My crested, Kiba, has gone through some major changes in the last two weeks and since I’ve only owned cresteds for three months I don’t know if these are natural or an indication that something is wrong.
Kiba’s typical behavior before the changes started was to leave his hiding spot and come to the door of the cage to be fed as soon as the light went out at 6pm. Kiba was always ravenous and if I ever skipped a night of feeding he would leap out of his cage after me to feed him. I limited his crickets to five or six a night (which he always ate within five minutes) and left him his CGD to eat during the night. He wouldn’t eat the CGD every night, but when he did it was usually a sizable about and I would always find him in the morning with a very fat belly.
Two weeks ago I was startled to see that my tan geckos was now bright orange. My other crested, Kouga, will change every few days from chocolate/orange to olive/yellow, so I wasn’t concerned just surprised because Kiba had shown no signs of color variation. I was in for another huge surprise when three days after that I found out that Kiba was a boy not a girl. When Kiba reached ten months old and showed no signs of a hemipenile bulge I thought for sure he was a girl.
Soon after that Kiba started leaving his hiding spot later and later. He still would aggressively go after his crickets, but he started hiding at the back of his enclosure instead of coming to the door. Also he would eat his CGD less frequently, but more at each sitting. Though a little disappointed that I couldn’t always see Kiba hunt I wasn’t going to push him if he was feeling uncomfortable, so I started just dumping the crickets in all at once instead of feeding them one by one. That went on for a few days until three nights ago.
Kiba came out of his hiding spot and went to the top of his enclosure and stayed there until after I went to bed, he had never done that before. I found one or two crickets in the morning, but assumed that they must have found a hiding place to survive the night. Night before last he didn’t eat any of his crickets and last night he didn’t make an appearance at all, though he was out when I woke up this morning.
My question is has Kiba hit some kind of behavior change because of his, all be it late, sexually maturity or could there be something else wrong? Kouga, my adult male, is my only reference for ‘normal’ behavior and he eats CGD about twice a week and crickets every ten days or so, and only when he asks for them.
In my opinion, Kiba is rather small. He’s ten months old and still only half the size of Kouga who’s about 15 months old. That’s why I let him eat as much as he wanted whenever he wanted it. Should I keep offering food every night or go to Kouga’s schedule?
All of this just seems like a lot of changes in such a short amount of time.
Thanks for putting up with the long read,
Kat
