Which is more important?

Jupiter

Member
Aesop is turning into kind of a picky eater, the only things he eats readily are phoenix worms and crickets. He'll eat a few roaches then stop, and just turns up his nose altogether at super or silk worms. I know the standard method of introducing new feeders (or getting them to accept old ones, as the case may be) is to just not offer them anything else and eventually they will get hungry enough and go for em. But Aesop is still so young and doing so much growing, I feel like he needs to eat. So what should I do, indulge him with crix and grubs, or try and discipline him into eating a ful diet, at the potential cost of not eating at all?
 
I'd just make sure that the feeders are gut-loaded well and keep trying to add "good" variety. You don't want to add feeders to the variety that can lead to poor eating habits and refusal to eat what you need them to eat. ;)
 
I agree, at that age it is more important that he be offered the food he wants to allow him to grow. As he reaches maturity you can begin playing with various other feeders, as maximum growth will no longer be a primary concern. One thing I will say is if your cham refuses a variety of feeders, offer your feeders a wide variety of food when gut loading them, so at least your cham is getting some variety in his diet. Good luck :)
 
Sometimes just changing the size around counts (to them) as a new and exciting thing. So sometimes offering a roach nymph a little bigger than you usually go for or a worm that's bigger sometimes gets them excited. And hey, they get more calories from a single bug to boot.

May not work, but it's worth trying.
 
Well, at least both of those are pretty healthy options and gutload reasonably well.

Have you tried blue bottle flies? If you could get your hands on some land snails, those are great too...
 
Thanks for your responses guys, thats what I was thinking. I gutload with quite a few ingredients, so I don't think thats a problem. I didn't know you could gutload phoenix worms, how do you do it? Just put a little food in their cup? I am glad he's not hooked on supers or something though. I am looking into to BBs, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get some in the next batch of feeders I get coming up here. Does anyone have a landsnail connection haha? Also does anyone have any tips or experience with bringing the phoenix worms to full pupation to get soldier flies? Thanks again
 
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