Long term effects of feeding bean beatles

rmelancon said:

Wanted to hear from those (if any) who feed exclusively (or majority of the time) bean beatles and how long you have been feeding these. My concern is long term effects of the shells causing impaction or other digestive tract problems.

Thanks,
Robb

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Hi Robb,

I've been feeding D. ebraccata a diet of more than 90% bean beetles for more than a year now without issues. If you look at the diets of various dendrobatids in the wild tends to be very high in a number of species that are considered to be high in chitin such as ants and other small beetles.

Ed

Here are a couple of the reference articles Robb,

http://vsites.unb.br/ib/zoo/grcolli/publicacoes_pdf/Biavatietal2004.pdf

http://200.31.31.2/Recursos/publicaciones/Cientifica/Toft1981.pdf

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