Does anyone have any experience keeping live food for reptiles?

[Grim Portent]

Hi all, I recently bought a young Ackie (Spiny Tailed Monitor) and I was wondering if anyone with experience keeping bug eating reptiles had any tips or advice on keeping his live food healthy and nutritious.

Currently I feed him mostly locusts that I keep in a pair of cricket keepers with store bought food mix and water, but I'm thinking of setting up something larger for them so they can get more exercise and are easier to manage.

[Bobbybobby99]

I just periodically buy my Skink crickets and set them loose in his terrarium, but that's primarily because my Aunt owns a pet store and we get things at a 20% discount. I also have some superworms; just give them my green leftovers. I have scant idea why you would want the crickets better exercised; they taste best when priorly sedentary, or so my Skink loudly and indirectly proclaims.

[Grim Portent]

I just periodically buy my Skink crickets and set them loose in his terrarium, but that's primarily because my Aunt owns a pet store and we get things at a 20% discount. I also have some superworms; just give them my green leftovers. I have scant idea why you would want the crickets better exercised; they taste best when priorly sedentary, or so my Skink loudly and indirectly proclaims.

My Ackie doesn't eat enough store bought bugs a day for me to just dump them all in his vivarium, they wind up dying from hunger and dehydration unless I add food and water dishes for them, which makes the viv ugly and is a risk for mold growing in it apparently. Also the initial swarm of them seems to disturb him and put him off eating them.

I'm also assuming the locusts will be more nutritious if they're healthier, which makes getting them a proper viv set up for them seem like a good idea.

[Bobbybobby99]

Ah. Ruppert the Blue Tongue Skink is around two feet long, so eating them swiftly isn't much of a problem; he can devour 30 in a few days, then sort of be sedentary for a month. If you have a smaller fellow, I suppose it would be less sensible. If you want them to be nutritious, buy a nutrient powder and dust them; that's what I do.

[Grim Portent]

My little guy's only about 3 months old and under a foot long, and most of him is tail. He eats a lot at a time since he's quite an active species, but still only 1/2 or 1/3 or a box of bugs a day. Sometimes he seems pretty bad at hunting though, a lot of the time he'll make a go for a locust and it'll leap past his head and sit still, when he turns around to look for it he'll look straight past it and wander off.

Spoiler

Show

[Bobbybobby99]

Aww, isn't he just the most adorable fellow. I just want to cuddle him and put him under a low intensity heat lamp shaped like a heart while he feasts on his favored delicacies.

[cobaltstarfire]

You may want to find a dedicated reptile forum keeping reptiles, even "easy" ones can be rather tricky to keep happy and healthy especially if you don't do your homework before getting the animal.

A quick google search and peak through several different pages and articles suggests a variety of insects (roaches, crickets, various worms) dusted with a good calcium supplement, as well as weaned pinkies, but those are generic suggestions, and should be modified to match your animals individual requirements.

Other than that don't overfeed your animal. find out how much and how often your reptile baby should be eating. And don't leave your animal unsupervised with live prey, anything that isn't consumed should be taken out because most of them can hurt your animal.

[Bobbybobby99]

And don't leave your animal unsupervised with live prey, anything that isn't consumed should be taken out because most of them can hurt your animal.

I heartily call false on that. If something can hurt your pet without undergoing a coordinating assualt and millitary grade tactics, you should be feeding your pet smaller food.

[cobaltstarfire]

I heartily call false on that. If something can hurt your pet without undergoing a coordinating assualt and millitary grade tactics, you should be feeding your pet smaller food.

It's not a falsehood, snakes have been disfigured or flat out killed by rats or mice left in their enclosure, a cricket or a roach probably can't kill, but they can still nip, and while such a minor injury may end up being no big deal, it may also turn into a nasty infection. Better safe, than trying to hunt down a vet who has experience with reptiles, cause even if there is one, it's still a largely hit and miss thing.

[Bobbybobby99]

Who feeds snakes in their enclosures, and aren't we talking about a lizard? In addition, a few examples do not a commonality make. Plenty of people get hit by cars when crossing the street. I continue to cross the street. Also, nip wounds are for animals that don't have full plate armor on at all times. If it's big enough to get through said armor, I repeat, it's too big.

[cobaltstarfire]

Who feeds snakes in their enclosures, and aren't we talking about a lizard? In addition, a few examples do not a commonality make. Plenty of people get hit by cars when crossing the street. I continue to cross the street. Also, nip wounds are for animals that don't have full plate armor on at all times. If it's big enough to get through said armor, I repeat, it's too big.

I'm speaking in general terms, as a general rule you shouldn't leave live food in your animals enclosure and you don't leave the animal alone in a feeding bin with live food, snakes are the easiest example, but I've heard it applied to lizards and geckos as well. "Prey too big" is definitely a factor, but it isn't the only factor, properly sized prey for an animal can still injure it and the point is to avoid such injury.

This is the reason I suggest the OP find a dedicated Herp forum, that way they can get good in depth advice from a variety of people who are experienced with the particular species and serious about good animal husbandry.

[Grim Portent]

From what I was told when buying him a sufficient number of crickets would pose him a minor threat, but locusts are completely harmless to him because of the differences in their mandibles. Part of the reason he mostly gets locusts, the other being that getting crickets small enough for him to eat is pretty hard at the stores within a reasonable distance, the nearby generic pet shop has very poor quality control with their livefood tubs, the 'small' ones range from half a centimeter to an inch, and the specialist shop I bought him from is too far to travel to for regular food supplies.

He's not the first reptile I've kept though, that would be my pet corn snake, so basic reptile maintenance isn't really an issue for me, plus the shop I bought him from is very supportive of their customers, it's more keeping live food alive for any length of time that gives me trouble. I got a bit over a weeks worth of food when I bought him and about 80% of one of the three boxes of bugs had died in their container by the end of week, the others lost less but still a lot. The new ones are living longer since I got live food pens for them and got the basic necessities sorted out better, but I'm still far from great with them and more than a few are still dying before they can get used as food.

I did try looking up information on keeping the lizard himself, but most monitor information I can find is on Boscs, and what information I could find on Ackies was often contradictory with other information on them, so for his personal care I've mostly defaulted to asking the shop he's from. Unfortunately they don't raise or keep live food for long since they buy it in bulk for the store each week rather than breed it, so they haven't been able to give me any tips on keeping the live food itself healthy beyond the most basic stuff despite being great for advice on the lizard.

[Trekkin]

I've only ever raised beardies rather than ackies, so I'm not sure if they have as much of a problem with calcium. That said, I always just grew phoenix worms and superworms, although the latter needed calcium dusting. I like the worms better than anything that can jump around the viv, just so I can remove the uneaten ones more easily. They're also rather simpler to harvest via tubes.

If you don't want to breed them but simply to keep them alive, I've kept locusts and crickets in those cheap plastic hermit crab "crabitats" before. As long as the temperature and humidity are all right you will probably be fine if you disinfect it between batches, although it may be easier on you to build a glove box panel and airlock into the apparatus to avoid letting them escape when maintaining it.

[Grim Portent]

What I've wound up doing is just cramming crickets into cricket keepers with food, bug gel and some nutrient jelly and putting them into a warm dark spot in a walk in closet. My locusts are in a medium sized faunarium with sand in it on top of the lizards viv, right above the heat lamp. They have food, water, nutrient jelly and get the occasional spritz of water to keep the humidity up. They seem to be doing well like that, they're active and grazing plenty. No deaths so far, which is pretty handy considering my previous batches would have had 2-3 dead by now.

The lizard himself has been doing pretty good. He eats a lot, defecates regularly, skin's in good shape, eyes are clear, doesn't seem stressed by handling or when I need to stick my arms in his viv to move things around or fix stuff.

[unglitteringold]

My little guy's only about 3 months old and under a foot long, and most of him is tail. He eats a lot at a time since he's quite an active species, but still only 1/2 or 1/3 or a box of bugs a day. Sometimes he seems pretty bad at hunting though, a lot of the time he'll make a go for a locust and it'll leap past his head and sit still, when he turns around to look for it he'll look straight past it and wander off.

You might be over feeding. While the species may be active, you need to keep in mind that he's a desert creature, and they are designed to eat less (that's why he has that long, fatty tail). I have a leopard gecko and he only gets fed a few times a week, and he's a bit older and smaller (6 inches or so and almost a year old), but I only give him 3-4 crickets at a time. When I know I won't be around to feed him for a while, or if he destroys the crickets, I'll leave him some meal worms to snack on in a mealworm feeder.

It is important to NOT leave uneaten crickets and the like in the tank. They will attack your lizard while he sleeps. Also, it's not good for an animal to eat dead crickets, and most won't, so the dead cricket just sit there and decay. Crickets are also stupid and will drown in your pet's water. Gross.

I don't know much about Spiny Tailed Monitors, but I would consult some forums dedicated to the specific breed - that's how I learned to care for my little guy. His name is Def. Def Leopard Gecko.

[Grim Portent]

You might be over feeding. While the species may be active, you need to keep in mind that he's a desert creature, and they are designed to eat less (that's why he has that long, fatty tail). I have a leopard gecko and he only gets fed a few times a week, and he's a bit older and smaller (6 inches or so and almost a year old), but I only give him 3-4 crickets at a time. When I know I won't be around to feed him for a while, or if he destroys the crickets, I'll leave him some meal worms to snack on in a mealworm feeder.

It is important to NOT leave uneaten crickets and the like in the tank. They will attack your lizard while he sleeps. Also, it's not good for an animal to eat dead crickets, and most won't, so the dead cricket just sit there and decay. Crickets are also stupid and will drown in your pet's water. Gross.

Both the shop I got him from and all the care sheets I've read say to just keep feeding him until he stops eating and remove any uneaten food before going to sleep. That works out to about a third or half of a box of locusts, if only because the boxes of locusts I can get here are woefully understocked. He eats less of a box of crickets because they come in greater quantities in the boxes from local shops, but I like to mix them up a bit and let him have both. I do tend to let the crickets get a molt or two in before feeding them to him now that I can keep them alive for a few weeks, just to let them get up to a similar size to his locusts.

I also can't feed him mealworms apparently, their shells are too hard for him and can cause gut impactions at his current size. Though there is some conflicting information on that, some people say it's fine to feed him them. I did try to feed him one before getting advice from the shop I got him from and he just ignored it completely, so the box of them just got chucked to my mother's chickens.

Not had any crickets drown yet, they seem smart enough not to go near the water dish much, the locusts on the other hand drown like they're members of a suicide cult. There were three dead in the water yesterday when I got back from uni.

He's quite a different beast from a gecko, I'd compare him more to a bearded dragon in terms of appetite, though to my understanding young beardies eat even more than he does.

His name is Def. Def Leopard Gecko.

*Groan*

Named my ackie Adno, short for Adnoartina, a mythical creature from Australian Aborignal folklore.

[kingzerno]

If you get crickets or locusts they are pretty easy to keep/breed. You'll need a set up similar to your lizards. A tank with heating. When you get the crickets/locusts dump them all n there. Add a bowl of water. Feed and clean them regularly.

Make sure you take out any dead ones because they'll try to eat them and that's not good for the lizard.

Feed them lots of greens and veggies, basically the better they eat the more nutrition they get.

I had a bearded dragon. Bought 3 tubs of locusts and treated above. They kept breeding to the point that those 3 tubs lasted about 6 months.