How things have been going

Hey, everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on here, so I figured I’d let y’all know what’s been going on.

This year I’d planned on doing a few pairings. I sold Velvet as a pet, because I believed she was getting a bit old to be bred again, and I wanted to clear up space to potentially get another female. I also had talked to a friend about breeding her gecko that she got from me, since she was up to size, and had wanted to try to hatch out and raise some little geckos.

So I bred both her gecko, as well as Ruby. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at the time, so we waited to see if we’d get some eggs. A month passed, and Coco laid eggs, but they weren’t fertilized. Okay, so we’ll just breed her again, no problem, right?
Not so much…

We brought her back over, and left her and my male in the tank together. I never saw them lock, but I had the first time. Then, I noticed a large gash on my male’s nose, so I removed them… and over the next few days I noticed he wasn’t doing as well. He hadn’t been eating as much, so I chalked it up to him being hormonal and looking for girls.

Then I found both of them dead one morning. I have no idea what happened, but I assume they must have fought or something, and there were internal injuries that ended up taking too much of a toll on them…

this was a while ago, but I’ve been dreading talking about it, because I feel like I should have done stuff better. I’m also dealing with a hatchling that’s not doing very well, as it never really got any bigger, and I think is just failing to thrive, after it’s hatchmate also passed away a few weeks ago out of the blue. It’s been really discouraging, and I’m not sure what my plans are going forward. I went from having 5 geckos to having 2 in such a short amount of time, and it’s been a lot to handle…

As for my plans… we’ll just have to see if Ruby lays. She hasn’t so far, but I’d like to have at least a few eggs for the season. It’s just a waiting game for now…

Im so sorry to hear that, while lots of people are able to house geckos together year round with little to no issues, death is unfortunately a risk you take by doing it, however small the risk. Please don’t beat yourself up over it though, it’s been very normalised in the hobby, and you had no way of knowing that it would happen to you.

In case you want to keep pairing in the future, it’s not uncommon for first time females to not be super consistent with their eggs, so a clutch of infertiles does not necessarily mean that the pairing didn’t take! Id wait at least 3 months and a couple of clutches before repairing.

I also had several hatchlings die on me last season, it really sucks. It might be worth checking all of your egg care and hatchling care through thoroughly, just to make sure everything is perfect, however it most likely is just down to poor luck. Ive always found that hatchlings that are healthy are pretty damn hardy, so if they die early for seemingsly no reason, they most likely just weren’t compatible with life.

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