Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm new to leos, can you tell what color or patter a leo might be when they are young? I know its nearly impossible to tell sex for a while, but i was wondering about coloration and patterns? Thank you for any info.

It's easiest to tell when you have seen the parents so that you can get an idea of their pattern. Hets are normals and normals will appear either a faded or high yellow with very thick black bands-- This later just breaks up into spots. That's usually what you get, but sometimes like for baby SHCT, they'll still have bands at birth, but since the SH is a recessive trait the bands will fade completely(Sometimes leaving a hint of some-what shaded skin in the band's place as adults). I bought a baby leo from petco that appeared to be a high yellow with the bands creating a peanut shape in the center. It turned out that my baby became a Hypo Tang(only two melamine spots on her lower back) with an abberant stripe lined with orange down her back. She also has a nice amount of orange coloration on her tail which wasn't visbable when I bought her. So.. Sometimes it's very, very hard to determine the baby's pattern for a while. Hope that helped some. I'm positive someone else may be able to tell you more about pattern determination. Take care!
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-Britney

1.2 Leopard Geckos: Ron, Raine(M) and Dream.
2.1 Cats: Bubba, Angelo and Cookie(F).
1.1.13 Rouen Ducks: Buddy, M.J. and 20 something eggs!
0.1 Albino Rats: Scabbers
0.0.1 Pied Doves

2 Months old High yellow (abberant pattern):
(see second post for comparison)

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Blaine

0.0.1 High Yellow Juvenile Leo (Echo)

4 Months old (Same gecko). So it's hard to tell pattern. You can see the round yellow circle on her back. That will stay...likely.

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Blaine

0.0.1 High Yellow Juvenile Leo (Echo)

This one has an inset of it at about 1 week old, and the main pic is around 3 weeks old.
he still has the stripes down his back.

I have a few leos with back stripes. Maybe one of these days I'll get lucky and hatch one with a striped tail this year. If not I'll probably buy a stripe and breed it with these and see what happens.
This is the mother of the one in that pic.

Maggie as an adult

Maggie as a baby

Here is a baby pic of the father of that one too.

Monte (powergeckos) has some great patterns in his collection.
Maybe he'll lay down some groovy pics on this thread
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The above sentence is false.

4.4 Leopard Geckos
1.0 Marbled Gecko
1.1 Red Eared Sliders
0.2 Siamese Mice