Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My boyfriend and I recently bought a male leopard gecko from a breeder and had him shipped across the country. He came in Tuesday morning and has been chilling in a 10 gallon quarantine tank. He's been eating crickets well, been alert, not too skittish. We have been planning to introduce him as a permanent tankmate to our female that we've had for almost a year and a half now. She is housed in a 20 gallon long.

He still hasn't shed yet, so is pale from the stress of shipping.
Here he is from the breeder's page:

And here he is now:

Notice how off color he is! But getting to the main point. Today (sunday) we decided to give him an introduction to our female. We took her out of her tank, rearranged things a bit, took any of her droppings out, and then introduced them both at the same time. I've read that introducing them both to a new tank will reduce territorial fighting, while introducing the male to the female's already setup tank will induce mating, so we opted for the 1st way.

Immediately they started exploring, but then he noticed her, and almost as if he were stalking a cricket, he moved with darts and dashes up to her. Then he started vibrating his tail over and over and went to bite her tail and then her midside. She swung her head around to face him, but by that time we had taken him out.

We are just worried whether this is immediate mating behavior or aggresive behavior. Almost every Leo caresheet on the web has this to say:

A male will vibrate its tail rapidly when it sees another gecko. If the other gecko in turn vibrates its tail in the same fashion then each of them knows that contact has been made with another male and a fight will occur. If, however, a male signals his presence via the tail shaking and the other gecko does not respond in like fashion, then the male knows that the gecko near him is in fact a female. This behavior is one means of determining their sex.

We don't know how to tell what we are seeing from this description. We love her so much, we don't want any harm to come to her. So how do we tell whether it's just lust at first site or if he is attacking her? Any tips, thoughts? Information from people who do have females housed with a male would be great.

Thanks!
(sorry for the long post!)

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0.1.0 Normal Leopard Gecko: Mala Ala
2.0.0 White's Tree Frogs: Wabo and Mermit
0.1.0 Bearded Dragon: Igor
4.0.0 Bettas: Ghost, Misty, Assasin, and Cobalt

Sounds like normal mating behaviour to me. Personally i would not keep a male with one female as we he will constantly bully her for sex which can result in your female losing her tail if she drops it, or getting bitten which again can end up quite bad! But the behaviour you have described sounds exactly like mating behaviour. Hope this helps some. Check out my site for a guide to breeding

Gilbery's Gecko's

So how come almost every leopard gecko caresheet says you can house 1 male with females? Are they all wrong? I know from reading posts that other people in the forums have females housed with a male. Do they have to grow up together to be able to do this?

Please, any experience people have with females living with a male would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

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0.1.0 Normal Leopard Gecko: Mala Ala
2.0.0 White's Tree Frogs: Wabo and Mermit
0.1.0 Bearded Dragon: Igor
4.0.0 Bettas: Ghost, Misty, Assasin, and Cobalt

You CAN house females with a male but not one lone female with one male. For example you can house 2-6 female with a male. Hope this helps some.

Gilbery's Gecko's

It's normally advised that you don't have just ONE female with the male. The key thing to realize in your response above is that people say you keep femaleS with one male.

It's been proven to be rather stressful on the female because the male is constantly after her for mating. It's like if you're a woman, and you've got this husband who's a nympho. He's constantly trying to get you in bed, but you... well, you have a life, and you need to get stuff done. After a while, you get stressed out because you're constantly having to fend off his advances when you're not in the mood. Same thing with the leos.

My concern, upon reading your original post, is about how long you've had the male? It sounded like you've had him only a short amount of time. It's best to keep new leos quarantined for 3 months. That way, if that new leo has anything wrong with him - bugs, genetic defects/illnesses, or any other kind of illness, there's a pretty good chance of you detecting these in 3 months' time. Even if it's from one of the best & most reputable breeders in the world, 3 months in quarantined is recommended. That's the advice I was always given when I was breeding leos, and that's the advice I always followed. It actually saved the future roommies of some of my new leos a couple of times.

If you've already quarantined him, and you know for sure that he's not sick, I apologize for butting in with the above advice. It's just that I won't be on the boards most of the day, so I prefer to cover all the basics while I am here.

~~Dusty Windom
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So Many Alleles, So Little Time...!
@
~~The Gecko Barn~~