2 Male Goldens in one cage?

JJenkins · #1 06-09-2009, 08:16 AM

Hi guys,

I ordered two female Golden geckos from a reptile dealer and I guess he was feeling generous that day because when I opened the box there were 3 geckos looking back at me. Anyway I'm pretty sure two are female, since they have much smaller, barely pores on their tails, but one of them I'm pretty sure is a male.
Problem is I ordered the two females for two males I currently have. So now I have a pair in one tank and two males and a female in the other tank. It's been a few weeks and so far they seem to be doing OK. I haven't noticed any fighting or scars. The tank is 4' H by 2' W by 2' W with two big plants in it, so there are lots of hiding places--I have a tough time even seeing the geckos during the day.
Can I leave the geckos as they are or am I going to need to find different accommodations for the male?

Thanks,

Jeff

Ingo · #2 06-09-2009, 10:47 AM

Goldens are among the most aggressive members of the genus Gekko in the pet trade. Thus, males will fight sooner or later seriously. Often that happens out of a sudden after a longer period of seemingly peaceful coexistence.
Also among goldens there are many female mimic males. True females do NOT have any visibly enlarged tubercle scales at either side of the talebase and do not have any scales with pore like indentions. You may however see a row of more whitish or enlarged scales where the males carry the pores. But other than in e.g. tokays, no "fake pore" openings in ulikovskii. Just nothing. Everything with slighly visible pores and visible tubercle scales at the tail base is male.
With wc goldens, more than 90% males come in and females are very rare. Thus, many pet shops do sell small, inferior males as females.

here are pics, which may help:
female:
http://www.sonyuserforum.de/galerie/...1&mode=search&
http://www.sonyuserforum.de/galerie/...9&mode=search&

male:
http://www.sonyuserforum.de/galerie/...0&mode=search&
http://www.sonyuserforum.de/galerie/...8&mode=search&

Hope that helps

Ingo

JJenkins · #3 06-09-2009, 09:42 PM

Thanks for the great reply Ingo. A lady I work with wants to take one of the males off my hands so hopefully I can help her get her cage set up soon.
Ingo and anyone else, do you guys know of any good scientific papers or books or anything on the Gekko genus? I'm really interested in this genus in general.

Thanks all,

Jeff

Ingo · #4 06-10-2009, 02:43 AM

Dear Jeff,

you might be interested to hear that I am writing a book on husbandry of the available species of this genus. A draft is ready since a long time. However, progress is stalled, since my job keeps me quite busy and I am in even more delay for another book.
Anyhow, sooner or later, I will finish both.
The sad thing for you may be, that it will be all in german.
In the meantime I can only recommend the booklets on tokays (W. Grossmann, NTV), green eyed geckos (W. Grossmann, NTV) and golden geckos (T. Hofmann, Herpeton) which are already available.
However, these are in german as well.

Best

Ingo

holocaustto · #5 06-10-2009, 07:06 PM

Where can we find them?