (which ironically is the site of the place I shop at). In western style writing the name of the worm is "hanamuguri" and Wikipedia lists this as "According to Wikipedia, there are 4 subspecies. I hope this helps, but if not, let me know and I'll try to find out more.

Many thanks for the reply, that's exactly the information that I was looking for.

I've been doing a lot of reading on Japanese websites lately, and there are a number of interesting products available in Japan, just out of interest are there any specific products/ suppliers that you would particularly recommend?

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[ninajp]

glad I could help!

there are a number of interesting products available in Japan, just out of interest are there any specific products/ suppliers that you would particularly recommend?

well, to be completely honest with you while I have some years of experience keeping all sorts of pets, I'm just learning about keeping them here in Japan. As I mentioned, the website you referred to in your original post is the site of the main shops I use for my reptile supplies. They are good, willing to get just about anything you ask for, even if hey don't normally carry it, but the store is focused mainly on bearded dragons and green/red iguanas. They have a pretty nice breeding program going on inside their stores. Of course, this being a Japanese store (not quite a chain yet, they have three stores, two in Tokyo one in Osaka I believe), they carry whatever creatures they can squeeze into the stores which makes it fun to go see, but sadly somewhat questionable as far as quality of life for the animals since they all have limited space inside the store.
Having said that, I find that out of all the shops I have seen/been to, the staff in those is rather dedicated to doing their best, which is more than I can say for most stores that carry animals around here.
However, I have no idea if they ship overseas?!
Plus, many, many of the products they sell come directly from America and are simply relabeled for sale here in Japan. (and since I know those products best, I use mostly those for now)

But...I think trying to help you out may actually teach me something - and that is rather cool from my point of view:lol: - so why don't you tell me more about the kind of things/pages you were looking for/at, and I do more in-depth research in Japanese for you?;-)

 

[monitor]

Ninjap,
Thankyou for your offer of assistance. I'm interested in anything that will help improve the husbandry of my herps, so if you have any recommendations concerning any product I'd be glad to hear them.

My main interest at the moment though is Insect Diets and Vitamin/ Mineral supplements. I've narrowed down my choice of supplements to the VMC products offered here Google Translate and a calcium supplement from Tortoise Style http://translate.google.com/transla...style.com/&sl=ja&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1 it is the L-lactic acid fermentation supplement (Google Translate's words not mine,) which is listed under & food original on the right hand side of the screen.

As far as insect diets are concerned I'd be interested to know if you could find out anymore about the Cricket Diet that is made by the company Pogona Club. Their products seem to be widely available in Japan, but I can't find an ingredients list anywhere I've looked. I did manage to link through to their homepage once through another site, but it was down for maintenance and I haven't been able to find it again (this would be a good time to point out that my computer skills are extremely limited.)

As far as overseas shipping is concerned I've used a Proxy Buyer service to get other, non-herp related products from Japan in the past so that shouldn't be a problem.

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[ninajp]

heh...you've really done some research I see! I'm kind of curious though, why you chose Japanese products - are there none available wherever you are?

anyway, about pogona club...well, I did find what appears to be their website, and it seems to be on permanent maintenance?? of course, I've never been to their site before, but...while it says they have put the page on "maintenance status" due to the fact that they are moving the page somewhere else, no other page popped up in my search, and the last *NEW* update link on that page is dated sometime in 2006.

I did find the cricket diet you mentioned in several web-stores, but none of them had an ingredient list, so I figured the one way to go would be to check the homepage of the manufacturer...as you know now, I had no luck with that (all but one link on the page are dead)...sooo...there is a mail link on the old website and I went ahead and sent them a mail to see what's going on...let you know what I find out as soon as I get a response.

to offer a comparison I checked the ingredient list of the cricket food available at the store I usually go to and it goes something like this:

this product contains corn, defatted soybeans, fishmeal, milk, brown sugar, with added protein, calcium and "other" stuff...

this is the way ingredient lists here usually are - if you are lucky enough to get one - because while things are slowly changing for the better, in a lot of places here the idea of "trust the professionals, they know best and you wouldn't understand anyway" still holds in many fields.
apparently the law doesn't require full ingredient lists in many cases (even food), so especially pet/animal foods are labeled poorly and "other" is a common ingredient! (more so if you are keeping "weird" pets like reptiles;-))

for that reason I choose to make my own cricket food, but then I have only a few reptiles here who eat crickets, so it's not much effort to keep a couple of hundred crickets a month fed...

here's a fun thing that may explain the "interesting" challenges you may face here in Japan when buying "odd" stuff...

I decided to research the maker of the calcium supplement you found since tortoise style is just the supplier, and this is where it gets interesting...

the makers name is "mic animal create" and their website lists exactly three products - none of which are the one you are interested in! (though it does seem the last time the page was updated was in July of 2007)

they clearly do their research, there are pages upon pages showing exactly what kind of research they did to what effect, so it certainly seems they are a reputable company, though whether they discontinued the supplement you named and you are getting leftover stock, or this is a new product and they simply haven't added it to their website yet - I have no idea!

one reason for this glitch in the websites of both companies I checked for you may be that they are part of the still common small companies who do things the old-fashioned way, have no actual employees to handle web marketing and so simply rely on outside help to make a homepage every once in a while? no idea...

anyway...this is what I found so far, but I'll keep searching for you if you like (once I get back from fishing this weekend...;-))

 

[monitor]

Once again, thank you so much for all the effort you are putting in to finding about these products.

As to why I'm interested in Japanese products, it's not specifically that I'm interested in products just because they are from Japan, but I've tried an awful lot of what's available as far as nutrition products go, in the US and Europe, and I've not found anything presently available that I'm entirely satisfied with. I used to use the cricketfood.com products and the Walkabout Farms products, and these were very good, but are sadly no longer available, and I've yet to find anything that measures up to them. That's where the Japanese products come in, as they are new to me and the science behind a lot of these products (at least what I can piece together from Google tranlsate) seems to be very well thought out.

On the subject of gutloads, are you familiar with the one produced by the Leo Leo Chameleon Farm? I'm not even sure if it is still being produced, the product page gives a price, but on the order page on the same site a gutload is listed as no longer in production. They seem to produce a couple of different blends so maybe the one on the product page, labelled as Special Blend, might be something new. Here's the link, http://www.leoleocf.com/CricketFood-Takesumi.htm

Enjoy your fishing trip.
Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[ninajp]

sorry bout the long wait...I've been...exceptionally busy here...

I did check the website you refer to in your last post...and no, I was not familiar with them before.
However, it seems that the one (new) blend of cricket food they did have is currently not being sold, and he (the owner) is not sure if he is going to start selling it again. The possible reason for that is that cricket food (quality or not) is sold *everywhere* here, because people do like keeping bugs of all kinds as pets. So, I guess why bother to get expensive food from a website, when you can get a pack from the dollar store? After all, they're just bugs.(not kidding, sadly)

This is a recurring problem for me...which leads back to me feeding them a mix of what I came up myself. (and seeing as all my critters appear rather healthy, I guess I do ok)

of course, that doesn't help you at all...

However, you seem to be rather determined to come up with something, so I'll keep trying to help you out if you like.

by the way...cricket food is usually simply called

コオロギフード

or

コオロギ餌

in Japanese.

I don't know if your browser displays the writing correctly (my mac does, automatically), but if it does, maybe you can use those terms to help in your search?

 

[monitor]

Thanks for replying again, no worries about the wait.

Like you I did use to mix my own gutloads, but there were a couple of problems I ran into. Number one, keeping ingredients in stock, a lot of what I used was of very limited availability and frequently out of stock where I bought it from. Number two, when I sold reptiles that had been raised on the various blends that I came up with I had problems with buyers because the animals colours began to fade when they were no longer being fed insects that were raised on my diets. The cost of making the blends available commercially was prohibitive and no one wanted to pay for the ingredients at cost, I had offered to split the price of ingredients with buyers without making a profit myself but I didn't get any takers.

I went ahead and ordered the VMC Maine and VMC Premium supplements, so we'll see how those pan out over the breeding season.

Thankyou for the Japanese translations for Cricket Food, I tried a number of different translations and got the best results when searching for Cricket Breeding Supplies but will try what you have posted and see if I can turn up anything new.

Thankyou very much.

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[monitor]

One thing I meant to ask about previously was Japanese products for breeding Grasshoppers/ Locusts. In my collection, which is mainly comprised of many sorts of geckos and Odatria and Prasinus complex monitor lizards, I find that the aforementioned insects are more eagerly accepted than Crickets or Roaches, but I have never found a commercial gutload that was readily accepted by Locusts. I've always fed various grains and greens that were available to me at the time, but would like a more nutritious option.

In my various searches on google.co.jp I've noticed that grasshoppers and Locusts are popular as pets in Japan, kept mainly for their singing ability, and I wondered if you knew of any shops selling captive diets for them. I've tried a number of terms to search with, such as Locust Diet, Locust Feed and Locust Breeding Supplies but haven't turned up anything in the way of food.

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[ninajp]

well...this wasn't an easy one. I had to some some serious research...and still came up empty

thing is, the only cricket/grasshopper/locust type insects I know of people keeping as pets here are so-called "bell crickets". That's the literal translation of their Japanese name "suzumushi". And yes, those are kept for their singing ability. Specific food for them is available and usually supplemented with fresh veggies/fruit, but from what I found suzumushi may or may not be available outside of Japan. Also I have no clue if any of your critters would actually eat them.

I kinda considered trying to see if my beardies would eat them, since they are quite hardy and would be easier able to deal with eventual problems from eating those crickets, but then...they *are* sold as pet insects and a bit too expensive to just feed off to my big guys ;-)

this is annoying though...I can't seem to come up with anything really helpful for you - and sadly I am beginning to get used to having a hard time finding good info here in Japan.

the only thing I really did find is the cricket food from the store I get most of my supplies from (the "hachikura" website you mentioned in your original post), but there I wonder if the shipping cost would actually be worth it, especially if you want to make the same food available to your own customers.

maybe I am just not searching "the right way"? I saw that there were at least at one point other members on this board that live in Japan (when I was sifting through oodles of old posts to help me with problems I had with my first frog eye)...*anyone* else out there who might have an idea?

oh...one more thought though...
you said something about frequently running out of those things you were using to make your own gutload.

if you let me know what it is you were running out of, maybe there is a way to get those specific things here (or back home in Germany) that would make it easier for you to get back to making your own, trusted, and apparently exceptionally good (;-)) cricket food?

 

[monitor]

Sorry about the length of time it has taken to reply, been very busy. No worries about not being able to find anything much about grasshoppers/ locusts. They seem to be much more widely used as a food insect here in Europe than anywhere else but there are very few products made specifically for them. The German company Namiba Terra makes a Grasshopper food but I've sent numerous emails to them, both in English and in German, and I've not received any response. I know they have UK distributors though, so I should be able to find it for sale somewhere when I get a chance.

Would yo be able to provide a link to any stores that sell diets for suzumushi? I've found shops selling various supplies for keeping them as pets, but never any food for them. As someone who has spent many nights being kept awake by the never-ending chirping of crickets, I was surprised to see that these stores sell ceramic containers to actually amplify their song!

As far as my own gutloads were concerned a lot of what I was using was discontinued, such as a specific strain of Hydrilla. Or else the stores where I got them from ceased trading. I used to get a Nutritional Yeast product from a company named Seres until my supplier shut up shop. The only other company using it, in a health food supplement, refused to give me the contact information for the manufacturer, saying that by doing so they risked sacrificing any advantage they had over their competitors. Regular Nutritional Yeast has been linked to neurological problem due to the substrate on which it was grown, so the Seres product was the only one I trusted, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to find a supply again.

I have been playing around with the idea of starting to make my own gutloads again, and in my research, I found out just how big the health food market is in Japan and how much better informed the average consumer is compared to those of us in the West. I don't have any specific products in mind yet but there does seem to be a much wider choice of products available.

I received the VMC supplements, and also a Cricket Diet sold by the Chameleon Breeder Colors. I'll have to wait until the end of the breeding season to see how they work out but the Crickets seem to like the gutload thus far; and the supplements have passed the "taste-test" with some very picky geckos, so hopefully they'll work well too.

Kindest regards.
Alex