Pesticide free gut loading necessary?

[David Pinckney]

I've heard that frogs are especially vulnerable to the toxicity of pesticides. Yesterday I impregnated some cat food pellets with water, and put them in my cricket container. Then today, I was about to add some lettuce, carrot, & apple cuts from stuff I have in the fridge; but I would bet my life that all of it has been sprayed. Do I have to buy organic food for this purpose, or is rinsing it in the sink enough? And what about the cat food, did I allready make a mistake?

[Gnag the nameless]

Honestly, I'd go with organic foods for your crickets. Just to be safe.

From my knowledge, cat food pellets are fine to feed to crickets.

[unkempt1]

You should also keep in mind that organic doesn't necessarily mean safe. It's largely an unregulated industry. While I'm far from an expert, in my experience it's ok to gut-load your crickets with "Walmart" bought produce.

I feed my crickets and roaches collard greens and very rarely mango and apple peels. I definitely rinse the hell out of them before putting them in their enclosures. My pacman is only four months old, but I haven't had any issues. I also have a bearded dragon that's been thriving on the insects I offer him.

[JeffreH]

^ SPAM much?

[unkempt1]

Me? No! Who's spamming?

[GrifTheGreat]

Me? No! Who's spamming?

Not you. There was spam and I removed the spam and banned the spammer. The spam was between your post and Jeff's.

[unkempt1]

Oh good - that's a relief! I thought I had unkowingly breached some sort of etiquette. Glad to hear that's not the case.

[demon amphibians]

You should also keep in mind that organic doesn't necessarily mean safe. It's largely an unregulated industry. While I'm far from an expert, in my experience it's ok to gut-load your crickets with "Walmart" bought produce.

I feed my crickets and roaches collard greens and very rarely mango and apple peels. I definitely rinse the hell out of them before putting them in their enclosures. My pacman is only four months old, but I haven't had any issues. I also have a bearded dragon that's been thriving on the insects I offer him.

This post is so true.
i mostly buy organic veggie's for my own consumption and then i also give the scraps and unused veggies to my roaches. And you will find out that just because the label says organic doesn't mean it doesn't have harmful residue on it. I had an incident with organic potatoes a few months ago. I gave my roaches the peels (and yes i cleaned them with water very thoroughly before i gave it to them). The next day i went in and i had well over 400 dead roaches surrounding the peels. Lucky for me 400 hundred deaths aren't even noticeable for my colony. But it was a lesson. so i found this awesome brand of veggie rinse. you soak your veggies in it for 5-10 minutes and it removes pesticides, wax, harmful bacteria and of course bugs and mites. I experimented with that and potato peels from the same potatoes i used before, and this time zero deaths. with this stuff you can use it with organic or veggies bought from anywhere with out having any more worries. If you would like the name of this product PM me.