Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Welcome to kingsnake.com's message board system. Here you may share and discuss information with others about your favorite reptile and amphibian related topics such as care and feeding, caging requirements, permits and licenses, and more. Launched in 1997, the kingsnake.com message board system is one of the oldest and largest systems on the internet.

Click here for Dragon Serpents
https://www.crepnw.com/
Click here to visit Classifieds

New Geckos, new Setup!

NCBoas Oct 20, 2007 08:22 PM

Well, we picked up two female leopard geckos today! One is a Patternless and the other is a Rainwater Jungle.. I already have a sub adult male mack super snow and a female hypo.. Those two have been seperated in their own 10 gallon tanks.. I figured since I bought both of these new leopard geckos from the same breeder, they could be quarantined together in the future breeding tank while the other two are maturing.. I used some large merimac stone to support the broken slate tile for caves and I'm using calcium carbonate for substrate.. I just like how it looks and I guess it's the safer alternative to sand.. Take care!

Replies (4)

casichelydia Oct 20, 2007 10:38 PM

Just two constructive notes - take em or leave em.

Your cage looks nice, but it's a people cage and not a gecko cage. That fluorescent light makes it such that there's not a dark place in the whole town - you can even see inside the two little bitty hides.

I can't comment with certainty since I don't use it, but many breeders advocate caution using calcium substrate, as it doesn't appear to digest any better than sand when ingested by leopards.

NCBoas Oct 20, 2007 10:54 PM

Any ideas on how to make a hide that won't let any light in but still have a hole for them to get in?lol Ah well, I'll just have to keep it off then.. I'll keep an eye out with the calcium sand.. If it comes down to it, I'll cut some slate tile to fit in place.. I just like the look of sand and seems like it will be easier to keep clean.. I have slate in the 10 gallon setups for the other two but it's a pain cleaning dried feces up with bleach without removing everything from the tank.. Paper towels or some type of paper would be the best route but that's not much fun for my kids to look at.

casichelydia Oct 21, 2007 12:31 AM

Making a better hide(s) would be easy, but you'll have to get inventive to stick with your current theme.

One easy way to do it is to grab a couple of elongate tupperware containers that are the flexible, almost rubbery, thin type (those more brittle Glad ones are also okay to cut with a pen knife). Cut the hole on the far side of the lid. Cover the whole thing neatly with strips of black electrical tape (wrap the lid and bottom separately so the lid can still be removed). If that doesn't match you theme enough, you can hide the now solid black and nearly light-proof tupperware with rockwork.

Be careful using bleach on your slate. That rock's very porous and will always retain some of the chemical. I rarely use any kind of cleanser past water for my animals, although that'd make some of the "neat freaks" cringe. In the calcium substrate tank, just keep an eye on the feces to make sure they're not coming out with lots of sand in them (a sign of impaction danger).

Your ghost animal, as others told you, is a line-bred hypomelanistic animal (meaning reduced spotting). I don't know how much line-bred work (as opposed to recessive trait work) is done with boas these days, but line-bred traits work based on consistent breeding through the generations - no deviation, as that causes a quick return to the "wild" state.

When you breed your Mack super snow to the hypo, you'll get two results in each offspring. You'll get a partial expression of the Mack co-dominant trait, which won't be super snow, but rather snow (normal eye type, normal body pattern, very faded yellow pigment) in each offspring. The babies can look awesome when they hatch - usually stark black and white; the latter gives way to yellow with age. The hypo characteristic will continue to be expressed to some degree, but most offspring should have an intermediate amount of spotting, somewhere between mom and dad. If you think the hypo is neater than the super snow, then I think the money you paid for it is nothing to worry over, eh? The size of the expo says nothing about the caliber of each vendor there. But, if you're a snake guy, you should be used to dealing with that sort of fellow

NCBoas Oct 21, 2007 10:57 AM

Hmmmm.. Maybe I'll have to go a different route with the male.. I might as well pick up a bunch of normal females for him and use a different male on the color related females... In boas, the only linebred/polygenic traits we have are pastel boas.. Of course improving the genetic mutations is something strived for as well.. I never buy snakes from reptile shows! Thanks for all the advice!

Site Tools