I have a pair of first time breeder young crested geckos. They are happy and healthy in a giant enclosure. They show no signs of stress. I feed crickets and Pangea growth and breeding from multiple stations. She ignores her lay box like a true spoiled thing.
My female is under 2 years old and my male is a little over 2. My female was obviously gravid. She looked thinner today, so i weighed her. She dropped 5g and the skin around her cloacha looks a little looser. She looks fine, so all is well.
I turned my bioactive enclosure upside down and i can’t find the eggs (lots of isopods though). Do they eat the eggs if they’re not viable? I figured i’d get some duds and whatnot, but i assumed i would find them if i went looking.
It’s not a big deal because this is a hobby they’re my only pair, but what i am soooo curious!
If bio lay boxes won’t be used. They will dig and lay wherever.
I don’t keep together as this does cause stress for them as the male will always want to breed and the poor female is stuck breeding with nowhere to run off too. They make look ok but as I’ve found rescuing. They aren’t. I’ve taken on pairs before from people that were up skinny and dehydrated because wouldn’t eat of drink due to stress of breeding. Once separated I got them to a healthy weight and you could see the change on them x
Thats the setup. They use the whole thing. I find them near each other and on opposite ends. The lower cork is the preferred cricket hunting zone and today was food day.
She’s gained weight steadily then shot up, which is why i was not concerned about the 5 gram drop - the lower weight matches the curve. The chonky weight was abberant. I also watched her eat a cricket while right near the male. I weighed her earlier this week and she basically dropped 5g overnight so i really think everything points to eggs and not health.
I’d add more horizontal branches, cork tubes and all. As they may cohab but there will be stress issues with them, he’ll want to mate, she’ll tell him off, it’s endless though as they’ll have nowhere to hide or remove scents of eachother, it’s why I keep them separate and only pair together for 3 days to breed and that’s it for the year then. X
I get that the pairing for a few days vs cohabbing year round is a huge debate in the community. I hear your opinion.
I should have mentioned. In inches, that’s a 24x18x36. The tall cork bark is 24" high and angled so that there is 1/2 the back corner at least behind it. It’s where the male runs when i mess with something too much. (The female doesnt care). The short cork bark is probably 16" and walls off a 3rd corner of the back tank. That’s the females favorite. She likes crickets so she just points herself downward and waits for the crickets to come by her. That space is also more humid where behind the tall cork bark is drier. And obviously with a bio and timed spray i have a top to bottom graident.
The male’s favorite space is hiding up in the vines on the back left (which puts him and the female out of view of each other). He also likes the block across the front and the stick on the ground (again, all visually blocked from the female’s spot). If i find them together they’re on the lower cork bark.
I tried a second block and didn’t like it visually, but i have some rope on stickies i can see if they like. The enclosure is too wide for bamboo pole extenders.
Do you know their weights? You said you checked not long ago so what were they?
And I get that they’re fine for now, but I know of others who did this and then went down hill after a while. Females became egg hound due to stress and died also.
It’s why many don’t do it. Females cohab but not males and females.
Defo need to add more branches and cork tubes though so she can hide and get away.
The only times I have ever heard of female/male cohabing was when there was more than one females. That usually will split his attention between them. But even then it is risky and not recommend.
And you realize that @ghoulishcresties is one of the best crested gecko breeders out there right? I promise that you should listen to her. You should be putting the animals wellbeing before what you want. Please listen to what we are saying. At the minimum have a second setup ready for if they need separated
Sorry forgot - 45 (f) and 43 (m). She’s 40 now (weighed twice). I have back up tubs but she has honestly done better in this setup than when i had her in the tub for quarantine. I also grabbed a set of enclosures at Tinley but they’re not set up yet.
I’m in the US so I’m much more plugged into the US market and opinions. We have big breeders like David at Tikis that have found no detriment to cohabbing with monitoring. The US has two huge camps of cohab vs separate as well as everything from a minimum size of 35g up to 60g for breeding. I have them both in that enclosure because it’s huge and they seem happy in it, as opposed to when she was in the quarantine tub.
I did another dig and found one of the eggs. Candled and full cheerio. I have given up on finding the other. I either killed it by tossing the soil trying to find it, or who knows. But i wanted to go digging one more time since i was getting so much pressure about my geckos health. She simply lost weight because she was gravid and hid the eggs somewhere unexpected. Very much a case of a duck looking and sounding like a duck. I just hadnt realized how deep they dig!
