Staple diet for tegu?

[Beckyfireflies]

I was wondering if there are other staple diets besides the "San Diego Zoo Diet."
I don’t have a tegu yet, but I want to be completely knowledgeable of the lizard before getting one.
Also, I’ve heard of people using fish as 50 percent of their tegu’s diet. Is this okay?

 

[Tannaros]

I was wondering if there are other staple diets besides the "San Diego Zoo Diet."
I don’t have a tegu yet, but I want to be completely knowledgeable of the lizard before getting one.
Also, I’ve heard of people using fish as 50 percent of their tegu’s diet. Is this okay?

Many people tend to be stand-offish from non-whole prey items. I've heard the argument go either way.

Here is a list of foods compiled by users on this forum:
http://tegutalk.com/threads/tegu-food-list.6446/

 

[SnakeCharmr728]

Everyone has their opinion on what is an acceptable staple, however most people agree that the san diego zoo diet is not a good staple. Ground turkey lacks a lot of needed nutrients. The key to a good diet is variety. Personally, I feed all 7 of my tegus mostly whole prey food items and fruit/veggies. Whole prey just means the whole form of an animal. so mice, rats, chicks, quail, whole fish like smelts, sardines, anchovies, silversides, crawdads, mini crab, softshell crab, rabbit kits, shrimp, prawns, insects... Occasionally I will offer a bit of beef heart, chicken gizzards, hearts and liver, lean rabbit meat, quail eggs, and fish fillets mixed in with their fruit/veggie bowls. If you go to the media page and look at the photo gallerys I have posted some photos of my tegu meals in the feeding pics gallery.

 

[Roadkill]

It's not that the so-called "San Diego Zoo Diet" developed by Jeff Lemm is bad, it's the fact that people in general are too stupid to use it properly. They see the common place items and think that's all that's needed, they don't understand the importance of the bone meal (or some of the other ingredients). Same with any ground meat in general: what do we typically see when people tell us they're using ground meat? "I dust with calcium". It's not the meat that is bad, it is that people can't take the time to understand nutrition. However, just because it is "whole" prey doesn't mean it is healthy either. For example, SnakeCharmr728 lists "smelts, sardines, anchovies, silversides" - if these are fresh off the fishing boat, GREAT! If these are frozen for any length of time (as they tend to be) then I would only use them as a treat once in a while. Fish have an enzyme called thiaminase that gets released upon death. This breaks down thiamin, a necessary vitamin. If given fresh, then the thiaminase has little time to work and doesn't do much depletion of thiamin. If frozen, however, this only slows down the thiaminase, not stops it. So it continues to break down the thiamin. If the fish is frozen for significant periods of time (as small 'trash' fish typically is), then they become nutrient deficient, same as we say for ground meats - you have to build them up with supplementation to be nutritious. Some fish (smelts, sardines and anchovies) tend to have even higher content of thiaminase and therefore are of greater concern.

 

[SnakeCharmr728]

So would feeding those fish, maybe once a month be a concern? Thats why I said variety is best.

 

[Roadkill]

Nope, once a month should be acceptable, and yes like you said, variety is best. But when someone says variety is best, and a recipient doesn't pay attention or fully understand the message, then what they hear is entirely something different. Back when I used to work in pet shops, it used to frustrate me to no end when I'd sell a herbivorous reptile with the instructions of "pay attention to the calcium/phosphorus balance" and "variety is the key thing to keeping these healthy" and a list of acceptable foods. 6 months later the owner would come back with an animal in horrendous shape saying "I fed it lettuce, carrots and apples just like you said". People need to understand the nutrition of the foods they give, not just give foods that someone else says is fine.

 

[Roadkill]

Salmon and tilapia aren't "immune" to the same situation, but to be of concern one would have to feed a diet almost exclussively of fish. Some fish are quite high in thiaminase (goldfish are often reported to be significant - but right now I can't seem to locate a source giving anything too concrete) and it becomes a concern of not just thiaminase causing nutrient depletion in the fish (after death) but in organisms that consume them in high quantities. I know smelt and sardines are quite high in their thiaminase content, and are also bad in the fact that they tend to be caught in huge numbers and frozen for "eventual" use. Salmon is rarely treated this way. Tilapia......that's a whole other mess. Some of the conditions they are raised under would really make most people rethink about eating them. They also tend to get frozen, I just don't have much of an idea what the turnover is like for tilapia. Any fish is ok, it is just a matter of moderation and knowing what you are doing.

I keep getting asked what is the best, most nutritious way to feed tegus, and the answer is always the same: educate yourself on the nutritious needs of your pets. There is no "one way, one way only" solution. Variety is great, paying attention to the good as well as the bad, being mindful to other aspects of their food intake, and most importantly - don't get lazy. I've seen too many tegus get "plugged up" with rodent fur to think that a rodent based diet is fine - there are probably other husbandry issues at play as well, though. I've also seen ground meat diets go wrong - usually because people don't want to think about building nutrition. I use whole prey, ground meats, live large insects, fruits and veggies. I also pay attention to how each animal "reacts" with the food. I have a female that really doesn't seem to do too well with rodents: she eats them and usually winds up plugged up from them, so for her I try to emphasize ground meats with lots of veggies and even include dietary fibre (or even powdered meal substitutes like Oxbow Carnivore Care, but that gets darned expensive really fast). A male I have could probably eat lug nuts and do fine, so he gets whatever I have on hand for him - but that doesn't mean I don't pay attention to the nutrition. I wouldn't feed him exclusively fish, for example. As much as I'd like to say the fish situation is more cautionary than hazardous, I do have one unfortunate event to show it is quite real. I had to leave a caiman in the hands of others, others that included a registered animal technician and a veterinarian, both that had experience with caiman and alligators. I thought they should know enough about the animal that they didn't need much input from me, I just said he preferred his fish. Figured they knew enough to take it from there: well, they took that to mean it was ok to feed the caiman nothing but frozen smelt (despite that that is not how they kept any of the other crocodilians). That poor caiman died of nutritional disorders.

 

[nepoez]

It's not that the so-called "San Diego Zoo Diet" developed by Jeff Lemm is bad, it's the fact that people in general are too stupid to use it properly. They see the common place items and think that's all that's needed, they don't understand the importance of the bone meal (or some of the other ingredients). Same with any ground meat in general: what do we typically see when people tell us they're using ground meat? "I dust with calcium". It's not the meat that is bad, it is that people can't take the time to understand nutrition. However, just because it is "whole" prey doesn't mean it is healthy either. For example, SnakeCharmr728 lists "smelts, sardines, anchovies, silversides" - if these are fresh off the fishing boat, GREAT! If these are frozen for any length of time (as they tend to be) then I would only use them as a treat once in a while. Fish have an enzyme called thiaminase that gets released upon death. This breaks down thiamin, a necessary vitamin. If given fresh, then the thiaminase has little time to work and doesn't do much depletion of thiamin. If frozen, however, this only slows down the thiaminase, not stops it. So it continues to break down the thiamin. If the fish is frozen for significant periods of time (as small 'trash' fish typically is), then they become nutrient deficient, same as we say for ground meats - you have to build them up with supplementation to be nutritious. Some fish (smelts, sardines and anchovies) tend to have even higher content of thiaminase and therefore are of greater concern.

Thanks for this. Can I please get some clarifications? So basically the reason fresh fish can be a staple diet and not frozen fish, is because frozen fish lacks thiamin. Is that correct?
Can I feed a tegu frozen fish daily, but hacing the fish only consist of say 30% of the daily meal while other 70% whole prey such as frozen mice, worms, and fruits/veggies etc?

 

[laurarfl]

Thiaminase is an enzyme that breaks down thiamin, Vit B1. Too much thiaminase is not good. Some fish have higher thiaminase levels than others. Cooking fish denatures the thiaminase since it is a protein.

"Fish and Shellfish

Thiaminases are present in the viscera of certain raw fishes and shellfishes, especially carp. Humans, even sushi lovers, rarely eat enough raw fish in their diet to constitute a problem. However, thiaminase induced thiamin deficiency has been seen in mink and foxes fed large amounts of raw fish in their diet. Termed Chastek's paralysis, after the fox farmer who first documented the disease, thiamin deficiency in these animals follows the same path as outlined above."
http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/thiaminase.html