Many leopard geckos require calcium and vitamin supplements in powder form to provide them with essential nutrition that they may be lacking from their feeder insects. When adding supplements, be sure to sprinkle over their feeder insects prior to giving it to your leo!
Keepers often use gut loaded feeder insects when providing leopard geckos with meals; this ensures their pet receives all of the essential vitamins and nutrients it requires and prevents any deficiencies later on.
Contents
Calcium
Leopard geckos are insectivores that require plenty of protein and calcium from their feeder insects for proper nutrition. Unfortunately, many commercially available feeder insects available from pet stores do not contain enough of these essential vitamins and minerals for your leopard gecko’s diet.
Assure your leo is receiving enough calcium and vitamins by dusting their feeder insects with all-in-one vitamin (and calcium) powder prior to feeding time. This will help bridge any potential nutritional gaps caused by many feeders being too high in phosphorus content which impedes calcium absorption.
Once again, this can be accomplished by placing feeder insects in a plastic bag, cup, or container and mixing in all-in-one powder before offering to your leopard gecko. Should any powder accidentally get on their eyes or eyelids, simply spray or syringe some distilled water over it until any trace disappears – Zoomed ReptiVite provides complete vitamin and calcium supplementation as well as multivitamin support to give them optimal care!
Vitamins
Leopard geckos are insectivores, meaning that they require feeder insects for protein. An ideal plan would involve providing various feeder insects containing high levels of nutrition – brown crickets, locusts, mealworms and wax worms can serve as nutritious treats that add variety to their diets; others, like dubia roaches and crickets may provide regular sustenance sources.
For optimal nutrition, feeders should be gut-loaded with high quality reptile vitamin and mineral supplements 24 hours before feeding them to leopard geckos. This will ensure they receive all essential vitamins and minerals required to sustain a healthy diet.
This powdered supplement for cats includes beta carotene derived vitamin A to support eye and immune system health, calcium, vitamin D3 and more. To prevent too much phosphorous being absorbed and leading to digestive issues in your pet, look for one with a low phosphorous ratio ratio.
Mealworms
Mealworms are an ideal feeder insect for leopard geckos, for many good reasons. Easy to breed and maintain, offering an excellent protein ratio, they stimulate their natural hunting behavior while satisfying other nutritional requirements like fat and calcium intake. But in order to provide your leopard gecko with optimal care it would also benefit him to include other insects like dubia cockroaches or crickets which contain higher amounts of nutrients and fat content in his diet.
Gut loading mealworms is another effective way of increasing their nutritional value for leopard gecko enclosures, and should be done 24-48 hours before offering them as treats to your leopard gecko.
Reptile owners typically opt for either liquid supplements, which can be added directly to water or drizzled onto feeder insects, or powdered supplements, which should be “dusted” over feeder insects before being fed to their geckos. Either type will suffice in terms of health benefits; both methods help prevent illnesses like metabolic bone disease.
Crickets
Leopard geckos depend on crickets to get all of the protein they require from their diet, along with calcium, vitamin D and iron. But mealworms, waxworms, superworms, dubia roaches and flies should also be provided as feeder insects to supplement this source.
These other insects provide variety to a leopard gecko’s diet while being easier and less noisy/odorous to raise than crickets.
Before feeding insects to your leopard gecko, it’s a good idea to dust them with nutritional supplements – this process is known as “gut loading.”
Gut loading involves giving insects a diet rich in calcium, vitamin A and other essential nutrients before giving them to your leopard gecko. There are commercial gut-loading diets available; however, you can easily create one at home using vegetables and powdered vitamin supplements.
