Hi guys
I just wanted to share with you the bad luck streak that I had with Tarentola chazaliae and (possibly) a not so honest seller.
At the beginning of February, I've bought 1.3 group of Tarentola chazaliae from a private seller in Czech Republic. The animals looked great, fed and hunted actively. I've kept two females and passed a pair to my colleague, as we agreed earlier. Two weeks later, I've found one of the females dead after I came back from work. I was shocked, because she looked as though she's been only sleeping and I've seen her walk around before I left for work. I was quite bummed about that, because I thought that it might've been something I did, that lead to the death.
Two weeks later, my friend told me that his female just died. That was just weird. We both kept the animals in best possible condition and closely monitor them. What is even weirder is the fact, that we both had other specimens of this species, that are still fine. I started to worry about my other female, but she remained active and showed only minor infection with nematodes - nothing that could cause sudden death.
Yesterday I watched the last female of the bunch die.
She clearly tried to push out the eggs she had. That all three of them had, as me and my friend recalled. I clearly could see her struggle and how she contracted her muscles to push the eggs out.
I immediately grabbed the phone and started to call every vet in the city. The only one that was still open, and would be able to help, was going to close in 30 minutes and they still had many patients, they told me that there is no way they could manage to help me, and asked me to come back first thing in the morning. It turned out, that even if they could see me, it wouldn't change a thing as the poor thing died in minutes (I even ran to the pharmacy for parrafin and water soluble calcium).
I'm devastated, however I'm pretty sure that I did nothing wrong. The seller says that I'm a fraud and it's my fault because my conditions were usuited for the animals - without specifying what's wrong, other than the fact that he doesn't like the plastic tub that they were kept in (my friend is keeping his in glass terrarium, mine have screen top, so this argument is invalid). I would like to point again that I had one female before I got the others and she's still her grumpy self. I kept the geckos in plastic tub (56x40cm / 22x16in) with fine sand as substrate. On hot end it retained temperature of 32*C (90F), 15% humidity and there were two hides there (dry and humid). On the cold end the temperatures were around 22-25*C with one hide and around 80% humidity (I've sprayed this end each evening). They always had access to the bowl with fresh water. Fed once every two days with roaches dusted with Calcium + d3 and vitamins (rotated every feeding).
Who do you think is right? The seller saying that me and my friend didn't provide adequate environment, or we, saying that this guy sold us overbred and exhausted females (male from him, and geckos we had earlier are still fine).
I just wanted to share with you the bad luck streak that I had with Tarentola chazaliae and (possibly) a not so honest seller.
At the beginning of February, I've bought 1.3 group of Tarentola chazaliae from a private seller in Czech Republic. The animals looked great, fed and hunted actively. I've kept two females and passed a pair to my colleague, as we agreed earlier. Two weeks later, I've found one of the females dead after I came back from work. I was shocked, because she looked as though she's been only sleeping and I've seen her walk around before I left for work. I was quite bummed about that, because I thought that it might've been something I did, that lead to the death.
Two weeks later, my friend told me that his female just died. That was just weird. We both kept the animals in best possible condition and closely monitor them. What is even weirder is the fact, that we both had other specimens of this species, that are still fine. I started to worry about my other female, but she remained active and showed only minor infection with nematodes - nothing that could cause sudden death.
Yesterday I watched the last female of the bunch die.
She clearly tried to push out the eggs she had. That all three of them had, as me and my friend recalled. I clearly could see her struggle and how she contracted her muscles to push the eggs out.
I immediately grabbed the phone and started to call every vet in the city. The only one that was still open, and would be able to help, was going to close in 30 minutes and they still had many patients, they told me that there is no way they could manage to help me, and asked me to come back first thing in the morning. It turned out, that even if they could see me, it wouldn't change a thing as the poor thing died in minutes (I even ran to the pharmacy for parrafin and water soluble calcium).
I'm devastated, however I'm pretty sure that I did nothing wrong. The seller says that I'm a fraud and it's my fault because my conditions were usuited for the animals - without specifying what's wrong, other than the fact that he doesn't like the plastic tub that they were kept in (my friend is keeping his in glass terrarium, mine have screen top, so this argument is invalid). I would like to point again that I had one female before I got the others and she's still her grumpy self. I kept the geckos in plastic tub (56x40cm / 22x16in) with fine sand as substrate. On hot end it retained temperature of 32*C (90F), 15% humidity and there were two hides there (dry and humid). On the cold end the temperatures were around 22-25*C with one hide and around 80% humidity (I've sprayed this end each evening). They always had access to the bowl with fresh water. Fed once every two days with roaches dusted with Calcium + d3 and vitamins (rotated every feeding).
Who do you think is right? The seller saying that me and my friend didn't provide adequate environment, or we, saying that this guy sold us overbred and exhausted females (male from him, and geckos we had earlier are still fine).
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