Today I took some new pictures of our tangerine leopard gecko breeding pair. Halloween, the male is the hypomelanistic one. Midnight is darker and more plump. Both are very sweet and friendly.
Halloween and Midnight
Jan
26
Last week I determined that my RAPTOR female was gravid. Her belly was big and I could see 2 eggs. I put her back together with Henry, the RAPTOR male. They had been together for a week in early January.
After making sure the egg-laying hide (lay box) had sufficient moist coconut fiber, I turned the incubator on.
Sunday night Lemon Drop was in the lay box digging. But Monday morning she was out walking around. I removed the lay box and carefully dug around finding 2 nice white eggs.
Set up a fresh Rubber Maid container with 60 grams of pearlite and 48 grams of water (1:0.8 ratio by weight). This is the leopard gecko incubation method recommended by Albey. Placed the eggs in and put in the incubator at ~82 degrees.
Hopefully they are fertile and there will be 2 beautiful RAPTOR hatchlings in 7-8 weeks.
Jan
10
I know, I’m a bit late with the “Happy New Year”. I’m also a bit late with an update to this blog.
Well I’m back and planning to make more frequent updates in this new year.
Well, the geckos are doing great. Growing and getting more beautiful. I guess I never finished the story of the young female that laid a couple eggs. The eggs were infertile. I incubated them for a few weeks, and the second clutch of eggs as well. But all the eggs eventually shriveled up. She didn’t eat for a while and I was worried but eventually get her appetite back and has gain weight.
The pair of Bell albinos that I bought at the reptile show in Manchester, NH in September may not actually be Bells. I tooks some pictures with closeups of the eyes and posted them on GeckoFourms.net and the consensus was that they were probably both the more common Tremper albinos. I will probably need to cross the male to a known Tremper female and to the female that I bought as a Bell. In the future I am not going to trust breeders at shows unless I know of there reputation beforehand.
Breeding Season 2010
I plan to start breeding Leos this season. I bought a used incubator so I am all ready. I just need breeding pairs.
Many of the Geckos I bought after August ‘09 will not be ready to breed for a few more months. However, my RAPTOR pair are 9 months and are large enough now. So I put them together last week. The female, Lemon Drop, didn’t seem interested and so they have been separated until I determine that she is ovulating.
That is all for today. I promise to write more frequently and provide some interesting articles.
Oct
8
I took a few more pictures this morning. Here is a carrot tail stripe, a Mack Snow and a hypo tangerine. Also added a picture of the Bell albino male with the snake eyes.
Stripe Carrot Tail Male - he wasn't too happy about being woke up.
Mack Snow female - Uncia
Hypo Tangerine male - Halloween
Snake Eyes on Bell Albino Male
Oct
5
Had my daughter help me get some pictures of the geckos. A couple are shedding today so I’ll get their pictures up in a day or two.
Mack Snow Male
Bell Albino Male
Bell Albino Female
SHTCTB Female with intense carrot tail from Wally and Nanette at Supreme Gecko
SHTCT Female from Aliza at Geckcessories
Dark Female
Female with intersting pattern on head.
Female with some interesting patterns
Raptor Male - two snake eyes
Raptor Female - one snake eye and one eclipse eye
George - Tremper Albino Jungle Male
Peaches - Tremper Albino Female
Halloween - Tangerine Male from Petco
Oct
5
I’m beginning to think I have a gecko hoarding problem…
After getting buying 5 geckos on Saturday, I visited a local breeder and came home with three more on Sunday. Aliza lives a couple towns over and I had wanted to see how she is set up for breeding geckos. She had some nice tangerines and a nice normal leopard gecko with some interesting coloration and head patterns. She wasn’t asking much for them so I decided to add them to my collection.
I have a few months to decide which of the geckos I will breed, and which ones to possibly sell/trade. I am really enjoying this hobby. Now I just need to stop expanding the collection and focus on enjoying the ones I have. Although there are still two unused shelves in my gecko rack…
Sep
23
I added three new leopard geckos to my collection this weekend. I now have a pair of RAPTORs and a nice Jungle Tremper Albino male.
I saw a classified ad on the Gecko Forums that was from someone not too far from here. So drove over on Saturday and came home with the male & female RAPTORs and the Jungle albino. Since I am still not set up with a rack system. I made a make shift shelf for 3 bins. The pet store only had two under tank heaters in stock so I had to try to fit the 3 bins over the 2 UTHs. One UTH seems to keep a higer temp so placed it between 2 of the bins.
For bins I am using Sterilite 16 quart tubs with lids. I made holes in the bins with a cheap soldering iron. This really stinks and had to be done outside with a breeze.
The new geckos are settling in. The Jungle Albino is the most friendly. He will come out of his hide to see me if I disturb the bin. The RAPTORs are a little shy but don’t struggle when I pick them up.
Will get some photos up soon.
Next project is to build a rack/shelf system for even more Leos…
Sep
12
Two weeks ago I added a new gecko to my collection. I drove up to Portland, Maine to the Reptile Expo to see what was available. This was my first reptile expo and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Very interesting, but seemed to be many boas and other snakes. Not as many leopard geckos. I met Aliza from the geckoforums.net and purchased a mack snow female she had. I thought it had an interesting pattern, although I’ll admit I wasn’t really sure what to really look for in a good mack snow morph.
My new gecko is doing great and I have named her Uncia. I have her in my office and she peeks her head out of the hide occasionally to look at me. She is still a little shy though, but comes out if I drop food in the tank.
I am thinking of getting a mack snow male and attempting to breed her next year. I really like the look of the mack snow bold stripe combination and may make that my project.
In the mean time I am learning all I can about caring for Leos.
Sep
2
We returned to the pet store a few days later and found 2 geckos. One was a normal gecko and the other an albino. The normal was a little bigger than the albino. The reptile ’specialist’ at the store warned us about not keeping two males together for too long but since these were both pretty small I figured that we had some time before we might have to separate them. Next we purchased 25 small crickets (not enough) and 100 small mealworms, and a plastic desert plant decoration.
The geckos were placed in their new home and they wasted no time getting in the one hide that came with the habitat. We didn’t bother them until the next morning when we offered then some crickets. They had been fed crickets at he pet store and knew what to do. At this point we didn’t really know how many crickets and mealworms they would eat. For some reason I thought they might eat 2-3 crickets a day. But they would eat more than that. We kept mealworms in a dish but it seemed they preferred the crickets.
In the mean time, I started searching the Internet for some good gecko care sites. At first it was hard to distinguish the good info from the bad, and it seemed some of the advice was contradictory. Eventually I did get some good advice and realized I needed some calcium for the Leo babies. So back to the pet store for calcium and some more crickets. Found some Leopard Gecko Calcium Plus from Repashy Superfoods at Petco and started applying it to the crickets. I found it worked best to put some calcium powder in a baggie and then add some crickets, close the bag and shake. The crickets turned white/gray and were then placed in the tank with the geckos.
One problem we noticed was that the baby leopard geckos would strike at the crickets and get their teeth caught on the carpet (Zilla® brand brown terrerium liner). We removed the carpet and realized that one side was rough and one fuzzy. We had placed it in with the fuzzy side up. So we turned it over so that the rough side was up and now the geckos do not have a problem with their teeth getting stuck. Another problem with the carpet is that it is just a bit too long for the 20 gallon tank. The end curls up a bit and this provides a place for crickets to get under and hide. Next time I clean the cage I will trim a quarter inch off the end of the carpet.
Sep
1
Our leopard gecko adventure: how it started
A few weeks ago I was in a pet store with my 10 year old daughter to get some supplies for our dog and cat. My daughter is an animal lover and wanted to look at the animals for sale. After looking at all kinds of rodents and fish and reptiles she said she would like a pet gecko. She thought the leopard gecko babies were so cute. I thought that a gecko might be better than a guinea pig and I suggested we get a book on leopard geckos to learn more. She reminded me that I had once bought her a book on goldfish, but never actually got the gold fish and she suspected that this was another trick.
We bought the leopard gecko book and read the brief information that it had. It really was not a great book, but it explained enough that we felt we could care for a gecko. I remembered my sister had a gecko at Thanksgiving last year and called to see if they still had it and did she think it was a good pet. She was very enthusiastic and said Striker was doing great. Her children enjoyed looking after it etc.
Well about a week later we went back to see what the pet store had for gecko habitats. Olivia saw a Zilla® Deluxe Desert Gecko set up with a 20 gallon critter terrarium. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but it did come with a screen cover, 2 lights + bulbs for day and night, a nice looking hide, 2 small dishes (for food and water), a desert brown terrarium liner (carpet), a thermometer/humidity gauge and a bottle of reptile mist. I decided that it might be the easiest way to go to get started.
We set up the habitat and checked that it maintained a good temperature. With the light on and the thermometer directly below it, it was about 85 degrees F. That seemed to be within the range that the book suggested. Although I did read about keeping one side of the enclosure at 90 degrees. All that was missing was a gecko…