Additional gene in my Diablo Blanco?

I picked this guy up at an expo a couple months ago and really didn’t notice this until recently. All of his (presumable) siblings are solid white with no pattern at all. You can see it the best on his head, but there is very faint striping down his sides of an off white color. I’m really not too sure what gene would cause this patterning honestly. Also, he does have a small eye on one side if you noticed!

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My guess is that he’s not a Diablo Blanco- he couldn’t be with the markings on his head. Most likely he’s actually a very light Raptor, possibly a Snow of some kind- his pattern reminds me of a Mack Super Snow. The breeder probably just made a mistake because of the light color & pattern.

Given his ocular defect, make sure he stays a pampered pet and is never bred. :+1:

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I didn’t even think about that honestly. That makes sense. Out of the group of four, I really only think one, maybe two, will be able to be bred. There’s one that, for less of a better term, vibrates when you pick it up since it gets scared. I’m hoping it’s just an enigma gene but I have been giving extra vitamins just in case it’s a deficiency.
Luckily this guy is doing perfect other than his eye and a bulb-shaped tail. Thankfully, it’s just cosmetic and he’s super healthy! :heart:

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I agree- the vibrating could well be due to Enigma. The gecko I have with Enigma in him actually was able to calm down a lot about being handled, he just needs patience and assistance with eating at this point.

There are reports of W & Y being inconsistently linked with sometimes severe neuro disease as well (pretty hotly debated), but I don’t have any personal experience with them.

The only trait I know of that is associated with teeny eyes is NDBE (Noir Desire Black Eye), but I’ve only seen people working with NDBE in tangerines.

I feel like a regenerated tail and a teeny eye are badass! The little fellow has overcome adversity to become the handsome little dude before us today! :heart_eyes:

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He’s super sweet, he’s the only one out of them that is always trying his best to climb out when he sees me come in the room. I hate to say it but he’s definitely my favorite lol.

The possible enigma has a short and crooked tail, which at first I thought was just a birth defect but I’m now assuming is due to severe MBD. There have been no other signs until tonight he had stuck shed on his toes so I soaked him in shallow water. Apparently it was not shallow enough because I found him five minutes later rolling around upside down with his nose under the water. I believe I caught him just in time, but he had his jaw clamped shut and it’s very noticeably soft and is obviously typical MBD rubber jaw. I feel really terrible and dumb for not noticing it before now. The jaw never looked abnormal before now and he has been eating pretty good. This is my first time with babies this little (5 grams when I got him) so I guess I’m just not great at knowing what to look for on someone so teeny. I know you usually have really good opinions on things so I would love to hear anything you would recommend! The only thing I currently have is a little bit of Fluker’s repta-boost, which I’ve given him a few times. I’m down for buying anything if it will help.

From the sound of it, I definitely wouldn’t recommend buying from the breeder you got him from again. Sounds like they take pretty bad care of their animals and have bad stock too. Good breeders don’t sell their animals until they are 15 grams as well. You give them their usual dusted bugs correct? If you want, you can try to feed em repashy grub pie too (if they will take it). It has a good amount of calcium since it is made with BSFL. It probably wouldn’t hurt to take em to the vet if you can, see if they can recommend a treatment for em. UVB lights would be beneficial if MBD is present as well.

I’m definitely going to be much more careful who I buy from in the future. It was a person at an expo selling exclusively tiny babies. I just got super exited when I saw four little babies at a really good price. I guess forty bucks was too good to be true. I do dust their bugs, and I’ll try and get some grub pie. If he won’t eat it my dragon will for sure.

It’s actually a wild thing about how they were sold. Some guy came to the original breeder and bought literally all of his geckos. I saw them on the new guys table not realizing they were from the other guy. They really weren’t looking to resell them but they left them on the table so of course people were bound to wanna buy them! Just from 3/4 of mine having some sort of issue, I can’t imagine how those guys felt after buying 50+ geckos from a shit breeder, just to find out he didn’t care for them well and a fair amount I’d assume are now unable to be bred or have passed. Another expo is coming in April and I’m going to see if this guy is there so I can do some sort of buyer beware on him. Poor babies. :broken_heart:

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That breeder sounds pretty awful! You can’t do buyer beware posts on this forum, but I think there are groups that cover that thoroughly on Facebook.

Since this is a post about morph identification, if you’re looking for care tips, maybe make a separate post asking for that, and search the forums while you wait for the info to pile in. :wink:

I’m still working on a leopard gecko care sheet, but @ashleyraeanne is absolutely right about BSFL- they are excellent in terms of nutrition. I’ve not had a leo accept non-living food I wasn’t shaking with tongs. What texture does Grub Pie have? That would be so cool if it worked!! For all the geckos, I’d dust every feeding for at ~ 3 weeks with a good multivitamin & Calcium supplement. I like Repashy’s Calcium Plus, it has a leopard gecko on the bottle. It is not healthy to give vitamins every feeding normally, but it sounds like your guys are extremely nutritionally deficient.

I would take the suspected Enigma to the vet after the incident you describe- reptiles do not have diaphragms, and if your gecko has water stuck, then they can’t ‘cough’ it up like mammals can. Given that that gecko already has neuro problems, if you can’t take them all in, take that one in. Your herp vet can run fecals for you (these guys definitely need them done, given their dubious origins) and give you care advice too.

Next time just make a humid soak chamber out of soaking wet paper towel, and never leave a leo alone in water, especially one that can’t get out of the water & has neuro problems.

It is a gelatin, so if you add more of the powder it will be denser. If you add less it will be softer. You can cut it into thin strips and wiggle em with tongs. The smell is supposed to be irresistible to most lizards. Unfortunately you do have to use boiling hot water and the smell for humans is less than appealing lol. It is a great thing to get lizards eating on just in case you can’t get bugs at some point, or just want to give em variety.

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I will probably end up taking them, or at least the very ill one, to the vet. I’m hoping to maybe squeeze in a visit before work sometime this week, but it may not be until next week unfortunately since my schedule doesn’t meet up with the herp vet’s. He gave me a good scream so I know he’s feeling decent at least–he loves to tell me to screw off lol.

I believe I will make a separate post, if anything just for updates and tips and such. Thanks!!

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Have you personally fed grub pie to your leopard geckos?

I don’t have leos, and I don’t have lizards either, but I at one point was going to have a fire skink (he was DOA) and have grub pie already bought. I experimented with it a couple times. There are people that feed grub pie to their leos in the reviews online though. If they take food off tongs it should be easier.

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Thanks for the input. I was looking in to the option in case I should ever need to try it.