First things first..... NO LETTUCE PEOPLE!!!! Lettuce is mainly just water it has no nutrients in it, its my biggest pet peeve when I see people feeding this as the main ingredient in the salads. they need nice dark leafy greens like dandelion, collard, escarole, watercress ect,. These greens will help keep your iguana strong and healthy along with s mix of other ingredients, my favourite to use is squashes such as butternut, spaghetti, acorn mixed with parsnip or okra. I don't use all of these all the time I mix up different salads for them.
One of the biggest health concerns you can have happen to tour iguana is MBD, metabolic bone disease, this can result from either lack of proper full spectrum UVB lighting, lack of proper calcium or phosphorus levels in the salad or a combination of both.
See iguana use Vito D3 (which they normally get from sunlight) to allow their body to absorb the calcium I. their diet. They get Vito D3 from their full spectrum UVB lights as well as some calcium supplements have it added in. Without this Vit you can put as much calcium into the diet as you want but the body will not be able to absorb it properly leaving the body calcium deficient which causes MBD,
I'll do a post strictly on MBD in the future but it needs to be touched on when talking about diets.
The second point I want to make clear is the calcium: phosphorus ratio in the salads. So if you have proper full spectrum UVB light and good calcium levels in your food can your ig still not get enough calcium? The answer is YES. The ratio should be 2:1 calcium: phosphorus. When the phosphorus levels are too high, they bond to the calcium and disables the body from accessing that calcium.
Temperature also plays a big role in how effective a healthy diet is.
A healthy diet is one step, but it only works they way it needs to when all other parts are problem free (temperature, full spectrum UVB, supplements)
That's it for my rant on diets I will touch on the other points in the near future.
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