Sudden death in crested geckos?

Geckos Crested Geckos
21

Personally I have never heard of a Crestie dying from a tail drop.

I know many people who’ve had cresties drop tails and all still fine and no issues.

Same with here, also has a tiny bab drop one and all ok! Grew up lovely.

As said you won’t ever know for sure but animals can just pass for no reason.

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22

Tail was not infected. I’ve heard quite a few breeders say that hatchlings & juveniles can sometimes die soon after losing a tail. I’ve never heard of it happening with a well established subadult, but it definitely isn’t unheard of with babies, at least the other breeders I’ve talked to recently.

I know most do perfectly fine, but just seems too much of a coincidence for me. Especially given that in three years I’ve only had two unexplained deaths and both animals dropped their tails soon before.

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23

This is something worth keeping track of. However it’s the first I’m hearing of this being a thing.

One of my baby geckos threw it’s tail and is the best feeder I have from the babies, but to be fair, this same gecko eat it’s tail thinking it’s an insect :person_facepalming:

I know a few ppl here have had babys drop their tail and survived, but I don’t know if there were some Geckos that didn’t survive.

Sometimes geckos drop their tails for no real reason, however it is worth remembering that it can also be a sign that something isn’t right with your gecko. Eg dropping tail as super scared. So although the tail dropping might not be related, it could be a sign that something was wrong, possibly causing the gecko too much stress/anxiety.

Unfortunately, you won’t have an evidence to support the drop tail theory without going to the vet each time this happens.

But still worth keeping track of. I suggest you keep track of the environment/surroundings & temperature also.

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24

Okay, I unfortunately need y’all’s help to troubleshoot and figure out what is going on. This is a long post as I’ve tried to include as much detail as possible, so please stick with me.

Y’all know I lost my female red LW earlier this year (original post). I just returned from being out of town for two weeks visiting family, and when I returned, I found two additional geckos (adults) dead in another devastating blow, one male and one female. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what went wrong.

  • A pet sitter was coming every 2-3 days while I was gone, and I have used her in the past and trust her - I do not think this was her fault, and she consistently sent me updates and pictures of the animals. She said that she last saw both animals alive and well on Sunday afternoon, when she fed and sprayed them. A different friend came to spray on Tuesday, and I returned home early Thursday afternoon to find them dead. So presumably, both of these geckos passed in a span of 3-4 days. Neither were skinny, both were robust, healthy animals.
  • The male gecko was found dead at the bottom of his enclosure, nestled into his substrate (eco earth) where he very often curled up when he was alive, so I didn’t even realize at first that something was off.
  • The female gecko was found hanging head down, her tail wrapped around a vine and elevated off the ground, like she died while she was perched on her piece of cork bark.
  • The pet sitter sprayed extensively on those days in the morning and evening when she was there and ensured the substrate was damp so that the humidity would last. Generally I spray my geckos once either in the morning or evening and this has worked really well for me the last few years, so it’s not a big departure from what they’re used to. Though they’re not used to drinking from standing water, they all had access to water dishes. None of the other geckos looked even slightly dehydrated when I returned - I have six other adults and 12 hatchlings/juveniles that were totally fine.
  • Every gecko was fed when the sitter was here (pangea gecko diet) every 3-4 days, and every gecko had a water dish (even though they don’t generally use them). The two food dishes in the enclosures of the dead geckos looked like they had, in fact, eaten the last time food was offered, which would have been Sunday, four days before I returned home. It looked like the sitter made the food mix a little thicker than I normally do, but I can’t imagine this would make a difference, especially for only a few feedings.
  • I track temp and humidity with govee thermometers and the temperature in that room never exceeded 78 or dipped below 72 degrees while I was gone, which is pretty standard summer temperatures here (my house does not have central A/C, just a window unit that blows in the room the geckos are in). Both geckos that died were on the lowest shelf and would have been cooler than the ones above by half a degree or so.
  • Both of these geckos were healthy adults (just like the LW female from a couple months ago, which was a healthy subadult) that were eating, drinking, and passing normal bowel movements and acting just like I’d expect them to. The female was a young adult about two years old that had not started laying duds yet, and the male was a proven breeder around 3yrs old.
  • These two geckos, just like everyone else, passed a 6 month quarantine (3 month intensive quarantine on paper towels, 3 month monitoring) before they were introduced to the rest of my collection. I have not tested my gecko collection for crypto, which I will be doing now, but again - these geckos were healthy and gave no sign whatsoever they were ill in any way. I noticed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary during quarantine or afterwards, as I would have removed and isolated them.
  • The male was in an exo terra enclosure that had previously belonged to a breeder female, and I sanitized it and redecorated it for him when she was upgraded. That female breeder is still alive and well. The female that passed was in an arboreal enclosure I purchased a year ago at Tinley, and no one else was in it prior to her.
  • The two geckos who passed had enclosures right next to one another. The female was in an enclosed PVC-type arboreal enclosure and the male was in an exo terra arboreal enclosure. There were three other geckos on the same level of the housing shelf and at the same side-by-side proximity, and all three of them (an adult gargoyle gecko, a subadult crestie, and an adult crestie) were totally fine when I returned. These two geckos had not had any physical contact with each other aside from just being housed next door to one another, and I have pretty consistent biosecurity measures, so I wash my hands well in between cleaning and handling individual geckos.

I really don’t know what happened/what is happening, but to say I’m devastated is an understatement. I’m quite honestly debating selling all of my geckos and giving up on breeding them, because that’s three deaths of otherwise healthy adults/subadults this year and I really do not know what I’m doing wrong - they just seem so fragile and my mental health can’t keep losing animals out of the blue like this. I have kept New Caledonian species successfully for almost four years prior to this year, and if anything, my husbandry has gotten better, not worse. I’m normally really confident in my care/husbandry/understanding of the species, but I’m starting to doubt myself a lot. Early on in keeping I lost a few geckos on my move from Texas to Illinois due to heat (I had them set up in a cardboard box in deli cups with damp paper towels and with cool packs, but three still died on the drive. Since then, I am VERY careful about not letting them get too warm).

I’m taking a few steps. I’m going to switch everyone off of substrate (I use eco earth) and onto paper towels so that I can track bowel movements better and be absolutely sure none of them were eating the substrate, but there’s no sign they were. I’m going to do a deep sanitization of my spray bottles in case they were contaminated somehow and something grew in them that was harmful to the geckos. I’m going to check those tubs (and all of my enclosures) carefully for spiders. I’m going to send in fecal swabs to RAL for my remaining healthy adults to test for crypto, but I don’t think they will come back positive - all of my animals came from reliable breeders with great reviews, they all passed quarantine with flying colors, and I’ve personally never heard of animals passing suddenly from a crypto infection without displaying symptoms first.

I was going to try to put at least one of them in the refrigerator to call and have the local vet perform a necropsy, but unfortunately just after I returned home we had a severe set of thunderstorms here in the midwest and my house lost power entirely, so my refrigerator and freezer were both out of commission for almost three days and I had to bury them instead.

Anyway… I’m totally transparent and happy to show pictures of enclosures, the shelf where everyone was kept, pictures of the other geckos, etc. and to have y’all help me troubleshoot. I know that sudden deaths happen, this just feels like so many in a short period of time when I’ve kept them successfully for years before this and I just want to stop losing geckos. If there’s anything else you want to suggest, please do.

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25

I’m really sorry that happened, it’s difficult to lose multiple animals, especially not knowing what went wrong. How much ventilation did these geckos get? Were the enclosure designed with cross ventilation and was the air in the room stagnant or did it have airflow?

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26

Both enclosures had ventilation via screen in the top of the enclosure, and the air should not have been stagnant for more than a couple hours at a time - the A/C window unit blows the air around pretty consistently and I believe there was an overhead fan on as well, though I’m not 100% positive. All of my adult enclosures have top screen ventilation, and all of my hatchling enclosures have holes in the sides of the tub for ventilation.

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27

I have no idea what the cause would be then. When I had similar problems with babies I’m pretty sure it was because of a bad batch of crickets that were fed harmful food and I didn’t gut load them enough. That doesn’t seem very likely here. Sorry I couldn’t help more, but hopefully @ghoulishcresties and @foxreptile will be able to help or give some advice.

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28

Other than only misting once a day (should be twice atleast, and daily, shouldn’t go days without water) and eating every 3/4 days (every other day is best)

I don’t see an issue here.

Have you checked the enclosures for false widows?
Check cork tubes and backgrounds, check throughly.

I do know of a couple people who had cresties wiped out, there’s a disease that passes easily on and will take cresties out. I cannot for the life of me remember the name but a friend had whole lot wiped and never touched cresties again…

Worth autopsy’s.

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29

I normally feed mine every 3-4 days because I’ve had a lot of luck with them actually eating more consistently - when I offered every other day I had a lot of animals that just didn’t eat sometimes, and since I started offering only twice a week they eat significantly better when I do offer. So that’s the reason for that, and everyone does things differently so I know a lot of people feed more often but these were healthy animals with really good, thick body condition - I can’t imagine this was starvation, especially with this being the standard schedule that I follow even when I’m home. Also - I do normally feed babies more often (every other day) but the adults I would expect to be more hardy when it came to lack of food than the babies, especially large, healthy adults with good body condition. But I didn’t lose any babies, just two adults.

You have a good point on the water as I was worried about humidity a little, but they did have access to full water dishes in their enclosures right next to the food bowls, so they should have been easy to find, and the humidity gauges in their enclosures never went below 50% even on non-misting days because I made sure to fully hydrate the substrate before I left. I know they normally drink from misting and I was a little worried about that, but pet sitting is super expensive in my area (like, $40-50 a day starting out) and I’m a graduate student with basically no disposable income. I wasn’t able to work consistently the last couple months due to being sick and I made the decision to save a little money to have someone come every few days. That’s on me and in the future I will have to just work extra shifts to pay someone to come every day. I was gone 2 weeks and she came 7 times while I was gone, so it was generally no more than 2-3 days between visits).

I really wanted to do a necropsy on at least one of them, but with the storms that came through I had no refrigeration so unfortunately even though I wanted to, that is not an option for either of these. I really wish that it was - I planned to do necropsies, put them in the fridge, my power went out about 15 minutes later and the vet’s office was closed due to power outage the next day, and by then with the lack of refrigeration it was too late to do autopsy.

By the way, this is not me arguing with you! I’m just trying to discuss and talk through to see if there’s something I’m missing.

I have not checked for false widows, I don’t even really know what to look for. But now that my power is back on, I am going to check the enclosures thoroughly and get started switching everyone to paper towels.

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30

If there is some kind of disease that can wipe out cresties in great numbers and even though thankfully you lost 2, (didn’t want to say only 2), maybe when your vet is back in the office it would not hurt to maybe give the vet a call to see if anyone else has reported anything similar with cresties lately.

I am sure this is a very dumb idea but you’re just out a phone call……. :pray:

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31

So here’s a crazy line of thinking, but are they anywhere where natural sunlight from a window falls? You mention they’re right next to each other on a low shelf, I’m wondering if sun angle could have caused a temperature spike at a certain time of day?

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32

I suppose it’s possible, but I think it’s unlikely. The room is 4 walls - two outer walls with windows and two inner walls. My housing shelf is on one of the two inner walls and while the sun does come in a little, it never hits any of the enclosures directly, just the middle of the room. Also, while I was gone, I closed the blinds to prevent the house from heating up too much since I only have the window A/C. That was my first thought as well, but I genuinely don’t think sunlight from any of the windows is even possible to hit those cages. It’s part of why I put them on that wall.

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I will definitely call my vet. I kind of doubt they’ll know anything, but it certainly won’t hurt to call.

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34

Well with the oddity of the occurrence, twice, It would be odd if the vet had an idea. I feel for you. But in my heart I think it was out of your control……

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35

Literally just look for them, check any cork tubes for the spiders and backgrounds.

We had ‘unexplained’ deaths in adults and a bab and turns out widows were present in vivs and that’s actually how they’d died :pensive:

The water bowl, not many will drink from. I even tried this myself :smiling_face_with_tear:

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36

And the one before also, but it is something that can wipe out many and quick as passes on.
A friend literally added in 1 Crestie more, and obviously not knowing and over months they all dropped.

Even I didn’t know there was something that could just take them out like that.

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37

Shouldn’t cause an issue.
You should see the spikes we’ve had here on the heat! Some bugs jumped right up and we had to open window and door to get it down…
Luckily all ok :face_exhaling:

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38

OMG I’m so sorry for your loss.

It definitely seems like there is a problem, rather than coincidence.

I totally agree about spiders. I have an enclosure that I’m waiting to upgrade a Gecko into but I can’t add the Gecko as there is a false widow there :triumph::rage:

It’s been there for months. I have never seen it but I see it’s webs! They are a nightmare to find! I’ve emptied it too!

I really don’t want to say it but did you take pics of the dead geckos :scream: and although I doubt it will make a difference, do you have the pics of the enclosures? How far apart are these enclosures to your other gecko enclosures? Can you move the now empty enclosures away as a precaution?

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39

So sorry for your loss :frowning:i think getting a necropsy would be the only way to really tell, nothing in your care seems off. In my experience, i have never had a gecko not drink from a water bowl, and i don’t spray daily, and mainly on the substrate. Dehydration would show clear signs before as well such as extra wrinkly skin and a wavy tail, as well as poor sheds. A short temperature spike would be unlikely to kill them as well, and it would likely have caused them to panic and look for a way to cool down. They can handle higher temperatures than most people think just fine as long as they get to cool down at night. It would have to be insanely high for them to be killed that fast. The only thing i can think of is the eco earth - i have read that it can expand in their stomachs if ingested while dry, but again i feel like there would’ve been signs of constipation? And the spiders as other’s have mentioned, but they’re super rare were im from so i have no experience with them

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I did take pictures of the geckos when I found them, which I can post, but they’re rather morbid and I wasn’t sure if that was appropriate for the forum so maybe I can share them in a message if someone wants to see them. I can say that their body condition was still normal and they weren’t wrinkly or otherwise appearing dehydrated or hungry. In fact, the female had a perfect shed (I found about half of it) very soon before she passed, as she normally eats them.

I can also post pictures of the enclosures, I just have to take some. The cages were in close proximity to my other geckos but as soon as I found the dead ones I removed them and placed them outside on my front porch.

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