Sporadic loss of foot-sticky?

[Brunnersgal]

my crested gecko seems to lose all the stickiness in his feet at intervals. when this happens, he climbs around all over the place, but he can't stick to flat surfaces like walls, the glass of his terrarium, etc.

he really -tries- to climb them and is eating well, so i don't think it's an underlying illness as of yet. he has shed while with me, but managed it quite well on his own, taking 3 days to go from slightly less sticky, to covered in old skin, to all bright new skin. his tank is between 71 and 86 humidity at night and between 50 and 65 during the day. his temps always stay around 70 - 73. i feed him on Repashy CGD every other day, with 2 to 5 gutloaded and dusted crickets twice a week and have been finding both brown and white feces. (both in the terrarium and on me when i handled him on one occasion - yum! )

ETA:- when his feet have no sticky, his tail still has it and he tends to put all his weight on it coz he reallyyyy wants to hang on the walls. amusing, but worries me!

i've tried doing the gecko bath thing and i've tried cleaning his little feet with q-tips soaked in lukewarm water. it seems to work, but only for a minute or two, then he's back to slipping down walls he tries to climb.

as i said, this happens sporadically. sometimes i see him hanging off the glass just fine!
any tips? just confused really, ha!

 

[Aimless]

usually that means one of two things -

first, he's ready to shed and the old skin on his lamellae is interfering with his ability to stick. or second, he's been walking in his diet (or something else) and it's clogging up the little crevices in his footpads.

you've washed his feet, so I'm guessing it's just old skin?

 

[Spyral]

If it's happening in intervals, it's probably shedding. You don't always see the shedding process, they're often very quick with it. Right before shed it's like everything is covered in Teflon and they don't stick very well! Then they shed and they're sticky again. In the wild they have tree bark and other things they can grip with their claws, or they have rougher surfaces that wear off the old skin pretty quickly; in captivity when they aren't sticking to glass we get a little nervous seeing an issue with climbing but it's usually fine.

Good luck!