herbs for taranulas (medical, not eating)

[JayzunBoget]

What brands are generally recommended? ...

...Although I'm still terrible at catching crickets, even *with* the "put a tube over them and let them crawl into it" trick. The stupid things always hop out before the tube can go over them!

The nutrients contained within the guts of an insect can far outweigh any nutritional value the actual insect itself had. One advantage of eating insects is that the insect can travel far and wide, collecting a variety of different (or I suppose in some cases specialized) food items within its guts. To ignore that aspect of nutrition can be detrimental or even fatal to your exotic pet, be it a T, a lizard or a frog.
Well, when it comes to commercially available gutload, if you are willing to overlook a couple of minor details, they can be very handy. There are alot of different brands and of course each formula is proprietary. Besides that, what are you going to compare it to? There currently is no USRDA for reptiles in general let alone any particular eating habits group (insectivore, herbivore, omnivore, piscivore, etc.).
The largest companies such as Zoo Med, Exo-Terra, Flukers, employ some of the best known names in their fields to design and promote their own gutloads, but I've seen things that have concerned me in each of them. At best you have to admit that you have little better than a stab in the dark of knowing how much of each nutrient your exotic needs and offer as much variety of appropriate food items (in this case to your crickets) as possible in hopes of some sort of balance.
I use Ecto-therm Yummies combined with occasional pinches of Sea-Chems Jurrasi-diet gut load and whatever different fish flakes I can borrow a pinch of. I work at a pet store, so that makes more sense than it sounds.
I must go now, but I have advice on catching crickets as well as feeding them. Maybe I will post later.

 

[8ballphoenix]

Super predators like cats, who don't generally eat grains or greens, digestives systems are not designed to be able to properly digest them where as a mouse or a cricket's is. So, basically they predigest the food for the cat when the cat eats their stomach with its content. (Everybody knows that probably...)

So, a T like our blondi, who is wild caught , would have eaten a variety of pray items feeding on a variety of foods. Compare that to a captive diet where she is feed primarily crickets... Although we do gut load and occasionally offer other prey items. (Wax worms, earthworms, pinkies...)

Like I said before.
IMO IT would be so beneficial to focus on trying to learn what vitamin and mineral needs Ts have. I would focus on nutrition before anything else.

And no, I haven't posted much because I have so much to learn and in no way consider myself a T expert. My husband is the one with the know how; I'm still trying to catch up. If the number of posts equals T iq that I really am s*** out of luck.

 

[zeruty]

I wonder what a smidge of ethylene blue would do...

 

[cacoseraph]

Super predators like cats, who don't generally eat grains or greens, digestives systems are not designed to be able to properly digest them where as a mouse or a cricket's is. So, basically they predigest the food for the cat when the cat eats their stomach with its content. (Everybody knows that probably...)

So, a T like our blondi, who is wild caught , would have eaten a variety of pray items feeding on a variety of foods. Compare that to a captive diet where she is feed primarily crickets... Although we do gut load and occasionally offer other prey items. (Wax worms, earthworms, pinkies...)

Like I said before.
IMO IT would be so beneficial to focus on trying to learn what vitamin and mineral needs Ts have. I would focus on nutrition before anything else.

And no, I haven't posted much because I have so much to learn and in no way consider myself a T expert. My husband is the one with the know how; I'm still trying to catch up. If the number of posts equals T iq that I really am s*** out of luck.

man, i have been trying to sell micronutrient drain for a couple years now and nobody listens =P

finding T nutritional requirments flat out is not possible for any one hobbiest to do, unfortunately. i talked with my dad who did some work on lima bean nutritionaly requirements when he was an aggy and it was hideous... and tarantulas would be much worse! until a real lab does a lot of work we are basically assed out :/ at best someone could maybe do some sort of lethal dosage tests and maybe lethal lack tests but getting a full nutrional requirement schema is on the order of a hundred thousand hours of labor

# of posts most certainly does NOT equal T iq. there are experts in the tarantula field that have only a couple dozen posts on here =P it is quite funny when ppl assume that someone with 3 posts is utterly clueless.

 

[7mary3]

I don't assume by posts.... I draw my conlcusion through age, previous posts, and the content of previous posts. If you come off sounding like a clueless 14 year old, then that's how I'm going to read you.

EDIT-- when I say age, I mean maturity. I'm only 22, so I'm not that quick to judge on chronological age.

 

[tigger_my_T.]

I think there is a type that works! ok so tigger, no mater how much I fed her, was still on the skinny side a month after molting. My mom does these herbs called sun rider. It basically dried herbs mashed into a powder. Well she has this one kind that has the calories of a actual meal. I dipped a cricket in it like you would calcium dust, next day happy spider I really believe that certain herbs work.

 

[saminthemiddle]

But it's not like apples and oxen. There are alot more similarities, just none that you can assume. I don't necessarily endorse randomly testing "herbs" on tarantulas, but how do you think "they" (the veterinary community) found out which medicines work on arachnids? I assure you that Piperacillin has little in common with corn starch or dirt.

Piperacillin is a antibiotic and it's not supposed to do anything to the animal. It kills bacteria kind of like how bleach kills bacteria but without the lethal side affects. It kills bacteria whether they are in humans, in spiders, on the ground, in a sewer etc... Very much *not* like herbs.

And by the way, herbs are medically useful because *ALL* herbs have developed a toxic chemical as a defense against things eating it. I would like to stress that the chemicals in herbs are toxic.

Put it in a human model: feeding your spider herbs is the spider equivalent of you going into the shed and pouring random chemicals onto your salad. Don't think the comparison is fair? Replace "random chemicals" with "random drugs."

Tarantula care isn't rocket science folks! But, there are a few basic rules to the practice and one of the big ones is "don't feed insecticide to your animal!"

As far as nutritional requirements: If people can live on Big Macs then spidy can live on crickets gut loaded with fish food. Health wackos have *way* overblown the whole "proper nutrition" thing. Surprise surprise, but your body (and your Ts) body have been evolving for millions of years to maintain a healthy chemical balance pretty much regardless of what you eat.

For pete's sake spiders in captivity live for 20-30 years healthily! Says we are doing something right already.

Consider: just because you have a so-so diet doesn't cause you to start guzzling mystery chemicals out of your shed!

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