Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This weekend, i adopted my first two leopard geckos from a guy in Pittsburgh who wasn't much help in answering my questions.

I got a male and a female and their entire enclosure.

the enclosure consists of calci-sand (which i plan on getting rid of ASAP and replacing with carpet or paper towel), a warm side hide, a cool side hide, some rocks, a fake cactus, and a water bowl (about an inch deep). is there anything else i can add or do for my enclosure to make it better?

the male is gorgeous, nice and chubby with beautiful colors and markings. he has stopped eating since i got him but im guessing its all the stress from moving. if anyone has any feeding tips and tricks, they would be greatly appreciated. the female how ever, i think, is sick. she wont open her eyes and she is quite thin. her tail has thinned out as well which assume is from dehydration. i cant get her to eat or drink and im not sure what i should do. can someone please help?

Well, first step is separate them. If one is sick and the other isn't, you want to minimize the chance of whatever the problem is being passed from one to the other. That'll also make it easy to tell which poops came from which animal, which could be relevant in terms of diagnosing what's wrong with the female and whether or not the male has the same problem in an earlier stage where he still looks healthy.

I would not be surprised if you were in for a vet visit in the not too distant future just to be sure of where you stand with them. I also wouldn't be hugely surprised to find out that the female is impacted from the sand. That would at least mean that she's not passing parasites or illness to the male, but OTOH it's not exactly easy to deal with impaction either. For now at least, please keep them well away from any other animals you have and wash your hands very well after any handling or cage maintenance in order to prevent spreading anything. Good quarantine practices are important regardless, but when an animal is visibly sick when you get it, it becomes even more important.

Apart from getting rid of the sand, it sounds like they've got a pretty good setup so far. As far as the feeding goes, give them a couple of days to get settled in and then try again. Keep handling at a minimum for now so as to keep their stress level low. Did the previous owner tell you what s/he was feeding them? Obviously at first, at least, it'd be best to stick with the same food because it's what they're comfortable with.
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0.1 Albino Leopard Gecko - Tigger
0.1 Crested Gecko - Pooh-Bear

first off, thank you for your quick response.

second, yeah, i am trying not to handle them that much if at all. i talked to a few reptile experts at a local store and they told me to try and force feed her some baby food, but im afraid that the force feed will cause too much not needed stress.

the previous owner had them on wax worms which are super high in fat. i didnt want to keep them on those full time so i switched to crickets which neither is taking. any recommendations?

Happy to help.

Wow, PO did a lot of things wrong then. You may have a problem weaning them off of the waxworms - I've seen it said many times that they can be addictive. One thing I discovered by accident that seemed to get my gecko back to chasing crickets when she'd stopped eating for a while apart from the occasional waxworm that I was giving just to make sure she was getting calories is that crickets will attack waxworms.

I put a waxworm down in her enclosure and she was just kind of ignoring it, and just to see if she'd be interested, I tossed in a cricket. The cricket actually bit the waxworm and sat there chewing on it for a bit - dunno if it was the smell of the waxworm being cut open or what, but she got excited and chomped them both down, and has been aggressively hunting crickets again ever since. Obviously this is anecdotal, so YMMV, but at worst you're maybe wasting a couple of crickets and/or waxworms if it doesn't work out, so it can't really hurt to try.

If anything major changes and/or you have more questions, please keep posting - the community around here is usually pretty helpful. That being said, don't be surprised if I'm not the only one who suggests a vet visit. I know it sucks to have to spend the money for that immediately after getting animals, especially if they were advertised as healthy, but on some level, they're your responsibility now, so that's just the way it goes...
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0.1 Albino Leopard Gecko - Tigger
0.1 Crested Gecko - Pooh-Bear