so just thought this might be as good a time as any to throw this out there, i bring this up because i was confused with the typical suggested supplement schedual and the ammount that the different products varyied if the ammount present.
this is a first draft and some of my math might not be right on, but there seem to be huge differences.
ex, how can we say calcium w/d3 twice a month if we dont know what brand it is, from what i have found rep-cap at 400,00iu is like 10 times stonger than most other products so 2 times a month can be a huge difference, then throw in different species and thing could get way off very fast..
Hey Hoj-
There are several other variables which make the IU/per kg a little more shaky as a measure of d3 delivered.
Consider these-
1- ability of the product to stick to the insect. Rep-cal doesn't stick nearly as well as minerall or herpcare. In fact herpcare sticks so well that when I tried the product I killed a number of crickets because it clogged them up and dried them out pretty quickly. Minerall sticks much better than rep-cal. So with minerall and herpcare, more of the product will be delivered to the lizard if it is fed immediately vs the rep-cal (such as hand fed immediately after dusting). What happens to IU/kg when only half as much product sticks to the feeder insect from one brand vs another?
2- duration of the product sticking to the insect. When I used a little less of the herpcare and didn't kill the insects the stuff stuck to them for a day or more. Minerall sticks pretty well too- will stay on for several hours sometimes. Rep-cal is mostly gone within an hour or two. So, if you are bowl feeding and your chameleon takes his time going to the bowl or has leftovers that he snacks on throughout the day or even the next day, amount of product delivered (and resulting d3) per insect is going to vary quite a bit depending on the brand and how well it sticks for any length of time. Same if you offer food freely in the enclosure so the cham can hunt a bit. What happens to IU/kg 2 or 3 hours after feeding when rep-cal insect has only 5% of it's original powder still stuck to it when the chameleon eats it vs the minerall where 70% still adheres to it?
3- Gutloading- I think we can figure this one out, but obviously amount of d3 and vit a can be effected by what we gutload. What happens to IU/kg when there may be extra d3 in the gutload on top of what is delivered in the dust?
4- lighting- sunlight vs artificial uvb. I've bred chams under vita-lites and even chroma 50s which I didn't realize had no uvb output. People probably use old tubes with little uvb output fairly often- especially "pet" owners. Also I've seen lots of people over the years place tubes to far from the animals to be effective anyway. When correct- the tubes provide most of the d3 for the lizard and supplements just act as a safety net. When incorrectly used, it is the other way around or even worse- all d3 comes from diet.
5- heating- this is just my really strong "hunch"/opinion because I've never seen it proven in a study, and I might be going off topic too much and opening up a whole can of worms- but I really believe that warm temperature plays a much larger role in ability of lizards to effectively utilize dietary vit d3 and probably other nutrients as well. I don't mean just because of increased metabolism- I mean ability to actually effectively take in and use it. I believe this because I have raised and bred species of lizard without UVB that nutritional studies "proved" had to have it, yet my lizards had strong bones and excellent shells on eggs and strong hatchlings. Some of these lizards were casually necropsied by a vet in a lab at a vet school, some were x-rayed when alive- all had excellent bone density and structure. Eggs looked great and hatched great to great babies too. I'm thinking mainly of iguanas as I type this, but I've also raised bearded dragons egg to egg without uvb, collard lizards and probably chameleons this way as well as I went a while using chroma 50s for chameleons- though this was not long before I started keeping animals outdoors during the summer, so I'm less confident about some species. If my hunch about why my lizards succeeded when those in some of these probably outdated studies failed, then it is because I provided higher basking temperatures than animals were provided in the studies. Which would mean basking temps influence absorption and utilization of d3. Low temps= less effectively delivered. Of course there could be other factors at play rather than temperature- balances in nutrition my animals had that those in the studies did not (vit a?). I was casual about it at the time- no bloodwork or lab work, so other things could have been the reason for success.
6- age of the chameleon. Is it's metabolism high because it is young and growing or lower because it is old? High metabolism might equal more demand for d3.
7- ratios and balances of nutrients- like mr. Rapeshy is talking about with vit a. I really like the wholistic thinking that comes from a real knowledge of nutrition and will probably be trying his product. It drives me nuts when I see hobbyists thinking about each element as if it were the only one to ever be fed whether it is a gutload ingredient, an insect, or a vitamin. This isolation view is so blind- as humans we look at our total diet and eat a wide variety so we get something from tomatoes, something else from carrots, something else from peas, something else from fish, something else from spinach. It is no different for lizards. The total and all the balances should be considered.
8- almost forgot- size of the feeder insects. smaller insects have more body surface and therefore more product sticks to and is delivered to the lizard by weight of insect. In other words if 10 smaller insects weigh as much as 5 larger ones and the lizard eats that weight in insects, more dust will be delivered from the smaller insects than from the larger ones. So more total d3 is delivered if you feed a whole bunch of 1/4" crickets to fill your lizard rather than fewer 3/4" crickets.
What does it all mean?
Personally I feel like many here on the forums believe that toxic levels are much lower than they actually are for d3 and vit a. I think there is a much wider margin of safety than many seem to believe. I believe all of the above illustrates this.
But also my experience makes me believe this- from early to mid 90s I kept all my chameleons indoors used rep-cal with d3 at every feeding. I used reptivite 1x per week. Generally I fed enough to last 2 days in the bowls. In the mid 90s I used rep-cal with d3 indoors and out as I had begun outdoor summer housing, and by the end of the 90s I still used rep-cal with d3 every indoor feeding, but plain calcium or minerall o when they were outdoors. I bred a number of species successfully throughout the 90s. Some in pretty decent numbers (hundreds per year- thousands over the decade). I have immediate family who are vets and friends who are vets. I had "casual" necropsies of many lizards throughout the 90s both with and without veterinary supervision. By casual I mean no lab or microscope, just opening up dead animals to see how they were doing. For what it is worth we never saw evidence of vitamin toxicity in any animal we examined.
That's not to say I don't think current thinking of careful supplementation isn't a better idea than my old way of dusting with rep-cal with d3 year round every meal. And I'm not trying to encourage everyone to go out and dust with rep-cal with d3 every feeding like I did. I've altered my husbandry a bit since joining the forums- some has worked well for me, some changes did not (I will not go vit a free again- bad experience this spring trying to raise panthers that way which I was able to correct but was unnecessary). I plan to try mr rapeshy's product now as well.
But I do relate my experience just to illustrate that toxic levels are probably large enough that a bit of vit a in a supplement or d3 in a supplement used every once in a while isn't going to harm and probably is going to help. We see problems probably related from not enough of these two vitamins all the time here on the forums- can't aim, clumsy, eye problems, falling etc.
Now I have a question- why is the trend among vit a believers to use drops from gel-caps for maintenance purposes? Why not reptivite or some other multivitamin with vit a already in it? I corrected my problem this spring with a few doses over a couple weeks from gel caps but for maintenance I just use reptivite. I've never had problems when using reptivite every week or two...
The issue is that what you think is normal and I think is normal are two different levels. We have been on this point in previous posts and I feel like we are going in circles here.
