Not gaining weight

hmarie186

New member
Plus he's got kinda big balls :>

Haha! Edgar has a pretty big bulge back there as well. He was temp sexed when we got him but at 5 mos he was already very noticeably a male. This new baby looks both sometimes. Some days tiny bulges and other days just flat. It's really putting a cramp in our renaming process. How old is Eclair? Is she for sure female? Maybe I can compare..:scratchhead:
 

Elizabeth Freer

Well-known member
I've identified another thing that might be a reason she hasn't been eating a lot before - hides. She has like 4 hides, two on the cold side and two on the warm side + lots of hiding places under plants and bark BUT she only really uses two of them. One is the moist warm hide and the other is a cold hide. The cold hide was on her warm side for a while just after we got her and she seems to have just picked it as her favourite and doesn't care that much about temperature as long as she's in that hide.

We need to rummage around in their tanks a bit tomorrow anyway so I'll move it back to the warm side and hopefully that'll help :3

Yeah, her warm dry hide is between 32-33.5 C :3

:yahoo:

Wondering why Eclair has been spending her time between the warm moist hide and the cold dry hide instead of "preferring" both warm hides. ;-)

There must be some reason.

Is Eclair back on the warm side now after you switched the dry hides around?
 
Last edited:

majahawt

New member
How old is Eclair? Is she for sure female? Maybe I can compare..:scratchhead:

She's just hit 5 months. I'm assuming she was temp sexed for female since she was advertised as female at 3 months but you never know. She does in general look a lot "slimmer"/female than Donut, just in her build. Since she's only recently gotten food that she actually will eat and she's WAAAY active, I'm assuming it'll take a while 'til she starts bulking up properly.

Donut lays around all day, Eclair gets up morning and evening to run, crawl, climb and generally just do a lot of stuff :> She's very curious!
 

majahawt

New member
:yahoo:

Wondering why Eclair has been spending her time between the warm moist hide and the cold dry hide instead of "preferring" both warm hides. ;-)

There must be some reason.

Is Eclair back on the warm side now after you switched the dry hides around?

She is back on the warm side after switching hides, yeah! Donut did have the hide she prefers for a while when he was young and he barely ever came out lol. It seems a little small and cramped to me but I guess they just really like squeezing into it.

[EDIT]: I also put her half-hide in front of a rather large "rock ledge"-kind of hide and covered the back with plants so that it's more sheltered. That's her main cold hide now. So she has one warm moist hide, warm dry hide, a mid-temp dry hide, a cold hide, plus there are some corners covered by plants she can hide under. She also likes to climb up on her Exo Terra-wall and sit up there so she's hidden away :>

We were gonna put in a new heat mat for Donut because the one he has now is a little small (not a problem but I prefer he has a proper-sized one) and then it turned out we didn't have the right adapter for it so we'd moved the tanks and taken the lid off and everything for nothing lol. Of course I forgot to plug Eclair's heat mat back in afterwards so she's been a little cold for a couple of hours >:/
 
Last edited:

majahawt

New member
I finally got my student money, which I've been waiting for for about 4 months so I got a big bulk payment, soooo... Donut and Eclair are both getting bigger heat mats and infrared lamps with timers :> I remember how much more active they were when they had some overhead heat as well and I've wanted to give them that back and now I could finally afford it.

Hopefully Eclair's appetite will benefit from this too!
 

Elizabeth Freer

Well-known member
I finally got my student money, which I've been waiting for for about 4 months so I got a big bulk payment, soooo... Donut and Eclair are both getting bigger heat mats and infrared lamps with timers :> I remember how much more active they were when they had some overhead heat as well and I've wanted to give them that back and now I could finally afford it.

Hopefully Eclair's appetite will benefit from this too!

:banana: for the extra cash that f-i-n-a-l-l-y arrived. Thanks for that news!!! Bet that makes you all very happy!!!

Donut and Eclair will once again love their overhead warmth (+ their UTHs).

hmarie186 has recently shared that she's using a Fluker's 11 x 17 inch UTH (instead of an 11 x 11 inch) in Edgar's current 20 LONG enclosure. She shares that, doing such, cool side temps are 76*F. :)
 
Last edited:

majahawt

New member
The tanks are 34" x 15" and they're both getting 16" x 12" heat mats :3

Also, for those who remember we were briefly worried about Donut showing early signs of MBD so we stepped up our dusting-game and look at him now :>
 

majahawt

New member
What is your dusting schedule now, majahawt?

My dusting schedule right now is honestly D3-calcium twice a week and a mix of multivitamin and calcium (4:1) all the other days. I figured that since Donut needed an extra boost and Eclair is still growing, I'd just kick the regime into high gear (also been watching a lot of videos by big breeders, they all recommend the multivitamin/calcium mix). I'll probably dial it down by the end of the year.
 

majahawt

New member
Eclair did the most impressive shed I've ever seen last night. I was checking up on her and I saw that she was all white, except having pulled some off her nose so I was like "oh okay I'll leave her alone then". 30 minutes later my boyfriend came home and wanted to see and... All the shed was already off!

In the evening I got her out for some handling and unlike Donut, who only wants to crawl around on the bed, she only wants to climb us. She hung out in my t-shirt for like 10-minutes :3

Since having moved the hides around she's gone back to the superactive way she used to be. She comes out probably 30-40 times a day to have a walk around or do a climb :> She ate all her food even though she had a belly full of shed too!

All the new stuff will be arriving tomorrow so I'm expecting some grumpy upset geckos since I have to dismantle their tanks a little, hehe
 

majahawt

New member
Wow, the silkworms really seems to have jumpstarted her appetite! We were running out so we ordered some new ones but they were delayed b/c of instar so we had to try giving her some other foods today and she gobbled up 4 mealworms and 1 waxworm straight from my hand (the first time she's ever eaten a waxworm)! I left lots of more mealworms in her dish so it'll be exciting so see how many she eats :>

Looking forward to weighing her on Sunday too, she must've gained some weight this time!
 

majahawt

New member
All right, new heat mats and the heat bulbs put in, Donut seems very pleased (Eclair is still grumpy after being removed for a while).

Donut has of course gained lots of weight as usual, he's up to 71 grams now, which is a 6 grams increase from last week. I can't believe how big he's getting :eek:

Eclair has only gained 1 gram, leaving her at 24 grams >:/ I can't believe this girl. We thought she'd have gained more because she looks a bit plumper. I'm gonna wait and see if the extra heat helps her out, but she doesn't gain any proper weight by next week, I'm gonna have to get a fecal to the vet to check for parasites. She's not losing weight at least. Her poos do look perfectly fine.
 

majahawt

New member
photo.jpg
photo (1).jpg

Here are both of them, didn't wanna take Eclair out because she was just so comfy right there in her food dish :D Donut was very grumpy today and didn't wanna stretch out for a good photo, so he looks a bit chunkier than he is since he's all curled up (he's actually quite streamlined). He's about 23 cm long
 
Last edited:

majahawt

New member
Eclair is still finishing off her silkworms every day like a good girl. We've upped the size of her feedings today to see if she'll eat more. She might just need a lot of food because she's so active! I've ordered small mealworms since she did eat some a while ago, I see how the silkworms are kind of annoying to her since they all bundle up with silk and attach to anything
 

hmarie186

New member
Since mealworms have a bit more fat, I've fed them pretty often to mine. Edgar not so much since he's an adult but Tidus has been putting on about 5g a week. May be worth doing while she's growing?
 

majahawt

New member
Since mealworms have a bit more fat, I've fed them pretty often to mine. Edgar not so much since he's an adult but Tidus has been putting on about 5g a week. May be worth doing while she's growing?

Yeah, the only reason she hasn't been getting anything but silkworms for two weeks is that a) she doesn't wanna eat anything else and b) I ran out of mealworms. The small roaches I have aren't big enough to be any kind of food and the big ones are too big (got 2 grown males and 4 grown females atm, along with about 10 juvies). She did eat a small superworm the other day as well and I'm getting new ones along with the mealworms so there might be some small ones for her in there :3
 

majahawt

New member
Super anxious about weigh-day. I'm crossing my fingers so hard she's gained some weight ;u; This girl is stressing me out, I keep having dreams about her dying in various ways. Like I said, if she hasn't gained any proper weight then I'll get a fecal to a vet. I hear her crawling around, climbing and scratching the glass at night so she's still plenty active (I remember Donut doing the same kind of stuff when he was that age).

Mealworms should arrive tomorrow so hopefully she'll eat them. We've been upping her feedings to see how much she actually eats, and it looks like she pretty much gobbles down everything we put in throughout the day. She's been eating about 15 small-medium (some quite large) silkworms every day for the past few days.

On a positive note, the bigger UTHs are doing wonders. Both geckos are up and about more and they lay around on the ground, half off/half on the warm zone just chilling. The heat bulbs were in very briefly as the wattage turned out to be way too high. I have some 15 watts daylight bulbs coming tomorrow, which'll give them a proper photoperiod (it's so dark here rn).
 

majahawt

New member
Okay guys, I weighed her today and... She's only gained one gram again (25 grams in total). However we googled a bit to see what other people's 5-month olds weighed and she's not far off. Her poos are perfectly normal, look just like Donut's poos. We also looked at her closely and her tail is as wide as her neck and her belly doesn't look skinny, I'm wondering if she's just a small/slow growing gecko? We can't really compare her size to Donut since he's a boy. IDK what you guys think? Attaching photo.

photo.jpg

[EDIT] HERE are her weights from just after we got her. When we got her, she was 20 grams so she has in total gained 5 grams since she arrived.
 
Last edited:
Top