Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We have 3 beautiful high yellow females and one high yellow male leo at school. Starting 2/4/07, all the females have been laying clutches of 2 eggs, about a month apart. I just found 2 more eggs in the lay box tonight after Open School Night. As soon as the female who laid them stepped out of the lay box, I saw the male try to bite her neck.

How many clutches will the females lay anyway?

The eggs are in a plastic shoebox half filled with moist perlite. Two of the original 6 eggs from 2/4/07 are still good, very swollen. The other eggs had been attacked by fungus and shrank, so I removed them. The room the box is in is between 77 and 81 degrees. Any idea when this first batch of eggs should hatch?

One female didn't bounce back from her last clutch and is a bit thin and off color. She is highly mobile and eating, however. Should I be concerned about her?

Thanks for any info. I'm new to leos, but not to lizards.

I've had them lay as many as 12 clutches in one year.

At those temps I would guess, off the top of my head, they would hatch at around 60-70 days (at 83 it takes around 60).

You should remove that female from the others and feed her a little more often until she is back up to her normal size.

Yea keeping the females with the male will stress them out and from clutch to clutch they will loose weight and energy and eventually pass. They need alot of calcuim in this time to so make sure you have PURE calcuim in there in a dish at all times. If you have them on sand (calcisand) or any sand i would remove immediatley. Sand is a very very bad substrate for leos and shouldn't even be on the market for sale if you ask me. Also leos store their sperm so you don't need them to keep mating, they only need to mate once and they are good to go.

The 3 females and 1 male leo are housed in a 55 gallon tank with an indoor-outdoor carpet substrate. They have a dish of calcium powder available at all times, and the crickets have a dish of Flukers high calcium cricket food available, too. They have an undertank heat mat, an infrared emitter, 2 overhead lights and plenty of moist and dry hides. They are living the life of Reilly, these lizards.

I'm new to leos too, but I think you may be keeping the eggs too moist. You said they're "very swollen" and that some had been attacked by fungus. If the hatching substrate is too moist, the eggs will absorb a lot of water which stretches the shell tight. Being that tight sometimes makes thin spots in the shell which allows fungus easy access into the eggs. I HIGHLY recommend the book, "The Herpetoculture of Leopard Geckos". I just got a copy and it's by far the best reptile book I've ever read. It's a bit pricey, but if you check around you can get it cheaper than the 40 bucks that most places advertise it for.

Check out ebay! That's where i got mine for pretty cheap!