So we've had our beardie for almost 4 years now, and for most of that time we've been using dry cricket food (Fluker's high calcium cricket diet) and plain water crystals (polyacrylamide gel, I believe) for food and water for both crickets and roaches. We don't breed our own (at least, not yet); we buy them in fairly small quantities at local pet stores and usually keep them around for several weeks before he eats them all. We've never had any real problems with this so far, and the dry food and plain water crystals have been soooo easy and convenient to deal with...
But it has recently come to my attention that some people don't seem to think that these are the best things to use, the ideas being that the extra calcium is hard on the crickets themselves, even if it's good for the beardie, and that the gel polymer gets ingested by the crickets and ultimately by the beardie, and may be somehow unhealthy or unsafe. I'm tempted to fluff this off with "If it works don't fix it", and I really don't want to start a major debate, but I would be interested in some more opinions about this :?
But it has recently come to my attention that some people don't seem to think that these are the best things to use, the ideas being that the extra calcium is hard on the crickets themselves, even if it's good for the beardie, and that the gel polymer gets ingested by the crickets and ultimately by the beardie, and may be somehow unhealthy or unsafe. I'm tempted to fluff this off with "If it works don't fix it", and I really don't want to start a major debate, but I would be interested in some more opinions about this :?
