Our 4 month old beardie has been on a diet of dubia roaches. Crickets if needed to fill in space between orders. He was eating 45-60 small roaches a day. Thinking that he was not being feeling full when eating, we decided to go with a medium size roach order. Since getting these he has dropped to eating 5-7 medium roaches a day. I did expect a drop in how many he would be eating of course just was not expecting this significant of a drop. Is this something to be overly concerned about? He also did just do a full body shed recently and is currently shedding his tail. Any help or suggestions are appreciated.
Besides the dubias he needs to be eating salads along w/ some worm for a balanced diet -- just insects is not gonna help you in the long run if he wont eat salads when hes supposed to - his diet should flip around a year old -- meaning he needs 80% veggies instead of 80% insects now- and yes its common for the to drop to a lower number since dubias are filling anyway -- here is a website for nutrition http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Nutrition.html ignore the kale thing its a good staple feeder -- I would recommend you get a glass bowl order some BSFL and get some super worms add as many BSFL to the bowl on top along w/ 1-3 super worms as a enticement to the salad bowl --- let him eat from that bowl for say an hr then add your dubias to the salad - you can also use silk worms as a lure and butter worms when they are back in stock -- if you need websites to order from please ask and I will post some for you
Karrie
I wouldn't think it's an issue since he is eating greens also.
We have a 5 month old and I can't imagine her eating that many roaches. ?
But I'm new, so hopefully more experienced members will chime
I do highly recommend adding bsfl to his diet though. We started that around your guy's age and she loves them.
Something to think about is the true size change in the Dubia. Since small and medium can vary slightly by seller I will give a direct size example. If your small were for example 1/4 inch adnt the medium are 1/2 inch this can mean around a 4-5 times increase in total mass. While they are only 2 times as long, they will also be wider and thicker. Using that as a basis the 5-7 a day could equal 25-35 of the smaller size, and as they age they will generally eat more of their salad. As long as there is good growth and weight gain then the exact count eaten isn't major.
Also sometimes they can get bored and picky of some foods, so adding some variety never hurts and BSFL is a good choice as they are great for calcium and a nice soft feeder.
I have 2 one month old beardies. They are doing great. Eating crickets, Dubias and some salad. I ordered BSFL to introduce them. Much to my surprise and now concern, they will not eat them. My dilemma is that I'm now out of crickets and waiting on more roaches.
They will not eat the BSFL at all. I have tried adding some to salad.
Suggestions please.
One of the biggest attractions to food for them from my experience is movement. Mibe showed almost no interest in BSFL at first, but if i would shake the dish while they were watching the movement interested them enough to try them. after a few times they decided they liked them and would eat fine.