Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My largest female crested who lost her tail a month ago has been acting weird. she is always hiding under her driftwood branch and isnt really active when i put crickets in. I just replanted and clean her cage and she acts a little more active but now how she used to be. ive been handing feeding her wich she will take from me and she isnt losing any wieght. Has any1 ever came across this behavior b4? could she b sick or just weird? well thanks for your information ahead of time.

Paul

Your female ..does she have cage mates that may be stressing her out ? The same cause of her tail loss could be the reason shes ''laying low'' . Its not typical for females to not get along but it does happen especially if theresa size difference.

she dose have a cages mate but she is smaller that her and the thing is she lost her tail by sleeping up side down and her tail kept beding over her head and than goin to the left then 1 day i found it layin in the cage

The cause of her tail loss sounds like droopy tail, which is caused by lack of calcium in the diet. I would put her in her own cage alone and make sure her crickets are dusted regularly or feed the crested gecko diet (or both) to get her back to health.

The very fact she is in a cage with a larger female is most likely why she is hiding all the time. The larger female is most likely the dominant one and is eating all the food, or most of it while your smaller female is forced to hide just to keep alive.
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PHLdyPayne

Well she is the bigger one and i will put her in her own cage but another problem is that she dosent have much of a sticky gip anymore. she cant hold on to my hand and im not sure if she can climb the glass, is this also a lack of calcium?

Lack of the sticky grip usually means they are shedding. It should go away in a couple days once the shed completes.
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PHLdyPayne

im not totally sure if you can say calcium deficiency is the cause of floppy tail. they try to cover that in the rhacodactylus book, but i think they say the exact cause is still unclear. i have a female that has floppy tail, and she has always had plenty of dusted crickets at her disposal. it's just one of those things that seems to affect some cresteds, while most dont experience it. anyhow, ive had cresteds that start spending more time around the bottom when stressed out, particularly last summer when i lived in a house for a month and a half with some girls who had a few cats. i did my best to keep the cats from pestering my gecko, but every night they would jump on top of the cage and stare at the poor lil guy, no matter how much i sprayed them to keep them away. he had always slept up in the branches during the day prior to that, but he began burying himself when i moved there. it's almost been a year now since all of that and he's doing just fine. give her some time and im sure she'll be back to her normal self.

good luck