Breeding Madagascar Giant Day Geckos

R

Raptor-gecko

New member
Hey Ive got a trio of Madagascar Giant Day geckos that i picked up a couple months ago. I bought them from a guy who had breed them but was just starting a new project. I feed them a rep ashy style diet which they love keep it around 89 in the warm end and have a UVB and a exoterra monsoon hooked in the tank. I have gotten multiple bad eggs and no good ones so what am I still doing wrong? Or is it just that it is still winter and they don't lay many eggs in the winter. Thanks
 
sturm

sturm

New member
thats why you cant breed them !!!

They need live prey such as roaches or crickets at least two times a week !
 
Pirarucu

Pirarucu

New member
I agree, add some variety to the diet for sure. I feed my quads repashy, two types of pangea, honey, agave nectar, crickets, and roaches. Plus they snack on any gnats or flies that make it into their cage.
 
Tamara

Tamara

New member
sturm said:
thats why you cant breed them !!!

They need live prey such as roaches or crickets at least two times a week !
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Bullshit!!! They don't need to be fed live food 2 times a week, 2-3 crickets every 2-3 weeks is more then enough.

We do agree that they need as much variation as possible in their food, and they also should be fed live prey every once in a while. But they are frugivorous in the first place, so their main diet should consist of fruits, and you should be able to keep and breed them on a strictly fruit based diet without any problems.
Again, variation is the key, and live prey should be on their diet, but they don't need it twice a week to get them to breed.
Our Phelsuma eat abouth 4 crickets per month each, and they produce offspring like there is no tomorrow.

In the wild, they live symbiotic with a cicade that excreeds honeydew, where they will stay a few inches under it to catch the honeydew when it comes out.
Now don't you think, if they needed live food so bad, that they would eat the whole freaking bugg? ;)

In fact, most Phelsuma's, and other frugivorous gecko's for that matter that are fed live prey too often will start to develop overweight.., wich isn't very healthy for any living organism that we can think of right now. ;)

With that being said, aside from klemmeri and standingi, Phelsuma's should always be kept as a pair and not in a trio or group.
It can work out for a while but the females usually can't stand each other so it's a recipe for disaster in our opinion, and we advise you to seperate the females as soon as possible.

Do you know the person you bought them from personally, and have you ever actually seen any of the baby's produced by your animals?

There could be a few different reasons for them producing bad eggs, it could be stress, from each other or from moving, or a combo of the 2, we will leave that in the middle.
I don't know how well you know the seller but if he isn't honnest with you they could be to young, or even too old for breeding.
But there is one thing that we are pretty sure of, it's not because you don't feed them live prey.
 
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sturm

sturm

New member
Bullshit!!! They don't need to be fed live food 2 times a week, 2-3 crickets every 2-3 weeks is more then enough.
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you're contradicting all the care sheet and books about the feeding of Phelsuma M. Grandis.
 
Tamara

Tamara

New member
Maybe i am, or maybe you are quoting information from an outdated book and caresheets.
In any of both cases, i'm speaking of 16 years of experience with all different kinds of Phelsuma and other gecko's instead of something we have read on the internet or in some book.

For that matter, when was the last realy good book abouth keeping Phelsuma's published?
We keep a whole library full of them but nothing recent abouth Phelsuma.
That's why we, together with several other experienced gecko enthousiasts hold frequent lectures and symposiums to share our findings and experiences. One of them being that they don't necesseraly need live food to thrive and be in perfect good condition.
To take this even a little further, a friend of ours, very well known and respected in the European gecko community and also a member here on the forum breeds almost every rare Phelsuma species that you can find, he has been able to breed several P. breviceps males last year, if you are a little familiar with Phelsuma you most likey know how difficult that is, but he succeeded and he did it al with feeding only 1-2 crickets each month.
That's also the reason we stopped with feeding them live prey every week, and the difference is realy huge.
We had a male standingi that was becoming very obese and since we switched them to a more fruit based diet he's much more healthy and active than before.
If you are ever in the neighborhood and understand a few words of Dutch or German please feel free to join us, in october we have Emmanuel van Heygen speaking for us, if you don't know him you should look up who he is, he also knows a thing or 2 abouth gecko's. ;)

So as we said before, we do believe and agree that some live food should be offered, they will hunt for prey also in the wild, but if they can choose in most cases they will always go for the sweet stuff, so you don't need to feed them live food to be able to breed them, and if we are contradicting some books and caresheets with stating this, so be it.
Or do you believe all new findings should be yust seen as noncense and we al should hold on to what's been written several years ago?
 
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cricket4u

cricket4u

New member
A few months ago I read a paper regarding Phelsuma Grandis gut content found. The majority consisted of arthropods and very little plant matter. Unfortunately, I can not recall the exact arthropods found in the gut. If I come across it again I'll post it.
 
Tamara

Tamara

New member
cricket4u said:
A few months ago I read a paper regarding Phelsuma Grandis gut content found. The majority consisted of arthropods and very little plant matter. Unfortunately, I can not recall the exact arthropods found in the gut. If I come across it again I'll post it.
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Now that would be very interesting to see what they eat in the wild, but will not change the fact that they will also breed on a fruit based diet.
 
cricket4u

cricket4u

New member
Tamara said:
Now that would be very interesting to see what they eat in the wild, but will not change the fact that they will also breed on a fruit based diet.
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You would have to ask someone who breeds them on a fruit diet only(if anyone has). I would imagine that they will run into protein deficiency(if only fed fruit) and possibly mineral deficiency if fed only the Day gecko MRP. If they are not feeling very healthy, it can interfere with breeding.
 
Tamara

Tamara

New member
Oh wow, don't get us wrong here, we do believe they should be fed live food, without a doubt.
But not 2 times a week, that's completely overkilling it.
As we said, we know many breeders, including ourself that breed them very succesfull with only limited amounts of live food being offered. 1-2 crickets a month and that's it, with no signs of any dificiency's at all.

A strictly MRP diet isn't good for any gecko in our opinion, but there are plenty of fruits available to feed them varied enough without having to use live feeders every few days.
We have been feeding ours Phelsumax, Pangea and Clark's, also they are offered biological yoghourt, mixed with fresh fruits such as mango, papaya, banana's and almost every fruit you can find (no citrus offcourse)
We also use bee pollen in their food for extra nutrients.., and some other things too. Sometimes also a pinky mouse or some snails are mixed in.
And, in addition to that, we feed them 2-3 crickets, grashoppers, roaches, soldierfly's or something else every 2-3 weeks, and we have been doing that for over 2 years now, with non of them becomming sick or unhealthy, and our P. grandis pair has produced 22 baby's last, and already 12 perfectly healthy baby's this season.

So, for abouth the 3th , and now last time, we do agree live food should be fed, as they will also hunt in the wild and it will only help in keeping them healthy, but not as frequently as stated above to have them thriving and breeding.
 
cricket4u

cricket4u

New member
Tamara said:
Oh wow, don't get us wrong here, we do believe they should be fed live food, without a doubt.
But not 2 times a week, that's completely overkilling it.
As we said, we know many breeders, including ourself that breed them very succesfull with only limited amounts of live food being offered. 1-2 crickets a month and that's it, with no signs of any dificiency's at all.

A strictly MRP diet isn't good for any gecko in our opinion, but there are plenty of fruits available to feed them varied enough without having to use live feeders every few days.
We have been feeding ours Phelsumax, Pangea and Clark's, also they are offered biological yoghourt, mixed with fresh fruits such as mango, papaya, banana's and almost every fruit you can find (no citrus offcourse)
We also use bee pollen in their food for extra nutrients.., and some other things too. Sometimes also a pinky mouse or some snails are mixed in.
And, in addition to that, we feed them 2-3 crickets, grashoppers, roaches, soldierfly's or something else every 2-3 weeks, and we have been doing that for over 2 years now, with non of them becomming sick or unhealthy, and our P. grandis pair has produced 22 baby's last, and already 12 perfectly healthy baby's this season.

So, for abouth the 3th , and now last time, we do agree live food should be fed, as they will also hunt in the wild and it will only help in keeping them healthy, but not as frequently as stated above to have them thriving and breeding.
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Due to the fact that they are so opportunistic, the information can be misleading. I look at it this way, what would be easily accessible and available the majority of the time? the plants (fruit), although their top preference was the hexapods at n= 1323.

I hope I did this right and you can see it.

https://translate.google.com/transl...DF/Dervinetal2013CSOIO.pdf&edit-text=&act=url
 
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R

Raptor-gecko

New member
ok thanks.....I will try separating them.... and start offering live food often I have gotten one good egg that I am incubating but I did just see one of my females also running across the wall with a egg in its mouth. Any ideas on that?
 
Tamara

Tamara

New member
It most likely an unfertile egg, that she is going to eat to get the calcium out of it.
You should also place a cup of grinded cuttlefish bone into their tank so they can get calcium whenever they feel like.
 
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R

Raptor-gecko

New member
yep.... i already do that....so i put one of the females in a second tank.... it did seem like there was a little bit of issues between them in the last little bit actually.... so I will see if that helps
 
L

lodewijk

New member
On my last visit to Mauritius I went to visit the phelsuma guntheri (yes the even bigger than standingi and grandis one!),found them licking juice from trees,I believe that is 80% of their dieet,not sure can ask!
gunher licking.jpg
 
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