Reptile & Amphibian Forums

ok i got my new lineatus which is a bit skinny, the other thing is its eyes are really sunken aswell, i see it drinknig regularly but i havent seen it eat yet, it seems kind of slow aswell, and not at all active like my mossies. can someone tell me exactly what i can do to get it to full health or what the problem could be? thanks - Joel

what you need to do is contact the seller and state your concern to them, hopefully they have a life/health guarantee and it hasnt expired yet. then what you need to do is get some fluids into your geckos, either use a dropper to give it flavorless pedialyte or shower it with water.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

hi, i have sent an email to the person i bought her off and tried to phone him but no luck yet. i have drenched the tank and basically been trying to get a lot of fluid into her the past few days. is there anyhing else i should do? should i rasie or lower temps? thanks for the help - Joel

it's better not to shower in the tank. take them out and do it in something else like a tub, or a potted plant or something. hope you left a message with the seller. also, cant really tell if you should raise or lower temps when you havent stated what temps youre keeping it at now.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

i would agree with mike on the showering. if you have a relatively clean bathroom with no hiding spots then an open fake or potted plant will work just fine. i choose to use a 55qt rubbermaid container with a majority of the top cut out and screened and a few holes drilled in the bottom. then i just pile a bunch of fake plants in there and let it go for a good 30-45 minutes with the shower head on a tepid mist. then just leave them in there for another 15-30 minutes so they can drink as much as they'd like.
you really see some dramatic changes over a couple of days of doing this. and you know it's dehydrated when it drinks for a good 45-60 minutes almost non stop.
other thing i would like to mention is be careful around dehydrated lineds, they like to drop their tails pretty easy when they're dehydrated, atleast a lot easier than the other uroplatus i've worked with.
i would also try to keep them around 78-82 as the higher end of their temperature range. good luck with it and let us know how it works out for you.

yeh. the seller sent me an email with the same basic advice, will they not eat if theyre dehydrated either? it looks better today but i will definately use the shower technique. thanks for all the help - Joel

i had a dehydrated mossy not too long ago that i basically had to assist feed for a month, and it eventually got to the point where he would refuse that. you can run into a whole lot of problems once your gecko starts crashing.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

It takes about a month for dehydrated U.lineatus to turn around. I keep pairs around 80 during the winter and 85-90 during the summer. What I've found to work really well, but is super time consuming is using a 2 gallon pump mister and sitting in the bathroom spraying them in the shower for a while. It works but is time consuming. I do it with new arrivals. Also, pedialyte is a god send but I tend not to use that stuff unless the animal can't even pick itself up. Which I did on an overheated female lineatus this summer when my old brilliant biophysicist roomate (not kidding either) kept turning off the air conditioner because it wasted too much electricity. Sad thing was he didn't have to pay the electricity bill. Needless to say the drastic changes in temperature did it to her and she nearly died. It took 2 months to get her up to speed again and no breeding her this year.

Ciao
jason

the gecko went down hill very quickly last night and died around dinner time today. i was just wondering if anyone had ever experienced anything like this, she was quite skinny and was refusing to eat, she couldnt climb and repeatedly fell off her branches, spent much of her time on the floor. i know this isnt normal behaviour but want to know what i could have been doing wrong??? thanks for any advice - Joel