Hi everyone, this is my first post. Unfortunately, I’ll be opening with bad news. My day gecko died this afternoon, and the reason I’m here is to hopefully get some answers, or even ideas as to what might have went wrong. Beware, as this post is going to get lengthy.
First, I should say this gecko was not actually mine. My boss owns an aquarium (for turtles), and two terrariums-one for 6 dumpy frogs and one which houses 9 poison dart frogs, a salamander, an ivory tree frog, AND one other day gecko (same as the one which just died, the one living is male and younger).
I took on the role of feeding all of these guys, following my boss’ directions (we’ll call him Joe). He is no expert on reptiles or amphibians, and neither am I. If we needed advice, we would call R.J. who does maintenance on the tanks every two weeks.
So I can’t really say what the temperature was, the exact kind of substrate (looked like moss?) and the dimensions of the terrarium. All the plants inside were live, though they did have holes where the slugs had chewed into them. The terrariums are from Exo Terra. I misted once a day.
Here is one place I can start: Around mid-December, we got the second gecko, courtesy of R.J. (he goes to expos, I believe, and gets them if Joe is interested). Older gecko (we didn’t name them) usually hung around the right side of the tank. He seemed healthy, active, and was eating.
As for food, Joe would ask me to get crickets from Petco. We rarely fed waxworms, once a month at most. We never dusted them. R.J. had once said that calcium was bad for geckos (he didn’t explain why). We did have Repti-cal, just never used it. I fed them 3x a week.
Late December, I noticed Baby gecko had settled in on the right side of the tank. Older gecko had moved on to the left. Around this time, I saw that Older gecko was shivering occasionally. His toes, his head, sometimes his whole body at once would just tremble. Here's a video of that happening. At the time I relied on google, because my co-workers and boss were just as clueless as me. I wondered if it could be an early sign of MBD, but I couldn’t be sure. I told Joe about this, but he didn’t seem concerned, he was also very busy. So we just waited it out.
We should have taken him to the vet at this point, just to know, but Joe did not want to spend the money.
In January when I came back from a trip, my co-worker told me both geckos were eating waxworms while I was gone. Only the waxworms. A few days later when I offered them crickets, neither was interested. I tried with waxworms, and they didn’t want these either. They didn’t eat for the rest of January all the way into March, though I kept offering. Just last week, Baby gecko FINALLY took a worm, and a cricket. He is so very active (he’s like a puppy, always wants to jump on our hands) and his color is vibrant even now. But he was like this, even without eating.
Older gecko had more problems. A few weeks ago, he shed but didn’t get all the skin off his toes. We gently pulled some off, and massaged them with wet q-tips. For some reason, after he finished shedding, he couldn’t stick to the glass or leaves anymore. He just fell and ended up staying on the ground. He turned much darker and he was getting skinny. He started gaping a lot.
Then I would see Baby biting at him, follow him, even lunging at him sometimes. R.J. advised to not separate them, though my co-workers and I wanted to; he said it would just stress the older one out more and he would die quicker. Maybe it was wrong of us to do so, but we separated the bullied gecko anyway. We put him in a small carrier, the kind you put crickets in. I lined it with damp paper towels, and some rocks. My supervisor let me take the gecko home to watch him, since we couldn’t rely on natural light the whole time. I placed him under my table lamp.
Last week he was less active and gaping more. On Monday it looked like he was taking big gulps of air, maybe he had trouble breathing. Yesterday he would not move from the same spot for hours and hours. Like he was frozen almost. This afternoon, we had decided to place him back in the original terrarium. I was desperate and by then I had also tried syringe feeding him with dusted and mashed up crickets and baby food. I tried pedialyte soaks. I massaged his toes to get any bits of dead skin off. His toes were turning black and they were always sticking together. His body felt cold all the time. Obviously he wasn’t in the right kind of habitat and my table lamp is just not the right kind of light. My supervisor wanted someone to watch him when no one else could. I tried as much as I could think of, relying on the internet mostly. The vet was still out of the question. I got my co-workers and supervisor to consider it today, but at the last minute.
In his last moments he was completely immobile and not breathing. One of the poison dart frogs was on him, so I shooed him off, picked up gecko and my co-workers and I buried him. It was a hard day afterwards. I didn’t think I would be so affected by it and my head is running with questions.
But that’s as much as I can think of right now. If anyone has any clue as to why he got sick, or any advice for the future (because god forbid the same happens to our remaining gecko), feel free to share and I will greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions, or need more specifics, just let me know.
Here's what he looked like before all this (hope the pictures show up)
View attachment 34132
Here's what he looked like on Saturday.
View attachment 34133
View attachment 34134
Thanks for reading.
First, I should say this gecko was not actually mine. My boss owns an aquarium (for turtles), and two terrariums-one for 6 dumpy frogs and one which houses 9 poison dart frogs, a salamander, an ivory tree frog, AND one other day gecko (same as the one which just died, the one living is male and younger).
I took on the role of feeding all of these guys, following my boss’ directions (we’ll call him Joe). He is no expert on reptiles or amphibians, and neither am I. If we needed advice, we would call R.J. who does maintenance on the tanks every two weeks.
So I can’t really say what the temperature was, the exact kind of substrate (looked like moss?) and the dimensions of the terrarium. All the plants inside were live, though they did have holes where the slugs had chewed into them. The terrariums are from Exo Terra. I misted once a day.
Here is one place I can start: Around mid-December, we got the second gecko, courtesy of R.J. (he goes to expos, I believe, and gets them if Joe is interested). Older gecko (we didn’t name them) usually hung around the right side of the tank. He seemed healthy, active, and was eating.
As for food, Joe would ask me to get crickets from Petco. We rarely fed waxworms, once a month at most. We never dusted them. R.J. had once said that calcium was bad for geckos (he didn’t explain why). We did have Repti-cal, just never used it. I fed them 3x a week.
Late December, I noticed Baby gecko had settled in on the right side of the tank. Older gecko had moved on to the left. Around this time, I saw that Older gecko was shivering occasionally. His toes, his head, sometimes his whole body at once would just tremble. Here's a video of that happening. At the time I relied on google, because my co-workers and boss were just as clueless as me. I wondered if it could be an early sign of MBD, but I couldn’t be sure. I told Joe about this, but he didn’t seem concerned, he was also very busy. So we just waited it out.
We should have taken him to the vet at this point, just to know, but Joe did not want to spend the money.
In January when I came back from a trip, my co-worker told me both geckos were eating waxworms while I was gone. Only the waxworms. A few days later when I offered them crickets, neither was interested. I tried with waxworms, and they didn’t want these either. They didn’t eat for the rest of January all the way into March, though I kept offering. Just last week, Baby gecko FINALLY took a worm, and a cricket. He is so very active (he’s like a puppy, always wants to jump on our hands) and his color is vibrant even now. But he was like this, even without eating.
Older gecko had more problems. A few weeks ago, he shed but didn’t get all the skin off his toes. We gently pulled some off, and massaged them with wet q-tips. For some reason, after he finished shedding, he couldn’t stick to the glass or leaves anymore. He just fell and ended up staying on the ground. He turned much darker and he was getting skinny. He started gaping a lot.
Then I would see Baby biting at him, follow him, even lunging at him sometimes. R.J. advised to not separate them, though my co-workers and I wanted to; he said it would just stress the older one out more and he would die quicker. Maybe it was wrong of us to do so, but we separated the bullied gecko anyway. We put him in a small carrier, the kind you put crickets in. I lined it with damp paper towels, and some rocks. My supervisor let me take the gecko home to watch him, since we couldn’t rely on natural light the whole time. I placed him under my table lamp.
Last week he was less active and gaping more. On Monday it looked like he was taking big gulps of air, maybe he had trouble breathing. Yesterday he would not move from the same spot for hours and hours. Like he was frozen almost. This afternoon, we had decided to place him back in the original terrarium. I was desperate and by then I had also tried syringe feeding him with dusted and mashed up crickets and baby food. I tried pedialyte soaks. I massaged his toes to get any bits of dead skin off. His toes were turning black and they were always sticking together. His body felt cold all the time. Obviously he wasn’t in the right kind of habitat and my table lamp is just not the right kind of light. My supervisor wanted someone to watch him when no one else could. I tried as much as I could think of, relying on the internet mostly. The vet was still out of the question. I got my co-workers and supervisor to consider it today, but at the last minute.
In his last moments he was completely immobile and not breathing. One of the poison dart frogs was on him, so I shooed him off, picked up gecko and my co-workers and I buried him. It was a hard day afterwards. I didn’t think I would be so affected by it and my head is running with questions.
But that’s as much as I can think of right now. If anyone has any clue as to why he got sick, or any advice for the future (because god forbid the same happens to our remaining gecko), feel free to share and I will greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions, or need more specifics, just let me know.
Here's what he looked like before all this (hope the pictures show up)
View attachment 34132
Here's what he looked like on Saturday.
View attachment 34133
View attachment 34134
Thanks for reading.