Boycotting crickets all of the sudden

[MamatoElvis]

My 5 month old panther has stopped eating crickets. I have been feeding him silkworms, hornworms, Phoenix worms, blue bottle flies and the occasional butter worm. Is this sufficient? Do the b b flies count for chitin?
I was gut loading and dusting the crickets. I assume if I try to dust the flies that by the time he ate them it would all be gone.
The breeder also said I should dust with calcium 5 or 6 times per week and Miner all 3 times per week. Minor all has calcium so should I be doing both or does the Minor all replace the calcium that day?

 

[jcarlsen]

My 5 month old panther has stopped eating crickets. I have been feeding him silkworms, hornworms, Phoenix worms, blue bottle flies and the occasional butter worm. Is this sufficient? Do the b b flies count for chitin?
I was gut loading and dusting the crickets. I assume if I try to dust the flies that by the time he ate them it would all be gone.
The breeder also said I should dust with calcium 5 or 6 times per week and Miner all 3 times per week. Minor all has calcium so should I be doing both or does the Minor all replace the calcium that day?

Maybe try skipping a day of feeding and trying a different gut load with the crickets. We change something in the gut load weekly and it seems to keep my Panther interested still. Though he occasionally leaves a few overnight.

 

[ChiefRedman]

My 5 month old panther has stopped eating crickets. I have been feeding him silkworms, hornworms, Phoenix worms, blue bottle flies and the occasional butter worm. Is this sufficient? Do the b b flies count for chitin?
I was gut loading and dusting the crickets. I assume if I try to dust the flies that by the time he ate them it would all be gone.
The breeder also said I should dust with calcium 5 or 6 times per week and Miner all 3 times per week. Minor all has calcium so should I be doing both or does the Minor all replace the calcium that day?

What exaclty is your feeding schedule? Variety is key, and with all of those feeders he is getting a abundance of nutrients! Sometimes my veiled goes on a cricket strike , so I just lay off the crickets for a couple of feed days and supplement with a different bug/ bugs! You can gutload the flies the same way with I think like Oats and Honey , Just as long as you are gutloading , and dusting accordingly you should be okay. You should look at the nutrient levels in all of your feeders, like percentage wise! Even though crickets are the stable of your diet , if you lay off crickets for a week and focus on say Super worms, which have a good calcium percentage, but still alternating bugs each feed day then you should be good!

 

[MamatoElvis]

I ran out of crickets yesterday. He was still eating one or two a day but he used to eat about 10 plus a few of the other feeders. I thought I would do like you both said and take a week off from crickets then try again. I was using Cricket Crack with some kind of fruit ( mango, apples, oranges, or plum) also I'd throw in some dandelion and carrot. I tried Kale but the crickets didn't eat much of it. I'm gut loading the flies with the fly food I bought from Mantis place.
His feeding schedule. I usually try a silkworm first thing in the morning (he usually only eats one), then I'll try a hornworm (again only one). I don't think the worms move enough. I have to hand feed them or he just walks right over them on the branches. He will usually eat about 10 to 12 Phoenix worms. I release about 15 bb flies around luchtime and he zaps them through the rest of the day. Sometimes he will eat another silk or horn worm later in the day. I try to keep the butters to 2x a week since I read they were high in fat. I guess I'll try to dust the Phoenix worms.

Do you know anything about the Minor all from Sticky Tongue Farms? Does it replace the calcium for the day?

 

[joepakaluk]

sometimes they stop eating crickets b/c they want some variety - I like to mix it up and catch them some grasshoppers and dragonflies and they love it.

 

[MamatoElvis]

Could a juvenile eat a dragonfly? I have a ton of them in my yard. You don't worry about wild caught bugs? Parasites or spraying.

 

[jannb]

Could a juvenile eat a dragonfly? I have a ton of them in my yard. You don't worry about wild caught bugs? Parasites or spraying.

WC bugs are ok as long as you do regular fecals and make sure your WC bugs come from pesticide free areas and that the bug it not toxic to chameleons.

 

[MamatoElvis]

We seem to have a lot of spraying. We have a truck that drives around in the night spraying for Mosquitos. I notice I no longer see the humming birds that used to be in abundance around my house. I remember a few years ago my mother ordered dragon fly larvae from a gardening center. She put them in water and now we have a lot of them around. I wonder if you could buy the larvae and captive raise them?