Gut loading crickets and concerns about pesticides

[KhoanScart]

So I'm planning on getting some feeder crickets today to let them gut load for 48 before offering food to my T. I was planning on giving them a feast of cucumbers, carrots and oranges from the store, but I'm concerned about pesticides that may have been used on the produce. Is there a way to ensure that I can wash any pesticides off the food before giving them to the crickets? I've heard that dog food is also a good thing to gut load crickets with. Has anyone tried it?

 

[Arachnoclown]

Just wash them real good. I guess you could use dog food, I've always used cat food.

 

[RonC]

They love fish flake food.

 

[InEx Situ]

You can buy organic and wash them.

 

[Tortoise Tom]

Carrots and oranges aren't a bad idea, but the cuc is mostly water.

I've been breeding and raising roaches since '92, and I can tell you that any residual pesticides on grocery store produce are not a problem. If it were, I'd know all about it. I feed my roach colonies a wide variety of produce and dog kibble. Nothing wrong with cat kibble either, but dog food is cheaper and I have it on hand. When my colonies are at their fullest, right before a reptile show, they go through nearly a pound of dog food a day.

 

[Dave Jay]

I always wash fruit and veg before feeding the feeders, some like apples I just don't use the peel. Not much is really known about the nutritional needs of tarantulas and what feeders should be gutloaded with.
I use carrots and spinach/chard as staple foods for feeder insects.
The chard or spinach provides thiamine, vit B.
Wild prey animals usually have a diet high in thiamine and this is often missing in captive feeders.
Some seafood (freshwater too) contain thiaminase, which breaks down thiamine so it's very important to supplement vit B for any animal that eats raw seafood.
Lizards are often vit A deficient. The carotene provided by the carrot is better than supplementing with vitamin A as the body will only convert as much carotene as is needed, avoiding overdosing.
So that's why carrot and chard are staples, but how important to tarantulas these reasons are I don't know, not enough information is available.
I also feed a wide variety of other vegetable scraps to my feeders, but carrots and chard I make sure I always have on hand.
I scrub the carrots pretty well, I've observed the mealworm beetles avoiding unwashed carrot pieces while swarming over the washed pieces so I feel there must be something left on the skin that they don't like.

 

[TheFlash]

I use chicken feed with my roaches

 

[ilovebrachys]

I always wash fruit and veg before feeding the feeders, some like apples I just don't use the peel. Not much is really known about the nutritional needs of tarantulas and what feeders should be gutloaded with.
I use carrots and spinach/chard as staple foods for feeder insects.
The chard or spinach provides thiamine, vit B.
Wild prey animals usually have a diet high in thiamine and this is often missing in captive feeders.
Some seafood (freshwater too) contain thiaminase, which breaks down thiamine so it's very important to supplement vit B for any animal that eats raw seafood.
Lizards are often vit A deficient. The carotene provided by the carrot is better than supplementing with vitamin A as the body will only convert as much carotene as is needed, avoiding overdosing.
So that's why carrot and chard are staples, but how important to tarantulas these reasons are I don't know, not enough information is available.
I also feed a wide variety of other vegetable scraps to my feeders, but carrots and chard I make sure I always have on hand.
I scrub the carrots pretty well, I've observed the mealworm beetles avoiding unwashed carrot pieces while swarming over the washed pieces so I feel there must be something left on the skin that they don't like.

Thanks @Dave Jay excellent advice from you

 

[Arachnoclown]

Pizza...that's what I use.

 

[Dave Jay]

I use chicken feed with my roaches

You have to be a bit wary of chicken feed, adding hormones was stopped here in Australia, although shops still use "Hormone Free Chicken" as a selling point when advertising raw and cooked chicken, but chicken food can still contain antibiotics. A while back I was reading about chicken feed and how the waste (straw, feathers, left over food and droppings) could be reprocessed back into pellets twice before new raw material needed to be added, so that's a bit of a worry! How widespread the practice is I don't know, I would think that could be true of large commercial quantities but I doubt you'd find it in a fodder store or pet shop. Interesting though, it all relates to how efficient, or rather inefficient their digestive system is, basically you can run one batch of food through them three times before the nutrient content is too low and needs topping up.
In any case, turkey starter crumble is considered a safer food in the fish keeping community, but of course some chicken pellets are bound to be a good food, it would just depend on which brand you pick.