Quote Originally Posted by SethD View Post
Are you talking about gut loading right before feeding them out? If your talking about feeding them lots of calcium as part of their standard diet it will not improve them nutritionally and tends to be unhealthy. To much calcium in the diet of crickets tends to kill a lot of them while giving no positive benefit.
I do not "gut load" my crickets prior to feeding them to my frogs because they have food available to them all day, every day. My cricket diet is as follows: Half a blender of ground up cat chow, 10% calcium supplement (Rep Cal), 1% Herptivite. This recipe and measurements are from the Culturing Crickets article. They have this available to them all the time. Then, every other day I give them a huge handful of leafy greens (usually romaine because they like it the best), and at least four of the following: carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, tomato, red grapes, apple and cantaloupe. I have read that it was good for crickets to have the extra calcium because they are naturally high in phosphorus and that too much phosphorus is bad for your amphibians, (something about a ratio of 1:1 Calcium to phosphorus?). What are your thoughts on that?