Not gaining weight

Elizabeth Freer

Elizabeth Freer

Well-known member
Nice screen shot...good record keeping! :)

Hard for me to say not to worry, but don't stress! You are giving Donut and Eclair warm comfortable homes and nutritious variety!!! Take some deep breaths. Beeee happy!

Good to hear the new UTHs are working well and that both leos are more active. :D You'll get the other stuff right.

Eclair is gaining...just not dramatically. Those silkworms are excellent!!! Hope that she like the smaller mealies now.
 
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majahawt

New member
Elizabeth Freer said:
Nice screen shot...good record keeping! :)

Hard for me to say not to worry, but don't stress! You are giving Donut and Eclair warm comfortable homes and nutritious variety!!! Take some deep breaths. Beeee happy!

Good to hear the new UTHs are working well and that both leos are more active. :D You'll get the other stuff right.

Eclair is gaining...just not dramatically. Those silkworms are excellent!!! Hope that she like the smaller mealies now.
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Phew, I'm glad she doesn't look undernourished or anything to other people. She didn't eat any of her mealies last night but she did have a small superworm, probably because she appears to be getting ready for a shed - it's hard to tell on her because of her morph but she looks a bit wrinkly lol. Donut is gonna shed in a day or two as well and for some reason they both shed within the same week every time haha.

I had to order more silkworms so I went ahead and got some more dubias as well, hopefully there'll be some that are the right size because they both love them so much!

Also, a question: does anybody have any experience/opinions on whether females put on weight slower than males?
 
hmarie186

hmarie186

New member
Females overall are smaller but as far as growth I'm not sure. If it helps at all, Tidus is I'm assuming 5 mos old (since we are now able to sex him) and on Thursday he weighed 37g. Haven't put him on the scale today. I assumed 3-5g a week was about normal for growing babies? Also, silkworms are pretty low in fat so she's probably burning all her calories up being so active!
 
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majahawt

New member
hmarie186 said:
Females overall are smaller but as far as growth I'm not sure. If it helps at all, Tidus is I'm assuming 5 mos old (since we are now able to sex him) and on Thursday he weighed 37g. Haven't put him on the scale today. I assumed 3-5g a week was about normal for growing babies? Also, silkworms are pretty low in fat so she's probably burning all her calories up being so active!
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Yeah I'm hoping she'll start eating the mealworms but I can't really gauge her interest when she's shedding >:/ I've ordered some butterworms to supplement in case she keeps on doing this whole silkworm thing. Also getting some free calciworms with my silkworms, yay!

I hoped I could compare her weight to her sister's, but it doesn't seem like they've updated the website since the last time I checked, which was about a month ago - she's still listed for 20 grams.

I forgot to mention that the light/heating project went down the drain - even with a wattage of 15 the tanks got way too warm. Next time we're up for taking the lids off the vivariums again, I'm going to attach the lights to the sides of the tank so the bulbs are in front of the glass and they'll still get their nice daylight as well as some mild heat :>

Cough had to get a new hide for her since her warm dry hide is getting too small and splurged a little (as usual). Ordered some water conditioner since even I can taste how much friggin chlorine there is in the water here (I'm originally from Norway so I'm spoilt on excellent water in the tap lol).
 
hmarie186

hmarie186

New member
I'm on city water too. I bought one of those zero water pitchers. Our water has ridiculous amount of calcium that cakes up in the water heater. It has to be knocked loose and drained several times a year. :mad:
 
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majahawt

New member
hmarie186 said:
I'm on city water too. I bought one of those zero water pitchers. Our water has ridiculous amount of calcium that cakes up in the water heater. It has to be knocked loose and drained several times a year. :mad:
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Ugh jeez :/ That's pretty bad. We don't get anything like that but when a glass of water has been sitting for a little while it tastes like plastic bottle chlorine water sorta. And it wreaks havoc on your hair. So I can't imagine it's particularly nice for the geckos :(

Both babies are grumpy today since they're about to shed. Haven't seen them since last night. Eclair's gotten a lot more sociable after she started eating properly though, she'll sit on top of a hide right next to the glass and wait for someone to put their hand in and then climb right up!

Also of course I forgot to change my address on PayPal so there was a little mix-up in my most recent livefood order so it'll be delayed, BLEEEH.

I'm starting a project of planting a tank for a gargoyle this week too and that'll be exciting! We won't be getting a garg right away, I want the tank to settle and get everything perfect :3 I'm pretty bad at plants in general so crossing my fingers that I can manage!
 
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majahawt

New member
She's been eating well for the past few days. The roaches we got were the right size so she had three of them yesterday :3 She keeps finishing off her mealworms and she gets a couple of silkworms too. I'm fairly confident she must have gained a bit more weight this week! Full tank cleaning on Saturday so we'll probably just weigh them then :>

Neither Donut nor Eclair will eat any calciworms still lol. I hoped maybe they'd grown out of it but they've been picking out all the other worms and leaving the calciworms. Ah well. Posted on a reptile group on FB, hoping someone wants to come get some free calciworms or they're going to waste :/
 
hmarie186

hmarie186

New member
I threw the last batch outside I was so disgusted. Mine won't touch them so I will never buy them again. There's enough other things that I don't worry about lack of variety. :)
 
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majahawt

New member
hmarie186 said:
I threw the last batch outside I was so disgusted. Mine won't touch them so I will never buy them again. There's enough other things that I don't worry about lack of variety. :)
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Hehe nah I wouldn't have gotten them myself, they just came for free along with my silkworms. Getting rid of bugs is more of a pain here since none are indigenous to the UK we have to drown them and then throw them in the trash or flush them, bleeeeh
 
Elizabeth Freer

Elizabeth Freer

Well-known member
majahawt said:
Hehe nah I wouldn't have gotten them myself, they just came for free along with my silkworms. Getting rid of bugs is more of a pain here since none are indigenous to the UK we have to drown them and then throw them in the trash or flush them, bleeeeh
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Could you toss the remaining calciworms in a kitchen sink garbage disposal?
 
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majahawt

New member
It's getting harder and harder to feed Donut because he pretty much doesn't want to eat food that's not running free (i.e. he won't eat a lot from his dish). I guess he's just got a strong hunter-instinct? We're going into town tomorrow so we'll see about getting some tiles. We'll start with half the tanks and see how it works out. We're going to need to have the beech/orchid bark underneath the tiles anyway, or the ground is "too low" (since we have wooden vivariums, there's a ledge between the ground and the glass doors).

Eclair is going to be super happy when we clean her tank because I've been working on setting up a planted tank and I ordered a 45x45x90 Exo Terra background for it but the tank already came with a background so we'll put that in sideways and chop some off the top of it and put it in for her. She just loves climbing so much :>
 
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majahawt

New member
Weighed her today as we were doing the full-tank clean and this week she's gained two grams! Hooray :yahoo: That brings her up to 27 grams, and she's definitely approaching an acceptable weight for her age :D

We did some work on her tank I think you guys will be pleased with... Will post photos tomorrow when we've done Donut's tank as well!
 
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majahawt

New member
majahawt said:
Aaaand here are photos of the tanks!
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Eclair loves it! Donut's a bit apprehensive, he spent most of the day walking around his tank and digging in the little space that still has beech chips in it (making a mess of everything). I popped 3 dubias in for Eclair and she got them all within less than a minute! I'm certain it'll be even easier to get her to gain more weight now :3
 
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majahawt

New member
Donut looooves the tiles! Instead of spending most of his time in the moist hide, he now hangs out under his little bark flat. He makes himself as flat as possible to absorb the heat and looks like a little pancake. We just call it "pancake-ing" :> Last night I heard some digging and I expected to see beech chips all over the place again but this time he'd kicked some moss out of his moist hide! He's become such a rascal all of a sudden!

Eclair has definitely started relaxing more and it's finally starting to show that she's gained some weight :3 I think there'll be some comparison photos posted this weekend. I had to open up her moist hide and pick her out to mist it and she didn't squirm at all, and even let me hold her to look at her belly. Then she crawled up my boyfriend's mom's arm! She's never been in touch with anyone but us so that's a huge step for her :> Got 50 more roaches coming in the mail now that I've finally found a place that sells the right size for her :3
 
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majahawt

New member
Ok I got some photos. Unfortunately I didn't have a great before-photo :/

Approx 1,5 months ago
kk.jpg

Now
kfjjlsdjl.jpg

It's a bit hard to tell in the photos, but both her belly and her tail are looking a lot plumper!
 
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