Syn
Avid Member
All credit to Andrew Schnell of Pangea Reptile Forums with permission to repost. See the original post here: http://www.pangeareptile.com/forums/showpost.php?p=322906&postcount=25
Please note this is informational and was posted on a crested gecko forum and probably does not apply to chameleons.
Please note this is informational and was posted on a crested gecko forum and probably does not apply to chameleons.
aschnell said:[...]
The following is an informational warning on calcium products which include D3.
Whatever you do DO NOT USE "REPCAL Calcium with Vitamin D3 (Phosphorous Free) Ultrafine powder". This is an extremely dangerous product, I have a photocopy of a letter that the FDA sent to my Vet warning him about the potential dangers of a product that had the exact same concentrations of D3 and calcium as the RepCal product I listed above. When used as directed (aka a 0.330 gram 5 week old cricket gets dusted with the RepCal supplement, and an average of 0.045g of supplement gets added in the process of dusting), the cricket's vitamin D3 content becomes 55 times the safe limit of Vit D3!!! The recommended safe limit of Vit D3 is 5,000 IU/kg of food (dry weight). My vet has done plenty of lizard, gecko, and chameleon Necropsies in which it was determined the cause of death was massive over-calcification of the soft tissues, so this isn't "just talk". My vet's website (Dr. Mark Burgess) with all his info available = http://www.swanimalhospital.net/
Here are pictures of the letter from the FDA, the product name has been blacked out for liability reasons, but you can go look at the REPCAL label and see that the nutritional content of the supplement discussed in the letter matches that of the REPCAL product.
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Anyone with a scale and a calculator can do their own study of any supplement, given that the label for the product is honest about the nutritional content (which is not always the case).