Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well I have just encountered a very interesting situation. I have 4 crested geckos, which I was SURE was 3 females and 1 male. (3 geckos in my huge tank, and the new for-sure male in quarantine.) Well...the other day I looked, and it seemed that one of my "females" was starting to look not-so-ladylike. I've changed their diet recently, and have been feeding them more consistently, so I figured at first that it was possibly some added weight. Today I was handling my geckos again, and realized that "her" extra weight was actually his dropped man-parts. Ugh. So now I have 2 males and 2 females, which is something that I wanted to avoid, since my goal was a breeding set of 3 females and 1 male. Why this males showed his maleness so late, I do not know.

I have my crested geckos in a 55 gallon very very tall tank. Do you guys think that 2 males would have enough room in there to establish seperate territory? I honestly do not think so. Today was the day quarantine was up for my lovely red tiger male, so what I ended up doing was putting the new gecko into the 55 gallon tank, and put the smaller male into his own cage for now. First off, he is fairly small for me having him for quite a while...and the other male is just bigger than he is.

I guess I'll have to keep this little guy as a solitary pet. I don't want to sell him...because he is really beauitful...but I guess this means I'll have to get a new female for my 55 gallon. Right now, I have a female red "super" dalmatian (I just use the term super because she is covered in bold black dots, so I'm not positive if that term is correct or not), a female light colored harlequin, a male light colored fire/dalmatian, and a red tiger. My *dream* crested gecko is a high contrast blonde harlequin. Prehaps I'll keep an eye out at the next reptile show.

One quick question: In your opinion, is adding crickets nessecary when you are using Clarks Gecko Diet?

Sorry if this was kind of rambled or hard to understand. I'm not feeling too great.
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0.1 Irian Jaya carpet python
1.0 Hogg Island Boa
0.1 Ball python
1.3 Crested Geckos (harlequin/fire, dalmatian, fire)
4.6.0 Leopard Geckos (nrml, abno, htct, blz, lcs)
0.1 Western Hognose snake
1.0 Albino Lavender California Kingsnake
1.3 Bearded Dragons
0.2 Water turtles
0.0.1 Rose Haired Tarantula-Sammy
1.0 Umbrella Cockatoo (belongs to my mom and I)

Hello,
Sorry to hear about your ratio dilemma. Even though they do not sound crowded, it is quite common for males to be "bullied" or intimidated enough to stunt sexual maturity and appear to be late bloomers. It even happens in mammals, there is even theories of bullies in school stunting maturity or growth in kids. I cannot answer your question about the 55 gallon being enough room for 2 males sorry.
good luck

Yes you should still give your Cresteds dusted crickets while giving them Clark's Diet. This diet is only meant to replace the "fruit" part of a Cresteds diet, not the insect part of the diet. I honestly feed mine more Clark's than I do insects, and they do just fine. But some kind of "bugs" in their diet is still a must!

Sorry to hear about your "new male." I had the same exact thing happen to me! It's a bummer. I think my male did it just to spite me because I had been calling him a "she" that whole time.

Yea, about a month and a half ago, I bought the new male, who I knew was a male and such. He is beautiful, and of course right when he is ready to come out of quarantine to be put in with my females, I discover that one of my females isn't a female. Just splendid.
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0.1 Irian Jaya carpet python
1.0 Hogg Island Boa
0.1 Ball python
1.3 Crested Geckos (harlequin/fire, dalmatian, fire)
4.6.0 Leopard Geckos (nrml, abno, htct, blz, lcs)
0.1 Western Hognose snake
1.0 Albino Lavender California Kingsnake
1.3 Bearded Dragons
0.2 Water turtles
0.0.1 Rose Haired Tarantula-Sammy
1.0 Umbrella Cockatoo (belongs to my mom and I)

don't take any offense to this but..
"In your opinion, is adding crickets nessecary when you are using Clarks Gecko Diet? "
maybe you should read the label.
here are a few captions from the label i found
"It takes advantage of the attraction to fruit to provide a completely balanced diet"
"this is the highest quality most nutritious diet available for your frugivorous geckos"
"Comprised of 56% fruit, 20% protein, and containing every vitamin, mineral, trace element and amino acid in the perfect proportions and consistency"
"Our Rhacodactylus geckos have been raised for multiple generations exclusively on this diet"
according to those four statements found on the label, no additional insects should be required seeing as the diet is "completely balanced, highest quality, most nutritious, has everything in the perfect proportions, and other have raised theirs EXCLUSIVELY" on this diet.
however if you read on you'll find this
"if we didn't believe in it, we wouldn't sell it" We recommend using this diet along with gut loaded vitamin - mineral dusted insects which will add fat and extra Calcium & Vit D3 needed for your geckos. Doing this every other feeding will give your geckos an absolute complete diet.
so basically it's a complete diet, but to make it an ABSOLUTE complete diet you need gut loaded calcium/mineral enriched insects.

Sorry, when I received my Clarks gecko diet in the mail last week, it didn't come with a label.
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0.1 Irian Jaya carpet python
1.0 Hogg Island Boa
0.1 Ball python
1.3 Crested Geckos (harlequin/fire, dalmatian, fire)
4.6.0 Leopard Geckos (nrml, abno, htct, blz, lcs)
0.1 Western Hognose snake
1.0 Albino Lavender California Kingsnake
1.3 Bearded Dragons
0.2 Water turtles
0.0.1 Rose Haired Tarantula-Sammy
1.0 Umbrella Cockatoo (belongs to my mom and I)

i figured as much.
the point of my post was more of a way to try to help people realize that if the people making the product can't even make a label that is non-contradicting and that makes sense, maybe people should think about what that says about the product.

I know how you feel. I had purchased 4 juvenile crested geckos and during the summer it looked like all were going to be females, so I bought an adult male to I would have a breeding group. Barely a month after I bought the new male, one of my younger juvenile developed his hemipenial bulges. But I am not disappointed, as he is a nice reddish dalmantion and my new male is a chocolate dalmation harliquinn. With two unrelated males, I can breed the three females with one or the other male to get a variety of offspring potentials.

Though, since you wanted a colony of three females and one male, you could have two colonies of one male and one female and when you have offspring, you can keep the nice ones and breed the females to the unrelated male. Or, you can buy some new females to put the younger male in with later. Lots of things you can do with two males, especially two nice looking males.

As for putting both males in the tank with the two other females...though the cage may be big enough, there really isn't enough females to ensure the males do not wind up fighting over them. A bigger cage with more females may work better, but then you wouldn't know which male was the father which means, breeding the offspring to any of your existing males could cause inbreeding problems (though probably not in the first generation anyway). KNowing exactly which male bred which female, does make it easier to track bloodlines especialy if you are aiming for a particular color/pattern.
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PHLdyPayne