# BONE MEAL



## Guest (Jan 3, 2006)

Am I mistaken but isn't the primary constiuent of the popular calcium suplament Calcium Carbonate? And isn't that just Arm and Hammer baking soda? I hope it has other stuff in it. If it is it will throw the ph of the soil extremely alkaline and kill your moss, etc.

Has anyone ever considered using plane old bone meal for a nice organic calcium suplament?

I use it allot in gardening, and our local feed and seed said the feds stopped them from selling the 50lb bags because of Mad Cow Disease. I'm not happy about that because I've never fed bone meal to anything in my life and now I cannot get the cheap quantitiy for gardening! OK So making nice herbivore cattle into carniovors isn't a good idea, but little frogs aren't herbivores. I cannot see why this would hurt them and it would have the added benefit of being organic and not throwing your soil PH through the roof.

Anyone out there more educated than I, please let me know what you think.

Anyone ever used it and had success or problems?

Larrry


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

Baking soda is sodium bi-carbonate, if I remember right.


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## elmoisfive (Dec 31, 2004)

Dancing frogs said:


> Baking soda is sodium bi-carbonate, if I remember right.


Correct and washing soda is sodium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is also basic but used in small amounts (avoiding mosses especially!) will not create alkaline soils. 

A large component of bone meal is calcium phosphate that does not present the optimal calcium/phosphorous ratio for PDFs. There are a few threads on the board speaking to the importance of this ratio for proper supplementation.

Bill


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## EDs Fly Meat (Apr 29, 2004)

Not sure where it comes from but it's pure calcium.
Dave


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## Catfur (Oct 5, 2004)

What is pure calcium, McFly? Wouldn't pure calcium be rather caustic?


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## Jordan B (Oct 8, 2004)

Most of the calcium supplements are from ground oyster shells, or so I've been told.


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## EDs Fly Meat (Apr 29, 2004)

Hey Clayton,
Ca+ caustic? It's an ion for sure but not like H+ caustic. Its an element but often found in a salt. Right? I'm not sure where they get the calcium. I honestly have no idea, maybe like soilent green (It's made of people). I spoke to a vitamin dealer today and he assured me it was pure, thus my post. I know that some companies used oyster shells, but there was a stink a few years ago about lead content in oyster shells. It was a sales pitch of Miner-All a few years back if I remember correctly, no oyster calcium.

Calcium Carbonate is a molecule that is difficult to strip calcium from. It takes a lot of energy to pry the calcium from Calcium carbonate. Three times harder than calcium gluconate. At least that's true in people. But Calcium Gluconate is harder to come by in larger forms. Isn't that why we use repti-CAL? Cuz it's pure powdered calcium?

Dave


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

Here is a link inviting you all to another calcium related discussion:
http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 7198#87198


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## Catfur (Oct 5, 2004)

Pure powdered calcium implies elemental calcium, not a salt. Snide comments aside, what were you referring to being "pure" calcium?


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## EDs Fly Meat (Apr 29, 2004)

Hi Clayton,
Snide comments are allowed. Sheesh.  By pure Calcium, I meant elemental calcium. Wouldn't calcium chloride be a salt? CaCl. Ca+ and Cl-As I said, I am purely ignorant as to how they get the calcium. I don't even know if it comes from a salt, I suspect though that it is easier to get from a salt than any other way. Yet you may be onto something. Calcium supplements for osteoporosis are alway bound to something else, it is not produced as elemental calcium. But then again that may be for taste and edibility. While important for people, for frogs????????????????????????
Dave


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## Catfur (Oct 5, 2004)

Elemental calcium is an extremely reactive substance, when placed in water it will strip away the hydrogen atoms from a water molecule in order to form hydrogen gas and Calcium hydroxide (a salt), releasing a large amount of heat in the process, similar to how sodium will catch on fire in water.


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## elmoisfive (Dec 31, 2004)

Rep-Cal is produced from oyster shells and is a source of phosphorous free calcium carbonate. Virtually any source of calcium that is available will be in the form of some type of salt. As Clayton posted, use of elemental (or pure) calcium would result in a spectacular but very unfortunate reaction.

A lot of what you read and get pitched about sources of calcium (at least for human consumption) is a lot of marketing gas. But it is true that some forms of calcium are more readily utilized by the body than others. Also, the percent of the salt that is represented by calcium varies as well. Calcium carbonate and phosphate are roughly 40% calcium, calcium citrate 21%, calcium lactate 12% and calcium gluconate 9%.

Bill


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2006)

OK So does anyone know what the oprimal form of calcium is for pdfs? And what the bad forms are or bad mixes one should avoid. I think that someone said that calcium gluconate was the most readily available form for human injestion.

Which supplament is the best?

Why cannot one enrich the ff media and achieve a similar result to dusting the ffs?

Larry


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Some points to ponder,

CaCO3 when ingested reaches the digestive tract where the pH is maintained by HCl in the stomach. This causes the calcium carbonate to react with the HCl releasing Ca+2 cations, Cl-1 anions, water and CO2.

This frees the calcium up for ready assimilation. 

CaCO3 is a good source of calcium for herps. (It is a good source as it allows for easy offsetting of the phosphate content of the food items we feed the frogs). It is hard to say about optimal as this depends on a couple of other factors such as diet (what is also eaten can affect absorbtion of minerals and vitamins), nutritional status (ratio of vitamin A to D3 for example), temperature (in herps)...


Ed


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## Jordan B (Oct 8, 2004)

elmoisfive said:


> Rep-Cal is produced from oyster shells and is a source of phosphorous free calcium carbonate. Bill


Yes!!! :lol: Thank's for backing me up Bill .

Jordan


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## EDs Fly Meat (Apr 29, 2004)

Well as I was compelled to do some research, elemental calcium is actually silver in color. Calcium carbonate is white. Food for thought.

Clayton,
Will get back to you on how reactive calcium++ is. It does some cool stuff, but I was assigned magnesium++ in college and not calcium. I bet it burns like a mother when heat is added but reacting like sodium in water???? Or potassium? Or even Cesium?!!!! I cannot speak on that. I am no chemist, but an old college roommate of mine is. I'll ask him. :wink: And maybe we can blow something up in the name of science for the MIDWEST FROGFEST!!!!
Dave


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## Guest (Jan 5, 2006)

Yeah! Yeah! FIRE! Heh, Heh!


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## elmoisfive (Dec 31, 2004)

Alkaline earth elements such as elemental calcium, strontium, barium are reactive towards air and water but less so than their alkali metal counterparts (lithium, sodium, potassium, etc.). Their reactivity increases as one moves from calcium through strontium to barium. The general reaction of these alkaline metals (M) with water is as follows:

M(s) + 2 H20 --> M++ (aq) + 2 OH- (aq) + H2 (g)

In some cases the heat of the reaction can ignite the hydrogen gas. But you will not see the same spectacular fires associated with tossing sodium metal into water (we used to entertain ourselves in the lab doing this many moons ago :shock: - chemists 'present company included' can be idiots at times  ).

Bottom line: there is a huge difference between the alkaline earth metal (Ca) versus the alkaline earth cation (Ca++). The divalent calcium cation Ca++ is about as non-reactive as you get except to form salt complexes but is critical for life processes.

Bill


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