My Leopard Geckos 2

7/04	Giant Tremper Albino (of Moose) 7/14/04 Male VMS Professional Herp
6/07	6/07
6/07	Approx. 9" tail to nose

As the waving tail suggests, he's bold and beautiful. Mostly passive, I'm able to keep him in the same tank with his females. I think he's very fair, sharing and very comfortable with his tank. He's a good boy and just as eager and active as the females during their feeding or when they think it's about time I tossed some crickets in.

They get excited and come out alert and watching before I ever open the lid to the tank. After a while with regular evening feeding, they'll let you know if you forgot the every other day bit with those beautiful little eyes. If they aren't hungry when I'm ready to feed them they pay no attention to me at all so sometimes it's three days to feeding. They can go over a week without food but it'd make them weak. Even during hurricane Rita when I couldn't get my hands on buying crickets for almost two months before I found much more reliable Flukersfarm.com, they were eating whatever grasshoppers and stuff I could catch for them. I even dug for earth worms. Fancy Dance loves cockroaches ... but my husband had to catch those things *shiver*.

I think his tail is a bit on the thin side but they do eat allot as it is, and he does have a tremendous tail. I'm not really sure how other folks are getting their adult geckos so fat but I've recently included mealworms and pinkies to the diet for the females so that might be it.

When he's walking around it reminds me of that soundtrack music for giant dinosaurs in old 70's b-rated caveman movies where they're really some bearded dragon lizard or another. "dommm, dommmm, dommmm ..." He's not a big giant, only a little bigger than SQ but I really like his color patterns and temperament.

Bean

6/07	Super Giant Tremper Albino (of Moose) 6/1/07 Male VMS Professional Herp

Bean is my newest arrival. I don't even have him yet, I'm just very eager for him to get here. I'm kind of hoping to place him with JJ.

Tawanda (Tawny)

2/07	Mack Snow 2/07 Female A-1 Reptiles

Also about to arrive. Tawanda's melanistic coloration and pattern are perfect for placing with Fancy Dance. I'm sure to find the offspring I was looking for. I've named her after 'Fried Green Tomatoes'. Like Bean she'll be in her own tank. He's going straight into a 20 gal tank while Tawny here has a 10gal ready and waiting. She'll be homed there for at least until next summer before I begin to introduce her to Fancy Dance's tank. I want to make sure she's adult size and take all that time to get them used to the newness and other geckos.

Rain

3/07	Mack Snow Jungle 3/15/2007 Female Alex Hue Reptiles.com

Waiting for her arrival as well. I think I'd have to put her in the beautiful department with Fancy Dance but I'm pretty sure right now I intend for her to go with JJ in Bean's tank. I've no intentions of getting any more geckos after Rain, I have more than enough, especially with hoping I get this breeding and rearing young right rather quickly. These new guys won't even be sharing tanks until next summer so there's no telling when they might breed. I'm looking forward to what the kids will look like anyway.

Jungle Jool

11/04	Jungle, Tail Stripe 11/21/04 Female Gecko Ranch
6/07	6/07 Approx. 8" tail to nose

JJ retained a beautiful coloring in yellows and white. Of the girls she's the most active or quick to get around if I've got my hand in there. I make it a point to touch them but she'd rather mosy off. She's lightning for crickets. I think I'd call her the swashbuckler of the group. Her and SuseQ's tails are still on the verge of getting thicker because they recently laid eggs. Unfortunately, I didn't catch those in time to incubate them, but this was the very first laying.

Susie Q

	Melanistic 6/30/04 Female Gecko Ranch
6/07	6/07 Approx. 8" tail to nose

SuseQ is more active than I really expected her to become growing up, she's alert and rather assertive. If she wants to keep her spot, she'll start the tail wagging and even FD will think about how bad he might want to be where she is for a moment. It doesn't really happen that often but I kind of think of her as the matriarch of the females. All in all I'd say they have a burst of energy when they want to have it and laze around the rest of the time picking spots to doze. Most of the time at night they stalk around like alligators looking for the runaway crickets from last feeding.

Gallery Pics

7/07 Fancy Dance	7/07 Susie Q
7/07 Jungle Jool

Tails are getting nice and fat in only a couple of weeks since last pics. I started the females on super mealworms to recover from their egg laying. They're eating every day right now, so the mealworms are a welcome alternative as well. I like the super mealworms better because the normal ones are very small, more suiting to baby gecks and small frogs really.

Even Fancy Dance is reaping from the bennefits of nice and fattening worms. He's looking about right to me right now, he was looking kinda skinny before. It's not easy to tell with these bigger geckos. He was eating average for an average Leo but I think I'll keep him in mealworm treats from now on. He ate like 15 of them in the first sitting and it was the day after a cricket spree. I'm not kidding, these guys breed - man, they get huuungry!

I give them one mealworm at a time by hand because I don't want any to get away and turn into a beetle, the geckos shouldn't eat something that hard shelled really, it might not digest properly. Mostly, more times I let them have a look at it and then drop it on the larger piece of sandstone slate because FD in particular likes to bite my finger and he's very strong, that kinda hurts. Most of the time they gently try to avoid my finger for the worm, but it's like getting nabbed by a beak that tries to twist a small chunk off and I don't really want them to think my fingers mean something to eat, course a little mealworm bowl from the pet store works too but I'd still take mealworms out after 15 or so minutes of trying to entice them to eat them or the rest will go unnoticed for lack of movement.

Once in a while I touch them as they move along, let their tail run through my fingers. They think I'm just another gecko. Having their smell on my hands helps allot too but they still might startle, especially after or during a molting, and sometimes when I'm taking them completely out of the tank. It's better for them to do it while they're cooled and I put a hand in front of their face rather than ever try to grasp and I don't chase them. I don't want them to start pecking at me for handfeeding.

I did gutload the mealworms first and the substrate I'm attempting to raise super mealworms in is grains, oatmeal and some fish flakes mixed with reptile vits and calcium powders since they aren't very nutritious coming from the refrigerator, because the mealworms don't eat anything that way. I still haven't gone with pinkies (baby mice) just yet but they're on the menu forthcoming.

Former Tail Glory

9/06 Jungle Jool and Fancy Dance	9/06 Susie Q
9/06 Missy

I took these last year with a regular camera. Colors hadn't really changed much since then but Missy turned so much darker from being just flat out miserable, while Susie Q simply shed for more dark than she retains a good yellow tone in there. This is what I think their tails should look like though, nice and fat. They've really lost quite a bit of weight this summer and I can't say I like it. They're getting back to par now, I think they should be even fatter than this for the breeding season, possibly just for the sake I like to worry too much.

A Week Later 7/07

FD 2.6 grams	JJ 1.4 grams
SQ 2.2 grams

The yellow is grossly over exaggerated on JJ there in that pic, her tail is all white and her yellowing is solid and darker. I couldn't get the yellow to show at all taking the pic. This is a week later from the last pictures up there on mealworms vs. getting back to weight. They're about normal now with Fancy Dance showing he's going to get as fat as possible on those worms. The pic also doesn't do his tail any justice, I could catch a large mouth bass with that sucker. SuseQ is actually the more finicky one, I think she might be pregnant again. JJ is just a smaller build despite having nearly the same length as SQ, but is still fairly lean body wise.

Molting

7/07 - Jungle Jool

Despite what you hear just about everywhere on how to care for these guys, not every Leo is the same. Such as Jungle Jool here, I never really notice her shed because she doesn't frost over until the very last minute when it's time to start rubbing it off. And just yesterday from this pic she ate about 10 super mealworms while Susie Q is still thinking about the idea of gobbling down more than one or two. SuseQ molted about three days ago though and had her fill on the regular feeding of crickets. She might care for mealworms later or just doesn't like them. Normally, Leo's don't want to eat sometimes just before you even notice they've frosted over for molting. It only takes a day or two, and then about an hour or less for them to rub it all off and eat most of it. Fancy Dance was the fairly normal one but now that I've introduced them to super mealworms he's eating them even while he was frosted over and ready to shed. He just loves the things.