• Hello guest! Are you a Tegu enthusiast? If so, we invite you to join our community! Our site is specifically designed for you and it's a great place for Tegu enthusiasts to meet online. Once you join you'll be able to post messages, upload pictures of your Tegu and enclosure and have a great time with other Tegu fans. Sign up today! If you have any questions, problems, or other concerns email [email protected]!

phoenix worms

frost

Active Member
1,000+ Post Club
Messages
1,111
I haven been looking at these thing as something to put in my tegus diet. the sellers are saying they have a good mixture of calcium and phosphorus
and are low in fat. im guessing that this is true but havent looked into any real studies. i have never seen them before and was wondering if anyone has fed them to their tegus yet.
 

new2tegus

New Member
Messages
277
I haven't,but I'm planning on it,well not to my tegu, to my beardie. They say that have one of the better ratios for nutritional value compared to other inverts. I have giant sized dubias now to food to him, if he ever decides to wake his rear up.
 

frost

Active Member
1,000+ Post Club
Messages
1,111
yeah thats what im reading too. hmm when i had a beardy he refused to eat roaches =/
 

TeguBuzz

Moderator
1,000+ Post Club
5 Year Member
Messages
1,478
Location
Texas
frost said:
I haven been looking at these thing as something to put in my tegus diet. the sellers are saying they have a good mixture of calcium and phosphorus
and are low in fat. im guessing that this is true but havent looked into any real studies. i have never seen them before and was wondering if anyone has fed them to their tegus yet.

I've tried feeding them to my tegus years back, they were uninterested in them. Those worms are tiny as can be, I ordered a batch from my local pet store 3 days ago to see if my new red hatchling will go for some. It's a shame really, the calcium value is great but I've had piss poor luck getting them to eat it.
 

frost

Active Member
1,000+ Post Club
Messages
1,111
TeguBuzz said:
frost said:
I haven been looking at these thing as something to put in my tegus diet. the sellers are saying they have a good mixture of calcium and phosphorus
and are low in fat. im guessing that this is true but havent looked into any real studies. i have never seen them before and was wondering if anyone has fed them to their tegus yet.

I've tried feeding them to my tegus years back, they were uninterested in them. Those worms are tiny as can be, I ordered a batch from my local pet store 3 days ago to see if my new red hatchling will go for some. It's a shame really, the calcium value is great but I've had piss poor luck getting them to eat it.
i wonder if they just dont like worms. the only kind of worm iv had luck trying to feed was an earth worm. anything other than that they refused.
 

TeguBuzz

Moderator
1,000+ Post Club
5 Year Member
Messages
1,478
Location
Texas
I take it they don't. My gu's have never showed interest in super worms or any other kind of worm. They go for all kinds of meats and poultry, an occasional hb egg, and that's about it.
 

kellen.watkins

New Member
Messages
668
I tried superworms to my extreme she wouldn't go for it but could get her to do crickets, after about a week I stopped offering insects, never bothered with my hybrid mainly cause cause the hybrid will eat anything including fish and seafood. My beardie eats any bug you throw in front of him, he doesn't like greens so much though
 

new2tegus

New Member
Messages
277
My beardie ate a piece of mustard green out of contempt I think,because I waved it in front of him, other than that, he only eats insects. A few dubias here and there, he's getting fat though.
 

Logie_Bear

Member
Messages
532
You might try hornworms? They get pretty big and when you feed them off of tongs they're super wriggly and my citters all love them. They can be a little pricy, but they're quite healthy as a feeder. :)
 

MakeyourIPATH

New Member
Messages
21
My tegu is very pick when it comes to bugs. Horned worms and dubias roaches is all he goes for, superworms for some reason he just picks up, and flicks them as far away as possible then ignores them.
 

Roadkill

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
502
Location
Earth
Phoenix worms are sort of a scam. The claim of them having appropriate calcium and phosphorus ratios are deliberately misleading. Bear with me:

Years ago, it was becoming apparent that standard, cultured invertebrate prey were not meeting the nutritional demands of exotic pets such as reptiles (they were just beginning to be aware of the importance of UVB at around the same time). At this time, some people started experimenting with the idea of just increasing the calcium in the diet of cultured prey. It was found that if you increased the calcium content just a little, this would only temporarily increase the calcium content of the prey item - quickly the invertebrate would basically just excrete the extra calcium if it wasn't constantly supplied, and so the minimal gain was temporary. If they increased the calcium content to the point where the calcium levels were deemed necessary for good nutrition of the reptiles eating them, it would just kill the invertebrates, they couldn't handle that much calcium. This lead to the protocols of "gut loading" and "dusting". Anyone that understands the nutrition and dietary dynamics of invertebrate prey knows you need to gut load the prey just before offering them to their pets, and further benefited with an exterior dusting.

Then someone stumbled upon an occurrence that made them revisit the old idea of being able to feed an invertebrate prey enough calcium to meet the needs of a reptile insectivore. In many parts of the world, the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) larvae are used for composting, manure management, waste bioconversion, is commonly found in rubbish heaps, and even carrion. In other words, they seem to thrive on any medium (most invertebrate prey are pretty selective on what they can be cultured with). This made people wonder if this particular insect could handle the appropriate calcium load to be more nutritious than other invertebrate prey. The answer was yes. So they re-branded the insect as "Phoenix Worms", made the claim of them having a higher calcium content, and marketed it to the herpetile pet industry. It isn't a total scam, because of the diet they are fed, they ARE a more nutritious prey item. However, that's one of the problems. Remember what I said earlier about the larvae of other invertebrates just excreting the excess calcium? Same thing holds true here. So if the Phoenix worms aren't fresh from the supplier, they're really no better than any other invertebrate prey item (ie. if that little jar you bought has been sitting on the shelf for a few days, you've paid a significant amount of money for maggot poo that you aren't going to be able to feed to your reptile....). A second problem I've come across is not too many reptiles are keen on eating these larvae in the first place. I've tried them out several times only to find out I had produced a swarm of large, wasp-looking flies in my reptile enclosures. Some people seem to have pets willing to eat them, most seem to turn their nose up at them. Personally, I don't like the idea of paying that kind of money for something that is basically just gut loaded, I can gut load and dust for much less.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
20,133
Messages
177,948
Members
10,303
Latest member
tildaworkneh
Top