Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i posted a little ways down, but no one has responded to my post.
I am interested in breeding, however, i know very little about it.
If no one themselves wants to lend any information, could someone suggest a good book with a lot of information?
I am not going to jump into something that i havent done my research on.

thanks so much

Breeding is rather simple as long as you have 2 healthy mates. The female should be over 40 grams, 50 grams is even better. This asures that during the pregnancy she has enough fat reserves to get her through the pregnancy since she may eat less. During the breeding season (Feb-sept) you can get up to 16 clutches of 2 eggs each. One breeding could give you up to 6 clutches since females can retain sperm. This number varies on the health and fertility of your female.

When expected eggs set up a nesting box with moist vermiculite or sphagum moss (did i spell those correctly? hah). After eggs are laid its best to incubate them. This is done commonly with commercial or home made hovabaters. You can make an incubuator with 2 small animal cages (you know the ones with the bright coloured covers and little handels). Buy one larger than the other and fill this with about 3 inches of water. Place a submersable aquarium heater to warm the water to your desired temp. Then place a smaller cage in the water you can weigh this down with a rock or heavy object so some is submerged. Inside this you can put some moist vermiculite in a small container with a bottle cap with some water (to create humidity). 85% humidity is ideal. You want to monitor the humidity to make sure you wont be harvesting mold or drying out the eggs.

When placing the eggs in the incubator you must be careful to place them in the way they were layed. It can be helpful to make an 'x' on the side that was layed facing up. This important so the embreyo doesn't suffacate and everything is good.

The temperature determines the sex of the offspring around 80 degrees farenheit you will get females, 86 will most likely give you both males and females, and around 90 will give you mostly males. Incubuating at temps higher than these may give you infertile females. The first 2 weeks of incubation determine the sex. Some people raise their temps a little after this time to get brighter pigments. Geckos incubated at lower temps seem to be darker (more aggregation of melanophores).

Eggs take anywhere from 35 - 90 days to hatch. The higher the temp you incubate them at the faster they will hatch.

Once you have this all down it is important to watch the eggs carefully during incubation. Check to see if any of the eggs have gone bad. These will appear colapsed. You can take a light and look at the egg to see if it is healthy as well. Fertilized eggs will have some visable viens and maybe an orange blob. Bad eggs may appear yellow and have no veins.

After they hatch leave them in until their clutchmate hatches. After this put them in their new home. It is normal for a baby not to eat until a week after hatching. They will be feeding off their yolk sac. After this you can try little meal worms. As they get older its important to seperate the babies according to size so no one is left out in the dust.

Good luck and happy breeding!