Heya! I got this little Lilly White from an expo in Indiana a few months ago. Breeder stated she never fed insects, so it’s been a bit of a journey getting this gecko up to a size I think is appropriate – slow grower all the same, I’ve gotten it to eat insects and it power houses through bowls of Repashy. Hatch date was said to be May 26th, 2023. We’re sitting at around 8.5 grams. I know breeding is years off, but I was curious what you might pair with this gecko? Sex is obviously undetermined yet, but I’m going to an expo later this month and plan on picking up multiple geckos that could compliment this one and others I have. Dark based from what I can tell so far. Parents were a high coverage LW and a Tri Color from Tyler Rugge’s line. Dark based tri colors with higher coverage is where I think I could go and have nice looking offspring, but I’m still relatively new to this and have plenty of time to plan and strategize – so why not ask for opinions now!
What do we think (also) about the head structure? I know it’s not the greatest, but I think with the right pairing with a partner that has very nice structure I could level it out.
Head structure seems fine, their structure usually comes in a bit later in their development in my experience, ive had geckos that looked horrible at 10-15g look great once they hit 30 or so.
As for what you should pair her with once she’s big enough, it really depends on what you want to make. The best advice i can give is projects before geckos; breed for what you enjoy and want to see in the hobby, and don’t just breed a gecko because you have it. She seems to have pretty strong pinstripe influence (her pattern is very horizontally aligned as opposed to vertically which signifies tiger influence), and she barely has any orange pattern. What a lot of people consider high coverage LW is often actually high coverage snowflaking, though yours seem to be a decent expression of both. All of that is worth keeping in mind when deciding whether she’s fit for a project
For sure! Quality > Quantity is the best rule of thumb I’ve learned from just about any passion project, animal related or otherwise. I know I must also be willing to keep the offspring if for whatever reason I can’t find homes for them. This is something I’m prepared to do and have ample space/materials to do so as well, that’s a non-issue. Ethically breeding healthy animals with the goal to produce more of what I’d like to see (as they very well may end up just being my personal pets) is my one and only goal here. I don’t anticipate ever making a career out of it, I’d like to remain very, very lowkey. A few eggs a year from a pairing or two.
I have photos of this gecko’s parents and they’re both very nice in general terms. Here are their photos:
So I do believe you’re right with the pinstripe influence. Bigger fan of pinstripe as opposed to tiger, so I want to keep that influence relatively untarnished. Dark based geckos are tied for favorite - contending with red based geckos. I don’t think mixing red into this gecko would produce anything in the shades of red I particularly like, so that may be a different set of geckos altogether… I think just riding it out with some nice dark tri colors would do well, or at the very least look visually nice.
Sounds like you’re super well-prepared and have thought it all through, that’s great to hear! Regardless of the pairing you would be getting dark babies, so you could try with a nice red if you want - Red seems to behave recessively, so you might not get any reds at all. Love the dad, he seems to be a nice clean dark, as does your girl, and some people swear by red x clean dark making the nicest reds. A super nice red girl that i used to have was from two muddy geckos that you could barely tell whether were dark-based or red-based though, so sometimes you get surprised.
