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My baby gecko won’t eat. I have a baby gecko with a tail that is extremely skinny. It is very young probably sold to me too young. It was kept in a tank with another of about the same age and the other got the majority of the food. We would bring this one out at times to offer it food separately and it ate then, but I don't think it got enough. Now it is walking around almost as if it has a limp or is retarded and will not eat live food. I put some in front of her and she made several attempt to eat it, but gave up I guess after a couple of misses. I crippled a cricket and left it in front of her and decapitated a meal worm and left it in front of her. I know she is hungry, but she has just about given up. Her eyes are wide open at the minute and she is pretty alert, but defiantly ill. PLEASE help.

Jonathon

She might have possibly eaten tonight, I seperated her from my roomates Gecko and left her with a bunch of crickets, but I couldn't watch her all night long. She is deffintly moving so strangly though. She is so thin it's horrible. Please someone help me.

I know that this response may be way to late, but it may help you for future refrence for your other leopard. First if your leopard is on anything, I repeat anything other than Paper towels, newspaper, slate or tile, get them off of it! NOW! not kidding, at this age they are A: not good at hunting, B: Have a tiny tiny digestive tract, and C: will eat foreign objects ie sand to quell their constant hunger. So if you have already done the substrate thing, and the geck is still kickin, seperate them permanently! A sick or impacted gecko has no chance of getting enough to eat with a healthy companion like you have, Next, if you need to know that the limping thing probably from lack of calcium, because the gecko can't get it from food items, so thats why it's bones aren't able to carry the weight of it's body. If its impacted it will need a vet attention, they will either try and scoop out the impaction through his/her butt, and then put it on an appetite stimulant. The gecko needs to be soaked, in a very shallow cup/bowl of warm water, to help ease the digestive tract and hydrate it. If you want to try and feed it make a slurry mix (search forums gecko for exact recipe) of crushed crickets and meat type baby food, mine liked chicken not turkey. The third possibility is that it hasa an illness, like coccidia or crypto, in this case for sure you must seperate the two, take it to a vet and have a stool sample one that is fresh or one that is old, it does matter, but take whatever you have and have them do a fecal. I have given you all the things that I did with my Baby Gaza, she would have made it if I had done this earlier than I did. Best of Luck to you and your geckos.

Well it was on sand for the first month or two that I had it and it never ate sand. I removed it from the tank with the other Gecko permanently soon after. Me and Bala, the leo, have gone to the vet 3-4 times spread out of the last year and I have spent probably about 10 times as much as I did on her. I have seen three different vets and at least 4 different vet’s assistants. She wasn’t impacted. Her stoles were checked at least twice. I’m not sure, but I think on the last trip they sent her blood to a lab to be tested.
Three different opinions came out to be the same thing. It is either an inner ear infection or something is wrong with her brain. Antibiotics of two different types seemed to help for short term. I still don’t think she walks normal, but that may just be the way she is going to be because of the troubles she had while she was developing. She has always had a good amount of calcium as well as occasional vitamins. I have digital thermometers on both ends of her tanks and a hydrometer. For the last… 6 months or so she has had a reptile carpet with lots of large rocks in it which she loves to climb on. Her water dish is kept very clean, so is the rest of her tank. My friends say she has grown a bit and put on weight.

Interesting. The first thing I have to say, is good for you for following through with the vet visits. The walking funny thing I am pretty sure is calcium related. You know about the fact that Geckos can't live off of Calcium with heavy D3 in it, or in their vitamin powder that is used along with it. Vets are weird, one place I toook my gecko to said that they needed natural sunlight, another place said that they didn't. One palce tried to get me to feed her a dry pellet diet if you can imagine that,.. they said tie a string around the lump of what ever the *%#$ it was and pull it across the ground in front of your gecko,.. YEAH RIGHT AS IF... anyways, I am glad to hear that your one geck is doing better. The sand thing, I have to say when they are babies and they are on sand, they eat it dude,.. none of us have 24 7 gecko vision and are watching to see everything they do. Impactions are also realy hard to notice. Mine was only visable through a highpowered led shined straight through her belly skin, and that was because the lump of sand she had in there was huge. It could be that she is a mentally challenged geck, it may be that she has some kind of strange protozoa that lives in her brain, I have heard of all kinds of stuf on this forum. The important thing is that she is alive and doing better. I applaud your efforts. What is she eating, how much, you said your friends say she is gaining weight,. have ya tried pinkies? Waxies, I just realized that I haven't been feeding mine as much as I could. I have been feeding like twice a week about 5-6 king mealworms,, yeah I upped the amount and they ate them all, so now its like three times a week, and like 10-15 king mealies. They are getting plump. Anyhow, good luck with your pet,. Robert

The last vet I went to had kept herps for years and was breading chameleons. I really trusted him and we talked with each other for a long time.
My Gecko's diet has been primarily meal worms. I have been told and have read a number of times that their staple in their diet should be crickets, but when a single cricket stays in her tank for two weeks and she can't catch it then I just can't leave them in their. She gets the occasional super worm to mix things up. It has been a couple of weeks since she has seen a wax worm, but I give her those as treats. She has also eaten a good amount of phoenix(sp?) worms because my roommate ordered some a while ago.
As far as the lighting stuff goes we won't have an answer to how much UV affects them for a while. Leo geckos are complicated because I believe most of the geckos evolved in forest being strictly nocturnal and these guys just wondered off into a sunny habitat. Even though they were now in an area that was move sunny they still usually only walk around at night when the sun isn't out. The thing that makes it most difficult though is that fact that I haven’t seen a wild caught leo gecko in my life. We are selectively breeding and messing around with the little animals, so even if a herpetologist or some other biologist did a study on wild caught geckos it may not even apply to our geckos. (they also keep changing lighting technology)
I've thought for a while now that the mentally challenged gecko possibility is pretty plausible. I brought Bala home with me for Christmas break and my Mom questioned her eye sight when we watched her hunt.

Jon