Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had a baby crested hatch 2 days ago and when I took him/her out of the container I noticed that he/she was shedding and vermiculite was stuck to the shed that she was eating (he/she was still a bit wet from hatching) so I tried to clean out its mouth as good as I could (its kinda hard they don't like being messed with and they are fragile) and so since then he/she looked whitish around the head and was gaping his/her mouth sometimes so I tried again at cleaning his/hers mouth and got a couple tiny peices out. So when I went up to my reptile room just a hour ago I found him/her lying there and just knew he/she was dead so I did my least favorite thing to do on an animal (especially a pet) cut him/her open and sure enough in the stomach i found a fairly big peice of shed with about 1 gram of vermiculite along with it. Which is a lot considering the size of the baby gecko. I can't believe he/she died so young and I can only think the vermiculite killed him/her because her clutchmate is fine and all the other babys from the same parents are healthy, stunning geckos.

I just buried her in my flower garden

Hope she likes GeckoHeaven

Derek

so the tally is is II for proven vermiculite deaths.... on the rhac forum anyways. next time just try to check your incubator more often, or possibly switch to something that atleast doesn't absorb water like vermiculite does. however even if your gecko had ingested something else in that kind of quantity ( like eco earth) i'm sure it would have still had a tough time surviving.
good luck with the others.

I check the box 2 times a day when I am expecting hatchlings. I guess after 12 good babies you have to get a bad one

Derek