leopard-gecks

[leopard-gecks]

Mistakes I’ve made as a leopard gecko owner

Despite having spent a lot of time researching care for reptiles and leopard geckos, and currently feeling as secure as I can while still learning all the tiny details no one talks about, early on I still messed up a lot, and am glad that my geckos health wasn’t negatively impacted by my mistakes.

I’m going to put the rest of this under the cut, because some of the details are slightly uncomfortable, and I know people don’t want to hear about certain things!

When I went into researching reptiles, I initially thought that it’d be super easy, just go to a petstore and buy one. When it came down to it, I knew that it’d be wrong and I could get an animal that has health problems I don’t know about. Even knowing that, when I went to get my leopard gecko, we didn’t spend time looking for local reptile breeders. In the end, we did go to a petstore. And I messed up there, as well.

I’d previously been looking at them, and had gotten to hold one a while ago, and fell in love with its stripes. What I didn’t realize was that most normal/wild leopard geckos are striped, and they tend to fade out into spotting as they mature. I didn’t think about that, and didn’t hesitate to get the first striped leopard gecko I saw, which was a tiny little new leopard gecko, instead of the older ones.

I bought her and happily took her home in a little cup with breathing holes at the lid.

I know much better, and don’t plan on buying reptiles, birds or rodents from any large chain petstores, because in the end I don’t know my leopard geckos family history or even if she was inbred at all, let alone where she came from. She hadn’t been handled before I got her, and even now she gets fidgety when held too long.

I bought her 12/16/19 and currently, its 5/28/20. With active handling, she’s gotten more curious about things, and hasn’t bitten or actually hissed past the first two times.

Another mistake I made is a bit more dangerous. When I got her, the day before for Christmas, I was given a particularly large box with all the things inside that was needed for a reptile. Another heating lamp, a wet hide, moss, a container for crickets, that stuff. The moss itself was pillow moss, which I have no real complaints about personally. I never experienced anything too bad with it. She enjoyed burying herself under the moss, since I didn’t break it up as much. But it was dirty, and had a lot of dirt still attached to it. But, she liked either burying under it, or laying across the top parts of it.

After a while, I ran out of moss and needed to get more. I planned on trying out a different moss, Sphagnum moss, instead. We got it without any issues, and went home. I switched out her moss that night and wetted it down.

She was actually in shed, so I got it wet and put it back immediately. Now, I’ve never tried removing her shed from her, and let her eat it. I’ve only found a few bits that werent eaten, such as a cap from her tail when she shed in her dry hide instead.

I left my room and left her alone, foolishly not monitoring her as she was shedding, so she had privacy and didn’t feel watched at all.

An hour or two later, she was finished. But there was something way too big to have been any poop laying by her water dish, somewhere she never goes. It was vomit.

Now, most reptiles dont have any gag reflex. They cant, because they eat their prey mostly whole. So, upon seeing a clump of vomit, I got scared. I immediately removed it and took it out of the enclosure and off to look at it and get pictures(which I won’t be posting as I don’t have them accessible right now). It was a mix of her shed, and some moss. I could clearly tell because I’ve seen her midshed before, and how the shed looks when its not attached. And it was tangled up with moss.

My best guess is she went into the wet hide to shed, and because the moss was wet and she got wet, it stuck to the loose shed and as she was eating it, she consumed the moss. It was a sizeable chunk, and she vomited all of it back up, so I made sure to monitor her closely after that and told myself that if ANYTHING changed, i wasn’t going to wait around until she died and planned on finding any exotic vets nearby.

Luckily, nothing did, and I left her in the care of my dad and sister while my mom and I went to the store to get new moss. In the end, the moss didn’t change.At least the type. But, unlike the moss I had before, I got a block of it, instead of a bag. So it isn’t as torn up and will be harder for her to ingest. I haven’t seen any changes at all, and am thankful for that.

I still check on her more than usual, to make sure she’s fine during shed. The only notable thing thats happened so far, was her kicking out a lot of moss from her wet hide to bury herself, and her claws getting long enough to scratch me up, now.

[leopard-gecks]

This is going to act as a base introduction, including a story I heard relating to leos!

A lot of things that I hear about and see relating to leo’s include their feeding. More recently I’ve heard of is from one of my parents co workers, who’s(young) son owns a leopard gecko.

For my leo’s food, I try to keep a ratio of crickets to mealworms. If I feed her multiple mealworms, I try to find ones that very recently molted, so they havent hardened yet and its easier for the shell to pass. But most of her diet is gutloaded crickets. When I asked my parent to buy some more, since we were basically out, she met a coworker at the store and they asked why she was getting crickets. Natural question, my mom doesnt talk much about my leo, so they were curious. In response to saying I have a leopard gecko, the coworker said that they only feed theirs mealworms

Which.. Isn’t the safest thing. I keep mine down to one or two per feeding, but I could probably go higher. Since she’s my first reptile, and we dont have any exotic vets nearby that could potentially help with any impaction, I try to limit it a bit more for now.

Mealworms aren’t inherently bad- they’re generally pretty full of protein and needed nutrients that a reptile needs, but in the case of leopard geckos, impaction is pretty dangerous. Especially if they’re still young. It also comes with some severe issues of proteins and nutrients- if a reptile isnt getting the needed nutrients to grow, or in general, it can lead to metabolic bone disease, which just means calcium isnt being processed efficiently, and the bones of the legs, feet and tails more commonly are twisted or easier to manipulate during growth. With bearded dragons its very common, because any accident can make it happen.

If I had been there, I would’ve tried to explain it a bit better, since my mom doesnt quite understand the ins and outs of leopard gecko care, but in the end the coworker left after buying some crickets, and updated my mom the next day that the leo was very eager to eat them.

In the end, no harm was done on purpose. It was just someone not knowing, or going the easy way. If I could safely feed my leo nothing but mealworms, I would. But she needs crickets or even dubia roaches, and my discomfort with insects means nothing when her health and safety is ont he line.

I also want to say: I didn’t make this blog to outright attack anyones care for their reptiles and leopard geckos, I want to reach more with how I care for my leopard gecko, the stories I’ve personally heard, and how I take care of her. As well as mistakes I’ve made, because I have made a few, which I will get onto soon.