Silverfire
New member
So this is a rather weird question since I know that females don’t normally eat while ovulating and I’ve been dealing with it from the other adult females. However, my young female who is between 11 and 12 months old started ovulating and she’s already a bit underweight. Not dangerously mind you, but she’s about 6 inches long and at 54 grams.
She’s the same female who started rejecting crickets so I switched her to mealworms. She’ll still go for waxworms, but now she won’t eat anything else and a quick belly check revealed that she was indeed ovulating. Does anyone have any advice? I lost three babies to crypto last year and am pretty worried about losing her as well. I sincerely doubt its crypto though, since she’s not losing weight rapidly (maybe a gram or two a week at the very most and her poops when she does poop are perfectly normal. Plus we haven’t introduced or even interacted with a new gecko in almost a year. She is the newest unless you count our survivor who reappeared in July last year).
Maybe I’m concerned over nothing, but Pearl is my baby. I got her from a reptile expo and have hand raised her to the point where she comes out and tries to climb the glass to come out to see me occasionally. I haven’t tried superworms with her yet, but I’ve tried crickets, mealworms, and small hornworms and nothing. I’ve got silkworms on the way so I can try those as well. And if worst comes to worst I may be able to get her some Dubais but my mom has SEVERE roachphobia, as do I. (Actually I’m scared of a lot of bugs but I know they need to eat live food so it’s a sacrifice I was willing to make when I picked my first gecko up).
As for temperatures in the cage... she’s in a 20gal long with three and a half huts (her calcium dish doubles as a hide which she will still attempt to wedge her way into even though it’s too small and I don’t have the heart to take it out, so that’s the half hut). She has an ultratherm and her warm hut is between the mid to high 80s and low 90s. Her humid hut (new) is around the mid 80s I believe, and her cool hut is mid to high 70s, maybe low 80s. She has a temp gradient of ~20 degrees.
The other three things that I guess could be affecting her is that my dad made me a new shelving system for the geckos so her tank got moved and she is much closer to my big female and if they move to specific parts of their cages they could see each other. So the move could be bugging her but she’s never had problems when she’s been moved around before. She’s also always been able to see my other female so I would assume the two would still be fine. My big female spends 99% of her time in a spot in her cage where Pearl (the underweight one) wouldn’t be able to see. The other thing is that I did get her a new humid hut and I use ecoearth as a substrate for the humid hut.
I’m rambling but I’m a bit concerned for her since I don’t want her to be dangerously underweight.
She’s the same female who started rejecting crickets so I switched her to mealworms. She’ll still go for waxworms, but now she won’t eat anything else and a quick belly check revealed that she was indeed ovulating. Does anyone have any advice? I lost three babies to crypto last year and am pretty worried about losing her as well. I sincerely doubt its crypto though, since she’s not losing weight rapidly (maybe a gram or two a week at the very most and her poops when she does poop are perfectly normal. Plus we haven’t introduced or even interacted with a new gecko in almost a year. She is the newest unless you count our survivor who reappeared in July last year).
Maybe I’m concerned over nothing, but Pearl is my baby. I got her from a reptile expo and have hand raised her to the point where she comes out and tries to climb the glass to come out to see me occasionally. I haven’t tried superworms with her yet, but I’ve tried crickets, mealworms, and small hornworms and nothing. I’ve got silkworms on the way so I can try those as well. And if worst comes to worst I may be able to get her some Dubais but my mom has SEVERE roachphobia, as do I. (Actually I’m scared of a lot of bugs but I know they need to eat live food so it’s a sacrifice I was willing to make when I picked my first gecko up).
As for temperatures in the cage... she’s in a 20gal long with three and a half huts (her calcium dish doubles as a hide which she will still attempt to wedge her way into even though it’s too small and I don’t have the heart to take it out, so that’s the half hut). She has an ultratherm and her warm hut is between the mid to high 80s and low 90s. Her humid hut (new) is around the mid 80s I believe, and her cool hut is mid to high 70s, maybe low 80s. She has a temp gradient of ~20 degrees.
The other three things that I guess could be affecting her is that my dad made me a new shelving system for the geckos so her tank got moved and she is much closer to my big female and if they move to specific parts of their cages they could see each other. So the move could be bugging her but she’s never had problems when she’s been moved around before. She’s also always been able to see my other female so I would assume the two would still be fine. My big female spends 99% of her time in a spot in her cage where Pearl (the underweight one) wouldn’t be able to see. The other thing is that I did get her a new humid hut and I use ecoearth as a substrate for the humid hut.
I’m rambling but I’m a bit concerned for her since I don’t want her to be dangerously underweight.