Dusting dose question

[meganmcnerney]

I've gotten better about not dumping too many fruit flies into the cup before feeding. However, I think I'm dusting with too much calcium/vit supplements. When I put the flies into the viv, all the supplement comes out of the cup as well and I have a small mound of it now in the tank. I think I'm using approx 1/8th tsp of each supplement...too much, right?

Since my froglets are babies, I've been reading to dust at every feeding...can someone elaborate on how much is a dusting? (measurements are always nice to have for a newbie and anal retentive nature!)

[LilyPad]

I tap a little in the bowl, I usually dump a bit in the tank myself, but not a ton. I like to make sure they are all totally coated with the vits and calcium. With froglets, you do want to dust daily, especially since the fruit flies don't have a lot of natural nutrition to them.

[Lynx]

To paraphrase a post I read somewhere, if they look like a powder sugar donut, you overdid it. At least with the calcium...I have a tendency to do that, and you'll notice a bunch of dead flies in the bottom of the feeding dish. The powder suffocated them. A little bit of the Ca goes a long way. As for the vitamin powder I use, I have great difficulty getting much to stick on the flies, so quite a bit ends up in their dish (I didn't use a dish at first, but the vitamin piles looked gross and were killing my moss), which they then track all over the glass. I can clean the glass and 24 hours later, it looks like I haven't touched it in a month. I plan on trying a different supplement.

[LilyPad]

I mix the vitamins with the calcium in a dish to dust, the vitamins and calcium stick to each other and then to the flies. You can't mix them until right at feeding time though.

[Lynx]

Amy, I've been wanting to try that for months, but I keep getting conflicting information as to whether it inhibits absorption of certain nutrients. I've heard it's okay as long as you don't store them together, and I've heard that feeding the 2 supplements together can prevent certain vitamins from being absorbed and/or render them inert. Is there concrete evidence one way or the other that I can check out?