Sav Monitor and Beardie Diets

I was wondering, is it ok to feed Savannah Monitors and Bearded Dragons fish? I've been doing it recently because, as we all know fish are high in protein (much higher than crickets and other bugs), but can be as big as mice (which fills their stomachs more than bugs) and also have the skeleton (which gives them calcium) so its kinda like getting the best of both worlds, more bang for your buck. It is difficult for the beardies to grip the fish, so i dust them with supplements in a "shake'n'bake" manner, and do the same for the monitor just for better handling. No ill effects have been noticed, but does anyone know the impact this could have, longterm? I've heard some bad things about fish oil, and all of the fish I feed my reptiles have all been gutloaded with dog food and have no known diseases. They are kept with my other fish in warm water, fed everyday and maintained as any fish should be, but under the pretenses of being...food. Does anyone know anything about this or where i can find DETAILED information?

Fish should not be fed to bearded dragons. They are not a healthy source of protein, even if they do have protein in them. They also can cause nasty poos, that are watery and smelly. Healthy feeders include: crickets, roaches and silkworms as a staple diets. Treats include: superworms, hornworms, and waxworms. I do not have a source of information that specifically says 'do not feed fish' but there are places where it says what healthy things to feed and fish is not one of them.

I would definately not feed goldfish to your dragon or your monitor. I also dont have any specific site that lists the nutritional content of goldfish (I looked), but I have not read one good thing about feeder goldfish. They are cooler water fish, so they have a very high fat content. And everything I have read says they have little nutritional value. I wish I had a good detailed website for you, but I cant find one either I just know that nothing I have read about them has been good, so I would never chance it with my animals if I wasnt 100% sure it was good for them. Heck, feeder goldfish arent even good to feed predatory fish either, accourding to fish enthusiasts.

How are fish not a healthy source of protein? Is it not true that their protein content is higher than that of a cricket's? Think about it, fish have a bigger body size, bigger stomach, and yes, they have the fat but isnt that a good thing when it comes to feeding? Which would fill YOU more, eating a cup of crickets or a cup of fish? Does the poop have anything to do with their health (better out than in, as I always say). I havent noticed much of any difference when I feed them goldfish because I feed them everyday or every other day, so their poop is a mix of many different types of food. And from the way things sound, EVERYTHING has a low nutritional value, except for mice which have a high fat content, but thats why we dust whatever we feed and gutload before feeding, isnt it? I wouldn't call myself a fish "enthusiast," but I have kept many fish which feed off of goldfish "strips" as I call them (chopped up goldfish strips or bits, good for angels, discus, and other goldfish). But besides a goldfish, what other fish is good for eating?
I do appreciate your feedback, but excuse me for saying that you two sound much like society 3000 years ago when Pythagoras proposed that the world was round and not square. I, of course would be Columbus, out to prove it, but Columbus didn't kill or harm any of his beloved pets on his voyage, and I don't want to either.

Oh yea, and why is it that we dust our feeders? In the wild, the little bugs and rodents (and maybe fish) are not dusted, so how do they get all the vitamins and calcium and all that good stuff when they are in the wild? It can't be the sun, because even with our full spectrum and UVA/UVB lights, we still have to dust.
What i'm looking for is cold-hard eveidence here. Can you imagine the cost savings of buying fish vs. crickets or roaches or other worms?
Lets break that down...

Advantages of fish:
Easy to breed (goldfish have 500-2000 eggs)
Easy to keep and maintain (they are hardy, inexpensive fish)
Easy to gutload (they eat ANYTHING-vegetation, dog food, bearded dragon food, fish, meat, flakes, bloodworms, brine shrimp)
Easy to store dead for later use (freezer)
Easy to grow out to desired size (goatload)
@ most pet shops, the big ones are 5/$1, little ones are 10/$1
Require cleaning once every 2 1/2 weeks
And they diffentitly have a higher moisture content than mice or crickets

So, how many babies do crickets have? How long does it take to grow them to a worthy-size (for adult lizards)? How many times do you have to clean their tank in a month? How many crickets does it take to equal 1 goldfish? Do dead crickets retain all the nutrients they had when they were alive? And lets not mention the mold, noise and stench of these little....pests.

I've thought about keeping and breeding crickets, but I would rather work smarter, not harder. If you went camping, and caught crickets (in the wild, where there are no pesticides or poison), how much time would it take you to catch enough to last you a month? Instead, what if you went camping and caught fish? One swoop, maybe two of a net and you're set.

I see all the advantages to fish, but what I'm looking for is a disadvantage, a reason not to feed them to my lizards. Yeah, they are dirty (when you don't clean or when you overfeed them), and yes they aren't the prettiest of freshwater fish, but what about the value of something as common as dirt, thats as profitable as gold?

Wow, Alex.......you come here asking for advice, and when a couple of well-meaning folks give their opinions, you insult them? Argue with them? That's not a very good way to get any kind of CONSTRUCTIVE comments.

Nonetheless, in a short search on using goldfish as feeders, I found a few very interesting bits of information...

Feeders and digestion. Some types of feeders (certain minnows, for example) have high fat content that leads to unattractively obese and poorly colored specimens. Others, such as goldfish, have large, hard-to-digest scales, which can obstruct proper digestion, leading to illness and death.

Feeders and nutrition. Feeder fish alone rarely constitute a complete and balanced diet, so other foods should be offered as well, and feeders may need to be withheld on occasion until spoiled fish begin to accept more standard fare.

Most feeder fish are kept in very crowded,dirty conditions(like an overstocked tank). The stress from the overcrowding and poor water quality makes them very susceptible to disease. Also sometimes goldfish carry pathogens which can make tropical fish very sick.

Goldfish (Carassius auratus) are the traditional feeder fish to buy. However, goldfish, while inexpensive, are a bony fish with tough scales. Only very large fish can handle them.

That information took me all of perhaps 5 minutes to find. The general consensus on every site I went to was that goldfish were a very poor choice for feeders, and several of the sites, though there still were no specific nutritional analysis, stated that they have very little nutritional value (except in ther eyeballs, ew) and were extremely high in fat content.

The first thing I would consider if I were thinking of feeding a bearded fish is that they come from the deserts of Australia and in all probability would never see a fish or anything resembling one in their lives. That alone would be reason enough for me.
This leaves the possibility that their digestive systems would not be conditioned to properly process fish, particularly the scales which are for all intents and purposes indigestable much like beaks and fur.
Now you might say that they would never see a domestic cricket, a super worm, or a lobster roach in the wild either, but those are a whole lot closer to the insects they do feed on than a fish.
Having said that we can consider the cons of actually feeding them such a diet.

One problem to consider is an issue with thiamin (vitamin B1) deficiency. Many fish contain the enzyme thiaminase which destroys B1.
Another problem is fish, especially "junk fish" like feeders commonly host parasites that if fed live or fresh killed can be transmitted to the lizard. Garter snakes are known to suffer problems with round worms, tape worms, and other internal parasites when maintained on a diet of live feeder fish.

In the end though you're going to do what you want to do and it looks like you want to feed them fish. Fine, feed them fish. Come back in a year or two and let us know how it worked. I'm sure we'd all be interested in seeing how your lizards fared.

I will address a few of your other questions/comments however.

So, how many babies do crickets have? How long does it take to grow them to a worthy-size (for adult lizards)? How many times do you have to clean their tank in a month?

Crickets lay between 250 and 1000 eggs at a time.
They are fully mature in 4-6 weeks depending on temperature.
Their tub can be cleaned once a month or once per life cycle.
Now I have raised crickets, I prefer not to, it's a pain. But roaches are very different. There's no way raising fish could be easier than raising roaches.

And they diffentitly have a higher moisture content than mice or crickets

Crickets average 76% moisture. They are 17.5% protein and 4.7% fat.
Goldfish may have a higher moisture content I don't know, but how much do you need? Isn't 3/4 of the mass enough? Besides I'd feel confident in saying the fish have a far higher fat content.

Oh yea, and why is it that we dust our feeders? In the wild, the little bugs and rodents (and maybe fish) are not dusted, so how do they get all the vitamins and calcium and all that good stuff when they are in the wild? It can't be the sun, because even with our full spectrum and UVA/UVB lights, we still have to dust.

I would have thought the answer would be obvious, but here are the main reasons. We dust our feeders due to our complete inability to replicate nature. UV lights are a fair substitution to sunlight, but they do not replicate it. Sunlight has nothing to do with the nutritional value of the wild insects though. We cannot raise insects in a tub to equal the nutritional value of a wild bug. Gut loading is fine, but the fact remains we actually have no idea what wild bugs eat in what quantities. They eat wild plants which have different nutritional values that what you pick up at the grocery store. No one knows exactly what goes into a wild insect, so we simply do the best we can and fill in the gaps with supplements.
We can keep our animals healthy in the environments we provide, but those environments including their diets, are not mirror images of nature.

One last note I'll add. Several studies of the gut content of wild dragons have shown that their natural diet is as much as 80% plant matter. In young dragons the ratio was in favor of insects, but the adults show a diet shift toward increased plant matter. I'd be more concerned with what plants I was feeding them in what quantities than I would be with what I could use to replace crickets for whatever reason.

See, now you two know what you're talking about! Those other answers (i know they meant well) told me just about next to nothing, and I did not mean to be offensive in any way, I was just kinda playing the devil's advocate. Its kinda funny though...I've been working on another experiment using lizard poop to feed to dung beetles (hoping to make a good fertilizer), and I've never seen any scales in the poop.
Crickets are a pain to keep, let alone breed and I wouldn't dare fathom the thought of breeding the nasty little things. Fish though, make sense to me and that is why I defend them as I do. As for the Dragons' diets, we, as humans are not carnivores, yet we eat meat. Our teeth were not meant for meat, but have adapted through the ages. I'm not trying to speed up the evolution of a lizard, but if one were to think outside "the box," wouldn't one create something that has never been done, never seen, or at least never tried? Where would we be if we all stuck to how everyone else does things?
Oh yeah, and moisture content...not that I know or anything, but fish live in water, they eat, sleep, and breathe in water. Crickets however, do not. I'm sure fish have a higher moisture content (common sense, come on now, really), and as for the fat, why do we feed pinkies and mice if not for the fat content? Thank you for all your answers, they help me think outside the proverbial box, and i look forward to talking to you two again.

Oh yeah, and moisture content...not that I know or anything, but fish live in water, they eat, sleep, and breathe in water. Crickets however, do not. I'm sure fish have a higher moisture content (common sense, come on now, really),

I wasn't suggesting that crickets were higher in moisture, I don't know that. You mentioned higher moisture content in a way that suggested it was part of your reason for feeding fish.
If it were, then surely a cricket being 3/4 moisture would suffice. Just some information, nothing more.

and as for the fat, why do we feed pinkies and mice if not for the fat content?

We do feed them for the fat content. However, you will not see anyone suggest using pinkies for any more than 5% of the diet at most, and it is normally only suggested to use pinks as part of the diet of breeding females to help them recover from egg laying.
Pink mice should never be a staple part of a beardeds diet or even be a decent portion of it. Feeding a high percentage of pink mice to a dragon will result in obesity and damage to the internal organs eventually resulting in death from fatty liver disease or a similar ailment.
Even though it's very common, a savannah monitor shouldn't be maintained on a diet of mice either. Mice can make up a portion of the diet, but the fat, lethargic, savannahs you normally see are not actually what they should be as adults. It is the result of a diet of thawed mice and chopped turkey. Savannahs should have a much higher percentage of insects in the diet than the vast majority of people actually offer. It's all too common that they are raised solely on mice simply because it is convenient.

In my research I read that snails are a common part of the normal savanna diet. Can anyone else confirm this?

Unless you live where there is a large population of naturally occurring snails, like So. Cal, the only other source I know of is the canned snails. I'm not recommending that snails be a staple for savannas, just that I think the point of departure when designing a captive diet for any animal should be what is the normal wild diet. Try to replicate that as closely as possible and supplement hoping to cover gaps in micronutrients.