Peqaboo series
Aquatic turtles like sliders shift from protein-hungry hatchlings to greens-loving adults. This guide explains how to combine quality pellets, live protein, and aquatic plants, how much to feed by age, and how to keep the water clean while meeting every nutritional need.
Box turtles are true omnivores whose needs shift with age and season. This guide covers the right ratio of plants to protein, safe fruits and vegetables, calcium and vitamin A, and how to feed juveniles versus adults so your turtle keeps a smooth shell and steady weight.
Chameleons stay healthy on a rhythm of gut-loaded, dusted insects rather than any single food. This guide breaks down which feeders to use, how to gut-load them, how to schedule calcium and vitamin dusting by age, and how to avoid the supplement mistakes that lead to metabolic bone disease.
Gut-loading and dusting turn plain feeder insects into complete nutrition for your reptile. This guide explains how to gut-load feeders, when and how to dust with calcium and vitamins, how to avoid over-supplementing, and how to keep feeders healthy so every meal counts.
Hognose snakes are famous for going off food, especially males and in breeding season. This guide covers normal feeding, safe frozen-thawed prep, proven scenting tricks to tempt a fussy hognose, when a fast is normal, and the warning signs that mean it is time to call a vet.
Monitor lizards are active carnivores that pile on fat when overfed on rich food. This guide explains what to feed by age, safe portion sizes, why whole prey beats organ meat, essential calcium supplementation, and how to feed a powerful predator safely without turning it obese.
Most common pet tortoises are grazers that thrive on fibrous weeds and leafy plants, not fruit or pellets. This guide lists safe forage, dangerous plants to avoid, how to balance calcium and fibre, and how to tell whether your tortoise's diet is keeping its shell and gut healthy.
Uromastyx are desert herbivores that thrive on leafy greens plus dry seeds and lentils, not insects or animal protein. This guide shows how to build a balanced seed-and-greens menu, which foods to avoid, how to supplement calcium, and how heat drives their digestion.
Overfeeding and cramped enclosures make pet reptiles overweight surprisingly often. Excess fat strains the liver and shortens lives, but reptiles hide it well. Learn to read body condition, recognise the warning signs, and adjust diet and habitat safely , with your vet's guidance.
If your snake, gecko, or lizard has stopped eating, don't panic. Learn the husbandry-first checklist to troubleshoot temperatures, shedding, and stress, plus the red flags that mean it's time for a vet visit.
Discover the exact protein-to-greens ratios your bearded dragon needs as they grow. This vet-approved guide covers baby, juvenile, and adult feeding schedules, safe insects, healthy greens, and essential supplements to prevent metabolic bone disease.
Discover why frozen-thawed prey is the safest, most ethical choice for your pet snake. Learn the risks of live feeding, how to safely transition stubborn eaters, and step-by-step thawing instructions.
Lizards cannot be taught mealtime manners. They do not share, wait their turn, or read another animal's signals. Safe feeding in a multi-pet home means separation, one animal per feeding space, and keeping cats and dogs out of the room entirely.
The decision that determines whether a turtle lives well is made in a shop, in about ten minutes. Commonly sold species reach a size and an age almost nobody is told about, and many shop turtles are already ill in ways that are visible if you know where to look. This covers what you are actually committing to, the spec
Feeding frequency in lizards is set by digestion speed, which is set by basking temperature, and portion size is set by feeding guild and life stage rather than by a fixed table. This guide explains how to read body condition in different lizard groups, why power-feeding juveniles causes bone and reproductive disease,
Reptile digestion runs on enclosure temperature, so a meal followed by the night drop ferments instead of digesting. Why live insects and rodents must never be left in, what permanent food bowls do, and why a reptile should not sleep on a bed.
Reptile foods are not covered by the complete-and-balanced standards written for dogs and cats, so the front of the pack proves nothing. This guide explains how to read the guaranteed analysis, correct for moisture, find the calcium to phosphorus ratio, and spot a product sold for two species with opposite diets.
Floor area alone does nothing for a snake, because a snake in open space seeks an edge and stops using the room; cover alone does nothing either, because a small enclosure cannot hold a real temperature gradient. This sets out the functional tests that replace copied dimensions, the layout that converts floor area into
For a rodent-eating snake, whole prey is complete and supplements are usually unnecessary. This covers why that is true, the four ways it breaks down (pinky-only diets, butcher meat, thiaminase in fish, degraded frozen stock), how to judge prey quality, safe thawing and hygiene, and the honest case for and against form
There is no cooked option for a snake, so the real choice is live, fresh-killed or frozen-thawed. Frozen-thawed is the default because a dead rodent cannot fight back, and live rats seriously injure snakes. This guide covers safe thawing and warming, why microwaving fails, sourcing and the rodenticide risk in wild prey
Salmonella is normal gut flora in reptiles, not an infection your snake can be cured of, so the whole problem is containment. This guide traces where the organism actually goes, from droppings to water bowl to enclosure door to your hands, explains why testing and antibiotic treatment of the snake are useless and in th
A lizard that strikes at feeding time is usually not guarding its food. It is in feeding mode and cannot tell your hand from prey. Tongs, a consistent routine, and separating hand cues from food cues resolve most of it.
For an adult plant-eating lizard the salad is the diet. This guide explains why excess protein produces gout through uric acid, why the calcium to phosphorus ratio and oxalate content decide whether a supplement works at all, which greens belong in the base and which must never be staples, why brassicas are rotated rat
Snakes eat whole prey at intervals, and the days after the meal decide whether it is digested or brought back up. This guide explains why digestion runs on body temperature rather than elapsed time, what a normal post-feeding bulge and dropping look like, why the popular advice to feed in a separate tub causes the regu
Most feeding refusals are answered before you reach the prey. This guide works through weight, temperature, security, the shed cycle, health, prey quality and presentation in order, and covers safe thawing, why repeated offering backfires, and when a refusal becomes a veterinary matter.
A snake refusing food is usually a healthy snake behaving normally. Shed cycle, season, breeding, a recent move and enclosure temperature explain most refusals, and anorexia in a snake is measured in weeks against a weight chart rather than in days against a bowl. Here is the order to check things in and the signs that
A whole rodent contains a skeleton and a liver, which is why most pet snakes need nothing added and why fat-soluble vitamin supplements can cause disease rather than prevent it. This guide covers the genuine exceptions, above all thiaminase in fish diets for garter and water snakes, vitamin E and oily fish, invertebrat
Snakes need no gradual food transition because there is no gut flora shift to manage; what they have is a learned prey preference and strict physical requirements. This guide covers thawing and warming properly, scenting and braining, moving from live to frozen-thawed, prey size, the regurgitation interval, seasonal fa
Turtles hunt by sight in warm lit water and never signal that they have had enough, so free feeding becomes overfeeding. This guide covers why food must be removed and never left overnight, how to portion by head size or a timed window, how frequency changes with age and species, and what fast growth does to shell, liv
Swollen eyelids in a turtle are the visible end of a vitamin A deficiency that has been building for months. This guide explains how the deficiency keratinises the linings of the eyelids, Eustachian tubes, airway and kidney, names the diets that cause it, separates it from water-quality conjunctivitis, and warns why in
Feeder insects carry far more phosphorus than calcium, which is the wrong way round for a reptile skeleton. This covers what to feed the insects and for how long, why gut loading and calcium dusting are two separate jobs, which feeders to rotate, and the early signs of metabolic bone disease.
Reptiles do not eat cooked food, so the real question is how to balance fresh food at home. Most plants and nearly all feeder insects carry more phosphorus than calcium, and high-oxalate greens lock away the calcium that is there. This guide explains the calcium mechanism, oxalates and goitrogens, how feeding type chan
Reptile nutrition is not a fresh versus packaged choice. It is about matching whole prey, feeder insects, fresh plants or a formulated diet to the species, and getting calcium, phosphorus and vitamin D3 right.
For a plant-eating reptile the greens are most of the diet, and their mineral content decides whether the animal develops metabolic bone disease, gout or bladder stones. This covers why the calcium to phosphorus ratio is the whole story, why spinach and chard deliver almost none of the calcium they appear to contain, h
Reptile foods sit outside the complete-and-balanced rules written for dogs and cats, so the front of a turtle food pack proves nothing. This guide covers reading the ingredient list and analysis, why dried shrimp and krill are treats rather than a diet, the vitamin A and calcium failures that follow a narrow diet, and
The elimination diet is a dog and cat procedure with no validated equivalent in reptiles, and running one delays finding the real cause. This explains why, then covers the diet problems lizards actually get: metabolic bone disease, oxalates, vitamin A deficiency, obesity and hepatic lipidosis, gout and impaction.
Lizards are not wormed on a calendar. Most reptile parasites have a direct life cycle, so the enclosure becomes the reservoir and the animal reinfects itself until the environment is dealt with. This separates the organisms that are normal residents from the ones that are always pathogens, explains why weight loss with
