Quote:
Originally Posted by ColleenT
it is not from a can, it comes in an airtight bag. it makes my life easier feeding 20 geckos. but to each their own.
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Can, bag, the container is not the point, besides, it's packaged both ways. The point is it is a commercially manufactured diet. The convenience of the keeper should not be the first consideration when choosing a husbandry approach.
There are commercial diets for many species, Mazuri tortoise diet, bearded dragon pellets, floating sticks for aquatic turtles. None of these however are adequate as a sole food source.
The study of reptile nutrition is still in it's infancy, and I will not trust any commercially manufactured diet to be satisfactory as a total replacement to natural foods. Anyone who believes that with a few short years playing with a mixture of ingredients, that they can equal all the fine points of dietary needs that have developed over eons of time, truly thinks a lot of themselves.
These diets are another in a long line of "reptile products" designed to generate a profit from the massive growth of the herp hobby. What's most interesting to me is the disparity between the people who chose to embrace these new laboratory creations and those who do not.
The vast majority of the people who have been keeping herps since before the advent of all these commercial diets treat them as a potential supplementary food, or something to be used as an occasional convenience when they are short on time. The people who flock to the cans and air tight bags from the store shelves completely convinced that they can keep a lizard just as easy as a dog, are almost always the relative newcomers to the hobby for who these products have always been available.
No one can completely replicate the natural diet of a reptile in the wild, but I will trust my ability and experience to be able to come closer to it than some powdered instant food I buy for the sake of convenience.