BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

I was wondering has anyone ever fed their Blue Tongue Skink tuna?

I was told not to feed any fish/seafood when I got my two by their previous owners.

Also if you read in the caresheet on here, seafood is not recommended.

Seafood is a suspect food. Meaning, the possibility of parasites and perhaps toxins from fish or crustaceans could threaten a pet reptile if ingested.

I'm not certain there's any direct proof that this has genuinely happened, but it's one of many "...better safe than sorry..." scenarios.

KW

I was curious and held a small prawn/shrimp in front of my skink's nose - he almost bit off my finger! He didn't even put his tongue out to smell the prawn, just went for it . I gave him a few more...

Plus, because of the high rates of mercury, I've read tuna should be consumed in only small amounts even by humans...

I would try it but at the (chippy ) fish n chip shop you can taste heavy metals in the flake fillets of shark.. pcb,s and heavy metals ..But i get a 100 kilo bag of horse and kangaroo meat for the raptors , its hotted up with goodies for the birds .The bobies love tucking in when its been zaped ...they grow really fast as well .. They go hopping mad for it LOL I share my greens off my plate with any boby that likes soggy peas yuk

Zach wrote:Plus, because of the high rates of mercury, I've read tuna should be consumed in only small amounts even by humans...

Mate thats shocking, I eat TUNA more than once a week, a tin at a time, I've got enough lead in me pencil all ready


skinkee mine loves them as well, I reckon they think there de-shelled aquatic snails or something , I don't feed him them any more as the toxins are an unknown, got big 'uns{snails} in the garden and little'uns{snails} in the fish tank, better and safer

^Yeah, my skink went for them like crazy - must smell delicious, shrimps... But I won't feed them regularly, only if I eat them myself (like once in 6 months or something...)

I gave him a few snails the other day - he liked them, only thing was I think snails are kinda cute and hate to hear their shells crack We have these in our backyard ->a snail called "lehtokotilo" in Finnish

Leigh wrote:

Zach wrote:Plus, because of the high rates of mercury, I've read tuna should be consumed in only small amounts even by humans...

Mate thats shocking, I eat TUNA more than once a week, a tin at a time, I've got enough lead in me pencil all ready


skinkee mine loves them as well, I reckon they think there de-shelled aquatic snails or something , I don't feed him them any more as the toxins are an unknown, got big 'uns{snails} in the garden and little'uns{snails} in the fish tank, better and safer

Haha, this is what I'd heard all through high school, who knows if it's been improved, or how big the scare really was....

high salt content.

skinkee wrote:I gave him a few snails the other day - he liked them, only thing was I think snails are kinda cute and hate to hear their shells crack

I like snails myself. Kept them as pets when I was a kid. When my parents finally caved and got me goldfish when I was ten, I got to get a snail too, one of the gold ones, to clean the inside of the tank. (I think it was the same sort as you guys call mystery or apple snails). I used to watch the thing for hours, its little sideways mouth eating all the algae.

After rain, if I step on one on the path outside, I always feel sick and guilty.

My mother used to take us out sometimes in the wet and show us things like the huge leopard slugs (those things can get to about five inches long!)

That's why I've only fed frozen snails to my guys. Too soft to feed live.

Zach wrote:Haha, this is what I'd heard all through high school, who knows if it's been improved, or how big the scare really was....

I thought you were better than to have knee-jerk reactions towards "old wives' tales," or any Chicken Little syndrome.

People always complain about mercury in their seafood, however hardly anyone winces at buying a non-stick pan and the chemical make-up of teflon being suspected of cancer as time plods on.

I think fish is probably safer than any other meat out there for human consumption. Reptile consumption, I'm not convinced either way, but since there's other options, I stick to the helpful food chart.

KW

KyleWeiss wrote:People always complain about mercury in their seafood, however hardly anyone winces at buying a non-stick pan and the chemical make-up of teflon being suspected of cancer as time plods on.

KW

So true - I was just chatting with my folks the other day about teflon and it being linked to cancer.

If you watch the news or read the paper, everything gives you cancer.
But wait! Read it the next day and those same things will prevent cancer!

Be happy, play nicely with the other kids, LIVE your life.

For the most part, I agree, but teflon is one of those things that we pretty much elect to ingest without a second thought. Kind of like how we don't use lead pipes anymore.

KW

Dont use metal items in your non stick pans, thats all I was taught,hee,hee

Yeah, metal will turn the teflon into a mess pretty quickly. Though pretty much any utensil will scrape the stuff off, I've noticed. There's neat non-stick alternatives out there, like some magic treated-ceramic coated voodoo that you can use metal utensils upon... I know little about it, other than there was a product demonstration at a local store, and I wish I had bought a couple of pieces...

KW

Just a thought my boys water bowl is non stick{see new post}, he doesn't use it for drinking from but could it be a problem?

I'm not a fan of teflon-type non-stick period. The only thing I've lost by abandoning it is a few pounds/kilos perhaps chiseling off the night's meal with the scrub pad.

KW

Plus if you overheat teflon it's supposed to put off some kind of fumes that affect pet birds, or so I've heard. I got rid of all mine when I had my birds, just in case. Wouldn't want to burn dinner AND kill the birds all in one night.

Don't think that's a problem with a water bowel though.