Reptile & Amphibian Forums

up until now, my girlfriend had never had any problems with this, but we just did... she's bred leopard geckos for three years or so, proucing tons of babies. last week i gave me little brother a female to introduce to his male so he could witness the whole miracle of life thing himself. well, they got to mating just fine, but the male had a problem. due to the calcisand he was on, one of his hemipenes dried out and he was unable to retract it. to make a long story short we took him to the vet and many dollars later, we had a gecko who was half the man he used to be. apparently, the hemipene was so irritated by the sand that it got swollen and traumatized and refused to go back in, so it had to be removed. he's still fertile (just half as fertile i guess) but i'm sure it was a terrib;e experience for him. i just wanted to know if anyone else has had this happen to them. i also hope that this doesn't happen to anybody else. thanks for reading!

another good reason to stay away from sand.
Hope your Leo is doing better.

he's doing fine, he's just pretty pissy lately. i have to give him oral antibiotics for the next couple days, then he should have a clear bill of health. i already got rid of the sand. poor guy, he thinks that every time someone picks him up they're either gonna chop off a hemipene or squirt meds down his throat. on a side note, the female is just about ready to pop. they mated about 2 and a half weeks ago, and the eggs have been very visible for a while now. i think she's enjoying the solitude. i can't put him back in with her until he's fully healed. we go back to the vet next week to see where we stand. he'll probably need a couple more weeks in iso before he's ready to go hog wild again. so yeah... down with sand. no sand. i hate the way newspaper looks, but over the years i've switched all my critters over to it one by one. first my male ball python, then my bearded dragon, then my little nile monitor, then my california kingsnake, and now my leopard geckos. come to think of it, the only things that aren't on newspaper are my baby female ball (she's on wood chips) and my girlfriend's scorpion and tarantula. stupid sand.