Questions about leopard gecko gut loading and vitamins

[Jack Baucom]

I’m going to get a leopard gecko soon. I was wondering about the calcium sprinkling and vitamins. Can gut loading replace calcium dusting? And I still need more information on vitamins.

 

[acpart]

Gut loading the feeders is more than calcium, it's a balanced diet for them. You can get gutload from the pet store. I get mine from progeckos.com and highly recommend it. I get it 20 lb at a time (I have a lot of geckos and consequently a lot of feeders) but you can get as little as 1lb. As you know, leopard geckos need calcium, vitamin D3 and other vitamins. The difficulty is that they don't need huge amounts of these and it's easy for them to overdose on them. The easiest thing to do, which I have done since 2009, is to get Repashy Calcium Plus which is an all in one, to dust the feeders ever other feeding and not to keep calcium in the enclosure. It's been working well for me.

Aliza

 

[Jack Baucom]

Thank you so much!!! I'm going to look into the Repashy Calcium Plus. thanks!!

 

[TeacherWithAGecko]

Wait, so NO calcium in the enclosure? I didn't know that...

 

[acpart]

There is a concern that leopard geckos could get too much calcium, which is why people are now advocating no calcium in the enclosure. Some people say the gecko knows how much calcium it needs and other people don't agree. All I can tell you is that I've been using Repashy Calcium plus for the last 10 years without leaving calcium in the cage and everyone is doing well. The only exception is that I did leave plain calcium in the cage of young hatchlings (approximately until they are 2 months old) because I had a few that were showing early signs of MBD until I added the calcium.

Aliza