Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I live in Southwest Virginia, and lately, a lot of pet stores have been getting gold dust day geckos out the wazoo. They run about $40.00 per animal, and sell like hot cakes. Are any other shops in other parts of the country doing the same thing? What's with the sudden availability change? This is the largest import of day geckos in my neck of the woods since the mid-1990s.

Sad thing is; most of the animals sold are males, and the are crowded together in ten gallon tanks. If they did not sell fast, they would probably end up dead.

I happen to work at a shop so let me give you the "low-down" as far as I know. It is true that shops in the past year have not been able to get day geckos very easily. It is still nearly impossible to get the four spottets (quadracilatta?..ociella...whatever). However, a few months back the madagascar shipment hit. Either somebody snuk them out or they found a loophole because madagascar is mainly closed off to exports. In any case, these are all wild caught to my knowledge and are coming in huge numbers. Shops will overload cages because they all try and grab a chunk before they dissapear again. It is quite sad but at least we house them in a large 40 (5 at this moment). If you obtain a specimen, watch out for parasidic infections and so forth as you would in a wild caught animal. Cost is roughly 20$ and most of these come from CalZoo and CalRep in our area. Using this you might be able to talk the sales people down and rescue yourself a few.