Melissa

So I have 3 tarantulas, Hank, Owen, and a wee little sling with no name...it is my tiny pet rock Hank, my B.smithi Owen, sold to me as a a.metallica but I personally believe she is a hybrid as to a few other T breeders/enthusiasts B.albopilosa my tiny pet rock of a sling I hope to in the future get an a.versicolor again, I had one but it died in molt which was sad as I had it as a tiny sling and it finally matured into adult colors. And a G.pulchripes. There are other species I would like, but I know those two for sure I will have in the future.

I have never had any interest in keeping hots, although I do wish to work with them some day, just not on a keeper level. But I do admire them and the lucy cobra and the green vines are beautiful, esp the green vines, very vibrant and big eyed. makes me grey banded king look boring lol

Do you not worry about oxalate acids with roaches? In the reptile world you avoid food high in oxalate acids due to them...well in easier terms make it harder to absorb calcium. When I used to keep crickets by the thousands it was something I considered as we all say what goes into our food goes into ourreptiles. So has this shown to but be as big of a deal wit roaches? This is the reason I stay away from foods like carrots, spinach and broccoli (thyroidial issues in reptiles not oxalate acids) in the past. As much as part of that does sound like a sales pitch however Allen as done so much for the Rhac world, the bonus to his work is that it has taken much of the guess work out of what too feed. Yes he wants his produce to sell, who wouldnt want their product to sell. But he has proven time and time again to produce complete diets. However we all know these guys can be maintained on other diets fine which is why my friends and I were looking for an alternative to the "bug buger"

Um....yeah I am not putting in crushed up dubia roaches into a $25,000 machine at work lol, we have to use that for the flour! I know what I normally give, and honestly it would cost me no more to make my own using the products at work since we throw out so many samples. Like I said it is working OK for me, would like something better, and as I said my other forum friends are really just trying to narrow down about the range to shoot for since we are all breeding for feeders for out reptile colonies we keep.

Well I am a gecko keeper mostly, I have 5 different species currently, there is just something about geckos, they are so diverse within one species it is amazing to me. So I figured I would share a some of my geckos with you The Cresteds Creme Rubia Amia Avalon Ginger The ever handsome Charlie Lazar Old man Scarface, the crested that started the crested gecko obsession Acacia and one in a million Naruto By no means not all of my crested gecko! These are just my cresteds, I still have gargoyles, chahoua, leos and phelsuma kochi I havent showed yet

Depends on the type of reptiles you are interested in. www.beardeddragon.org is a great place to go for bearded dragon info, for rhac species (cresteds, gargs, chewies, leachies) I highly suggest www.pangeareptile.com and if not there then hit up www.repashyforums.com for leopard geckos try geckoforums.net which they are pretty good with other species of semi arid geckos, along with some tropical like fatties they have a huge fattail gecko following over there. And for the oddball geckos try www.geckosunlimited.com The nice thing is for the more popular species you can find forums for them, then quite often there are owners on there who own other species. Like I am most active on pangea but I am not limited to just spilling out crested info as I was once a mod for a beardie forum (just lacked time to continue to do it so I stepped down). But we also have people who keep more phelsuma then they do rhacs, we also have a huge leaf tail following over there, along with many other species. And we do have the weirdo bug lovers over there too So although it can be hard to find a well rounded forum, normally finding a specific forum you will find there are enough people on there who have had alot of experience in other areas to help bridge the gap for you.

Hi all I am Melissa and I am from Toledo Ohio. I am in my senior year at Lourdes University, so close to my BS in biology! I am actually doing my senior research project on insects since I have been on a bug kick lately! I have been working with reptiles since 1998, starting with a bearded dragon. Now I have like 35ish geckos (for right now anyways, its breeding season!) which consist of crested geckos, gargoyle geckos, pheluma kochi (hoping to either get standingi or grandis later this year), leopards and a chahoua, then non gecko I have 1 beardie, 1 hypo RTB, 1 grey banded king, 1 northern garter, tiger salamander, 3 tarantulas, my colony of dubias, and next week I will be getting 2 colonies of isopods for my phelsuma tanks. Non cold blooded I have a eclectus parrot named Verde, who is the most spoiled pet possible. I hope to gain some good info here to help pass on to my other reptile friends on the other forum I am really active on, we are all pretty curious about some of the things we can do for our bugs. I know I spoil mine like they are pets, I enjoy the little critters, and I know many others over there who feed the same way, pretty sad when you become attached to the food!

Hi all new here, tried doing a search and could not find exactly what I am looking for, although got a little info from the grinding thread. I was wondering if anyone has any real good information on what is a good protein level for these guys. I belong to a gecko forum and we were having a discussion on making our own roach food and such and I already knew you had to watch the protein intake for roaches. Most of us keep dubias but there are a few keepers of other species. But I am however one of the lucky few who are capable knowing the nutritional content of the food I make because of a machine in my lab. I work in a flour lab, and our mill makes several types of flours, each type has a different requirement. Because of this I am able to get readings on moisture, protein, ash, fat, fiber, and iron although not sure how important iron is to roaches....So anyways I was going to try and come up with a blend using one of our whole grain flours, actually it is the backbone for MilkBones, and normally runs a protein around 12-12.6%, 12.3% is most common for it when it leaves our mill. And from there I was going to play around other foods to it. Right now I just do a mix of chicken feed, pond sticks, veggie fish flakes, and lafabers finch pellet. Not really thinking much of the protein intake as I thought well koi and goldfish food (the pond food) shouldnt be that high in protein, well it is at 28% protein, the finch food has 15%, which is more doable I honestly thought it would be more as there are many species of finches which are insect eaters in the pet trade. And my chicken feed is up there at 18%. So now I have realized although my roaches are doing fairly well, they are getting a pretty high protein intake. I plan to take a blend of my food in on tuesday out of curiosity and use my machine on it and see exactly what it reads. I think I have rambled....anyways I back to the topic, any info pointing me in the right direction would be great as I have been finding conflicting information (or none at all) on this. I know me and my gecko friends over at Pangea really want to get the answer of this...we love our bugs too