[Dendro_Dave]

Originally Posted by sarahjane85

All of my geckos are in natural vivs (including plant species from their particular region)..... no legos here.

Are you talking specifically about Mopani wood? Do you have A. felinus in vivs with Mopani?

This was a specific question but you can elaborate on what type of wood you use....with which species of GECKO....and how long you have had these set up with inhabitants........

Sarah.

Glad to see you've gone the natural route...alot more fun, and pretty if you ask me

In truth most of my wood has been manzanita, and the geckos exposed have been mostly various types of day geckos, and some flying geckos, and a golden gecko, maybe a few im forgetting. Also dart frogs and mantella and newts. Most were in setups for over a year atleast, unfortunately the ice storm last year in oklahoma left me and everyone i knew without power for 7 days, so that pretty much put an end to about $3000+ in dart frogs, mantella, and geckos. Not to mention several hundred in plants, and ruined most of my vivs ;(

But the new desert vivarium i have been working on does use a piece of mopani to section off the small corner pond from the rest of the viv. The viv is for a leopard gecko though and not a felinus (though i would like some of those)....if i have any problems with the setup i'll let ya know.

Its possible since the piece of wood in question was added later after the viv had been up for sometime that it experienced a temporary burst of bacterial/fungi growth or something and whatever that type was may have been toxic at those intitially high levels....it may have eventually stablized once in the viv for some time, ofcourse why chance it if an animal was having problems. Whatever that was could have been in the viv already but at much lower levels, or could have gotten onto the wood after it was autoclaved, or even survived that process? And then again there could be oils or something in that type of wood that felinus are particularly sensitive too. hard to say for sure. i doubt though that tannins had anything to do with it as pretty much any animal that lives in a moist environment is exposed to tons of those throughout their lives.

Good luck with your geckos and vivs!