Why can’t we do it too?

Kaizen

Chameleon Enthusiast
From years of keeping Japanese koi, I know that young, vigorously growing koi can eat up to 5% of their body weight per day. Once they pass the 15” mark, this can slow down to 3-4%, and as full grown, 30” adults, this can be as low as 2%.

SO WHY THE ____ don’t we have these kinds of numbers for chams? Someone, somewhere, figured out these proportions for fish, and the rule has been borne-out for at least 100 years. Yes, there are still sources that measure food intake for koi in terms of how much they consume in x number of minutes, but anyone worth their salt in the koi hobby knows his/her percentages, and sets their auto feeders to deliver this much daily, with growth and weight gain compensated for on a bi-weekly or monthly basis.

So again, what the heck are we doing in the hobby here? Not trying to bash anyone here, but the fact that we still say to feed x number of crickets per day, or y number of roaches etc.—without any mention of the size of cricket, roach, super, waxie, etc—is pretty straightforwardly embarrassing. Wouldn’t it be better to know that, e.g. 4-5 grams of well gut-loaded feeders/ounce of body weight/day is an appropriate amount of food?

For all those who are intent on playing devil’s advocate:

1) Yes I know Koi are a single species and Chameleons are myriad, but since about 80% of captive chameleons are simalrly sized panthers and veileds, I don’t see why this is a problem. Furthermore, my intuitions are that once this is figured out for veiled and panthers, there’ll probably be some easily discerned amendments for Parson’s, Jackson’s, etc. Or, at least, something we can dead-reckon on the fly.

2) Yes I know good quality commercial koi food is much more fabricated and controllable than crickets, but the percentages for koi were worked out over a century ago, when there weren’t any commercial diets, and the Japanese breeders were using raw, natural ingredients. If they could figure it out using silkworm larva, fresh water shrimp, rice and cabbage, then this shouldn’t be a problem either.

3) Yes I know the easiest reply here is, “OK hot-shot, you figure it out, and report back to us!” But that seems like something for which the onus should fall on someone other than a relatively new hobbyist with a modest collection.

In short, why isn’t there some loose recipe that says, “if you have a veiled or a panther, under one year of age, feed it approximately x grams of well gutloaded insects/oz. of body weight/day. If an adult, then use y grams?”

yeah, Challenge issued...mic drop!
 
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Usually space & time for this is limited, separating each baby to give it a controlled diet for anaylization, although, I will try with whole clutches, give a whole clutch x amount of food each day although since I work it would be Impossible to know how much each baby eats...... I will try, I have a clutch of f-1 babies hatching and a clutch of captive bred that just hatched... not sure if f-1 genetics would be that much different to be able to compare....
 
Because koi are a decorative piece for many expensive businesses, chameleons are not. So therefore, more time and money goes into figuring these things out. Also, our success keeping chameleons wayyyyy.... past their life expectancy in the wild kind of brings complacency in some aspects. The whole, if it's not broke, why fix it.

I guess I look at things like: how much is to be gained, whether it's money or something else and how many people care?
 
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From years of keeping Japanese koi, I know that young, vigorously growing koi can eat up to 5% of their body weight per day. Once they pass the 15” mark, this can slow down to 3-4%, and as full grown, 30” adults, this can be as low as 2%.

SO WHY THE ____ don’t we have these kinds of numbers for chams? Someone, somewhere, figured out these proportions for fish, and the rule has been borne-out for at least 100 years. Yes, there are still sources that measure food intake for koi in terms of how much they consume in x number of minutes, but anyone worth their salt in the koi hobby knows his/her percentages, and sets their auto feeders to deliver this much daily, with growth and weight gain compensated for on a bi-weekly or monthly basis.

So again, what the heck are we doing in the hobby here? Not trying to bash anyone here, but the fact that we still say to feed x number of crickets per day, or y number of roaches etc.—without any mention of the size of cricket, roach, super, waxie, etc—is pretty straightforwardly embarrassing. Wouldn’t it be better to know that, e.g. 4-5 grams of well gut-loaded feeders/ounce of body weight/day is an appropriate amount of food?

For all those who are intent on playing devil’s advocate:

1) Yes I know Koi are a single species and Chameleons are myriad, but since about 80% of captive chameleons are simalrly sized panthers and veileds, I don’t see why this is a problem. Furthermore, my intuitions are that once this is figured out for veiled and panthers, there’ll probably be some easily discerned amendments for Parson’s, Jackson’s, etc. Or, at least, something we can dead-reckon on the fly.

2) Yes I know good quality commercial koi food is much more fabricated and controllable than crickets, but the percentages for koi were worked out over a century ago, when there weren’t any commercial diets, and the Japanese breeders were using raw, natural ingredients. If they could figure it out using silkworm larva, fresh water shrimp, rice and cabbage, then this shouldn’t be a problem either.

3) Yes I know the easiest reply here is, “OK hot-shot, you figure it out, and report back to us!” But that seems like something for which the onus should fall on someone other than a relatively new hobbyist with a modest collection.

In short, why isn’t there some loose recipe that says, “if you have a veiled or a panther, under one year of age, feed it approximately x grams of well gutloaded insects/oz. of body weight/day. If an adult, then use y grams?”

yeah, Challenge issued...mic drop!

My toughts on this :
1) Well.. KOI are first breeded in.. 1820? Chameleons are since (..) :p thats a start : Back in the days animal right were kind of low and people did experiment by putting animal in hard condition and many KOI have been probably sacrified for the good of the knowledge (by comparison.. so many humans have been sacrified during the world war 2 with experiment putting human in inhuman condition.. and lot of our medical knowledge come from the WW2 experiments :/)

2)many good breeders and experienced keepers keep theirs experiences for themself (not all of them.. but we are good at showing off healthy chameleon in such good shape.. but what about the pittfall? peuple dont want to look like bad keepers because the entire community will jump on them so we stick and stay with the same generic info like a sad bible.



3)KOI come from a oriental culture and chameleon is maybe more occidental.. we make things disposable.. this is our culture? :/

KOI can live up to 70 Chameleon.. 7? depending of the speacies i dont know if this is really making a difference

plus.. i got many chameleons and its still impossible for me to pinpoint what they exctly need :/ anyway temperature, seasonal changes and hormonal changes (and age) will have an impact on this i think the best is to weight your chameleon every 2-3 months and if he is an adult, make yourself sure the weight stay stable ;)
 
I think that it has been established that chameleons benefit from a wide range of feeders and sizes. Most of us don't have the time to just study the optimal nutrition % for chameleons when they're fine and happy the way they are. This is a very niche hobby. Also, I am extremely skeptical that anyone knows for sure optimal diets for any animal considering we don't even for people. Look at weightlifters, athletes, etc... every week there is new science coming out about how often and what we should be eating.
 
koi get koi food pellets. Just like dogs get dog pellets. its almost 100% water free weight. Real easy to measure.

Chams have massive growth spurts, then months of nada. Chams are also very dependent on temps. 50f nights and 70f days vs 80f 24/7 on average might halve the growth rate between the 2.

Bugs have water, lots and lots of water. Good luck factoring that in.


So all we have to do is create "chameleon chow" that we can measure out and just add water. Then boom we can do the experiment :)

Someone else can figure out how to make the chameleon chow wiggle...
 
In a tropical fish club I'm a member of if you make a suggestion you take the lead and follow through.
We'll all be waiting for the progress you make in a few years.
 
"why isn’t there some loose recipe that says, “if you have a veiled or a panther, under one year of age, feed it approximately x grams of well gutloaded insects/oz. of body weight/day. If an adult, then use y grams?”... How many of us have a scale to weigh the insects...or the time. I used to have like 50 cages ....do you know how long that would have taken me??!!?? I don't weigh my chameleons (unless they need medication) to see what they're big enough to mate....I don't weigh incubation containers to see how much moisture there is in them or what the eggs weigh...I definitely don't weigh the insects. I've don't al of those things for so long it's just automatic! Sometimes when others say they measure, have proper incubators and automatic misting systems and more I think what a bad keeper I must be until I realize that the chameleons and other critters seemed to do ok without it. Sorry. :(

Btw...if you're going to give a certain weight of food to a chameleon then you're going to have to factor in the temperature since that will affect their digestion time...right?
 
I think that it has been established that chameleons benefit from a wide range of feeders and sizes. Most of us don't have the time to just study the optimal nutrition % for chameleons when they're fine and happy the way they are. This is a very niche hobby. Also, I am extremely skeptical that anyone knows for sure optimal diets for any animal considering we don't even for people. Look at weightlifters, athletes, etc... every week there is new science coming out about how often and what we should be eating.
I like how your brain works...
 
I think that it has been established that chameleons benefit from a wide range of feeders and sizes. Most of us don't have the time to just study the optimal nutrition % for chameleons when they're fine and happy the way they are. This is a very niche hobby. Also, I am extremely skeptical that anyone knows for sure optimal diets for any animal considering we don't even for people. Look at weightlifters, athletes, etc... every week there is new science coming out about how often and what we should be eating.
I appreciate your view here, but that can’t be a reason for not trying to push our knowledge further. That is, if it’s true that we don’t have a clue about nutrition, does that mean we shouldn’t bother trying to find out? Every time a new piece of science comes out about nutrition, that advances our knowledge base. It’s how we got to the microbial theory of infection, antibiotics, etc.

Anyways, since everyone seems dubious of the prospects here, I suppose we can just chalk this up to yet another naive idea from Kaizen. Pretty soon now I’m going to have to face one or both of two realities:

1) My foolhardy ideas are the not the kinds of things that will actually help the hobby, and that I’m more often than not on the complete wrong track; or
2) I’m mistaken that most people here are actually interested in seeing the hobby progress
 
I appreciate your view here, but that can’t be a reason for not trying to push our knowledge further. That is, if it’s true that we don’t have a clue about nutrition, does that mean we shouldn’t bother trying to find out? Every time a new piece of science comes out about nutrition, that advances our knowledge base. It’s how we got to the microbial theory of infection, antibiotics, etc.

Anyways, since everyone seems dubious of the prospects here, I suppose we can just chalk this up to yet another naive idea from Kaizen. Pretty soon now I’m going to have to face one or both of two realities:

1) My foolhardy ideas are the not the kinds of things that will actually help the hobby, and that I’m more often than not on the complete wrong track; or
2) I’m mistaken that most people here are actually interested in seeing the hobby progress
The same was said about the Care images recently created. We did not succeed with all of them but the ones that we did were totally worth the effort. Even if they were only small steps forward.

Nothing worth doing ever comes easily. Keep pushing.
 
@Kaizen , even if you don't succeed in developing a more refined and precise dietary protocol, it doesn't mean that you won't discover something else amazing in the process. Some of the greatest ideas, inventions and progressions in the last 100 years came from people that were working on something totally different and unrelated. You might discover a fountain of chameleon youth that could extend the life expectancy by a year or even few, or something that can make their colors pop more or even express ones we've never seen as hobbyists. I support your theory and any effort you put into this. Keep it pushing! People that think like you are the game changers of this world.
 
1) My foolhardy ideas are the not the kinds of things that will actually help the hobby, and that I’m more often than not on the complete wrong track; or
2) I’m mistaken that most people here are actually interested in seeing the hobby progress

3) Asking questions that ended up dead ends in the past, brings up new questions that may have usable answers.

The question on how to raise a healthy veiled was answered around 1992. Still people kept asking this same question over and over again for another 25 years. What we ended up with was countless more right answers to choose from.

You may find a new formula for calculating how to feed a growing chameleon, that gives us yet another right answer to choose from.


Im sure there are lots of healthy koi out there that were raised off of whatever parts of things the humans could/did not eat :)
 
Don't give up @Kaizen ...like it's been said...questioning things often leads to discoveries...even if the path isn't direct. We often travel down winding roads to reach what's at the end! All that thinking will lead you to something good in the end!
 
I appreciate your view here, but that can’t be a reason for not trying to push our knowledge further. That is, if it’s true that we don’t have a clue about nutrition, does that mean we shouldn’t bother trying to find out? Every time a new piece of science comes out about nutrition, that advances our knowledge base. It’s how we got to the microbial theory of infection, antibiotics, etc.

Anyways, since everyone seems dubious of the prospects here, I suppose we can just chalk this up to yet another naive idea from Kaizen. Pretty soon now I’m going to have to face one or both of two realities:

1) My foolhardy ideas are the not the kinds of things that will actually help the hobby, and that I’m more often than not on the complete wrong track; or
2) I’m mistaken that most people here are actually interested in seeing the hobby progress

Not against your ideas, for me at least, it is the dickish way you're coming off ATM, but maybe I took it the wrong way. People gave excellent reasons why it hasn't been done and your turn around and insult us all. I'm sure if you came up with some breakthrough research we'd all be excited and welcoming. We're hobbyists, not highly paid chameleon researchers. Nutrition is also a highly individualized thing. One chameleon may have different needs than another. So it's hard to get a solid recipe down.

Also your points about infections, medicines, etc... see my post about what is to be gained and who's being paid to research it. No one is against striving for more, just giving reasons as for why it probably hasn't been done yet. Pretty low on the totem poll. Lots of time/work for extremely little reward.
 
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