I have some.
My 'worry' is dosing....
Repashy has Vit A,
Dendrocare has Vit A,
Superpreen has Vit A
and I use them in rotation already....that said 'everyone' is touting the benefits of extra Vit A supplementation....
hence the feeling that Vit A cures all.
Do we all start crushing Vit A human grade tablets and supplementing more FF's???
Hi Shawn,
There is a risk of overdosing and I have concerns if people move to a easily dusted retinol only product. If we are willing to look at the empirical anecdotal evidence we can see that at least before the modification of the Repashy supplements, just using those supplements did not resolve symptoms of hypovitaminosis.
I ran a number of trials with both D. ebraccata and R. ventrimiculatus at work and replicated them at home with the hourglass treefrogs.
What looked to be poor fertilization and developement of eggs and SLS did not change significantly with the addition of dusting supplements containing vitamin A as retinyl palmitate. Once I added the dry vitamin A as a dusting supplement once a month, I saw an improvement in fertility, development and decrease in SLS. Once I went to twice a month, all of those issues disappeared and even after reducing the dry vitamin A to once a month I did not see a reoccurance of those issues. In several batches at home, I stopped using dry vitamin A for several months and just continued the Repashy and Dendrocare supplements without any decrease in fertility or development.
I want to move this over to trials with egg feeders as I think that is going to tease out a little more detail along with some more color trials.
We can probably extrapolate a RDA range using data from reptiles and birds but the issue is quantifying the amount that is actually sticking to the flies under different conditions....