Need Gecko Help ASAP

My 2 year old gecko, Ameila has taken a horrible turn in health, and I'm at a loss as to what I should do.

She's housed in a 20 long, fed mainly superworms, food coated nightly in Repashy Leopard Gecko Plus, moist hide wetted nightly, living on paper towels, which are cleaned weekly or as needed (some times she's really poopy and they have to be changed more often). She's got a heating pad on one side (moist hide over top of it, and dry hide half on and half off), a rock shelf with a heat lamp over top of it (her favorite spot), and a small cave under the shelf she sometimes uses if she doesn't want to sleep in the heated one.

Over the last few months, she taken to being extremely picky about food. She will not her usual superworms. A few weeks ago, I got her eating sparingly on crickets, and a few weeks before that, she ate some silk or butter works (the little white chubby ones). That's seriously all she's eaten in over a month. Like 6 crickets, and a couple worm, and most of what she's eaten in several months.

She was still active until very recently (a few days ago), and as of the last few nights she basically just lays, steam-rollered, on the floor of the tank, or curled up in places she's never slept before. Last night, she was stumbling around, jerking her head back and forth, walking in very tight circles, bumping in to things, trying to bite at (like it bothered her) the base of her tail. This is the first time I've ever seen this behavior from her, as I watch her every night for 10 or 15 minutes (she loves the attention, but isn't one for being handled).

Tonight I unplugged her heat lamp, since that's honestly the only thing that's changed reletively recently. I've been using this type of heat lamp (the purple ZooMed one) for several months, before this development. It's been suggested on line that improper lighting (mainly in regards to UV lighting) can damage their eyes, and cause them to stumble around, and act disoriented and become uninterested in eating, because they can't see properly. Whether or not this applies to this new type of heat lamp, I don't know, but it's the only thing I can think to do right now, with out further help.

Tomorrow I'm going to go buy some of the worms that she was willing to eat a few weeks ago, and see if I can't get her to eat them. I tried to get her to eat some superworms last night (they usually just go in a dish and she eats them when ever she wants), and she just wouldn't have anything to with them, even when they were touched to her nose. I gave her a dish of her Repashy mixed with my Uro's calcium suppliment, and she is wiling to drink water from her moist hide (her water is bottled spring or drinking water dosed with ZooMed conditioner that also adds vitamins).

I have a second, very young gecko, and I am taking precautions when going between them, and do not share their feeding utensils. If whatever is wrong with Amelia is due to something I've inadvertently done, I also need to not make the same mistake again. I hate seeing her like this, when she is normally so in-your-face. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

I am so sorry that this is happening to Amelia. We had a leopard gecko who exhibited similar symptoms when he went blind. First we noticed Manny could no longer eat crickets and struggled to get worms from his food dish to his mouth. When he started to lose his balance we took him to a reptile vet who told us he had lost sight in 1 eye. He indicated to us that blindness is not uncommon for geckos. Eventually Manny lost sight in his other eye, at which point he showed a lot of the symptoms that you saw in your gecko last night. The vet confirmed that he had become blind in both eyes. We were able to keep him alive for a little while by hand feeding him but eventually it became clear that we were causing him more distress than good.

I really hope that this is going not what is happening to your gecko but I thought I would share since there were some similarities. Good luck with Amelia - I know how heartbreaking it is when a pet is sick.

 

Do you think maybe it was the light? Or maybe, because she is an albino morph (they called her a Dreamscickle, which is somewhere in between a Mack snow patternless and a blazing blizzard. She is pink-ish white, with slightly darker pink spots, and black-red eyes)?

 

Ok, so here's an update.

As I said above, I've unplugged the purple heat lamp. I went over to see if I could make the little brat eat or maybe just even lick some of the vitamins from the dish, and put some more water in her hide. I dropped in a worm, and being the space cadet she always is, she was more concerned about what I was doing rather than what I had just dropped in front of her. I started to walk away when she showed no interest in it, when I heard a commotion, and I turned around to her lunging at the worm, and then swallowing it down. I took the top of the tank off again, offered her another, and she gobbled it right up! She's eaten several worms and is now sitting in her (still-needing-to-be-refilled) moist hide, staring out at me with her happy face on and eyes bright.

I don't know if this is a coincidence, or if it really was the light all along! Either way, I'm very happy with the outcome. I'll still buy her some of her fattening butter/silk worms (whatever they are...!), that way I can get some weight back on her.

It's funny about this light. It's supposed to not even be noticed by the reptile... I wonder if I should right ZooMed...? Or maybe it was just too much heat. Who knows... We'll see how she continues to do.

 

you could email a exotic pet vet some will give you some free info sometimes they cut themselfs on the lips and the blood can seal with high heat and they are reluctant to open mouth to eat if you were feeding calcium covered more than 2-3 times a week you may have been slowly poisioning your leo to much is no good but if to little then your leo gets mbd you can check for that by lifting the tail when ya drop it the tail should slightly hover if it just flops to the ground without the lizard giving effort you need to add calcium to the diet I would deffienetly reccomend emailing a exotic vet that is what I did when my leo was sick and get all the info free and easy

 

Her vitamins are just that, vitamins. Its not pure calcium, and it's designed for daily use. She has no visible injuries at all, and like I said in my post above, ate virgorously tonight.

And this is the bulb. ExoTerra, not ZooMed.

 

do the tail check just incase for mbd may need to add a pure calcium supplement if its not getting enough and glad to read she is eating deffinetly hope it was just the bulb I love my 3 leos and my large female does this sometimes out of the blue during breeding but guessing this isint the case since you said your other leo was very young I use a t5 light with mine that doesent produce a lot of heat and is slI'm to fit inbetween my shelves so not sure on the effects of a light so much

 

I am so happy to hear that she is improving! If she continues to get better, it would definitely suggest that her new heat lamp was the problem and may have been temporarily blinding her. That would be pretty messed up considering it's advertized as being for reptiles but I have heard of black lights being sold for fish tanks even though they cause a lot of harm in fish. It might not be a bad idea to reach out to a vet as someone else suggested to get their input.

 

Popping in for an update! I bought her some wax worms, and she's eating them like they are going out of style. Twice now, she's eaten out of her dish with out me enticing her to eat, which makes me happy. I like seeing her eat one her own. Her twitchy and disoriented behaviors are decreasing the more she starts eating, I'm half tempted, now that she's eating again, to see what happens when I plug her lamp back in, but at the same time, I don't want her to slip even further back than she was a couple weeks ago. Also, she won't eat meal worms or superworms or earth worms. Just wax worms.... In fact, bewteen the two of them, I'm out now! I'm gunna have to get more tomorrow and I may grab some crickets, too.

 

Thanks for the update! So glad things are looking better for her . Maybe hold off on the lamp until her symptoms are totally cleared up?

 

Another update!

She's eating well, and even got grumpy with me for not coming over to feed her in time last night LOL She's more active, and is eating like food is going out of style. Last night, she lunged so hard at a work that she nearly rolled her self over XD

I'm working on getting her off wax worms, and eating more on super worms and meal worms, and I want to try a few crickets (with their hind legs removed so they aren't too fast and don't chirp lol).

So, I think I've gotten to the bottom of it. I was looking and looking, and it seems, rather than something that was my fault (however unintentional), I think it's actually a balancing disorder. Like this:

She does the exact same thing! Round and round in circles, keeps her head cocked, trips over herself, and so on. She can support her own weight, hold herself up high, climb (sort of. Takes a few tries). She's back to not eating, and is worse now, I think. I guess its a gentic, enigma, thing, and there's no good ending :/

 

I am so sorry. It really seemed like she was making progress so that must be a huge disappointment.

 

Sorry to hear that Akari. Gosh, that's the worst thing about having pets, when they are ill and we can't help them.

 

Tell me about it... :/

She basically just lays around all the time. I have to wake her up to wet her moist hide (she sleeps in there now for some reason), and even then, she tries to go right back when I'm done. I try to keep her out and get her interested in some food, but she stares at all drunk looking, and head bobbing like "what even is that??"

I was thinking last night, my little gecko is getting bigger, and Amelia has such limited mobility, could I just switch them (10 gallon and 20 long), or would that be too stressful for Amelia?

 

I honestly don't know the right answer on this one but from my own experience with my gecko and my (minimal) understanding of brain function, this is what I think.

My sense is that if you move her and she is already disoriented, you are going to see her banging into things when she does try to move around. When she does navigate (i.e. back to the moist hide) do you get the sense that she working off of a stored memory of the placement of objects in her tank or is she aware enough of her surroundings to observe where objects are placed? You can test this out by moving something to create a small obstacle and see if she responds to it.

If she is able to maneuver around it easily then I would say the move to a new tank would be a little stressful for her but not too bad. If, on the other hand, she walks into the obstacle, I think a move will be difficult for her. It would suggest that she's functioning off of some sort of stored ability to navigate her surroundings. You could still move her but I would imagine the stress would be much greater for her at that point.

 

She walks in a way that has very exaggerated font leg and nose movements. Like, she'll take longer steps, and sort of sweep her head side to side. I keep a dish of worms in there, and I'd doesn't usually go in the exact same place, but she does have to crawl over it to to and from her wet and dry hides. I even recently changed her dish to a cut up worm cup glued to its lid, in hopes that the more concentrated area of wriggling might get her to eat when I'm there to more or less shove it down her throat. But she does easily navigate over anything low to ground with her method.

She can see large movements from what I can tell, and large shapes, but anything small isn't really interesting her. I don't know of she can't see it, or if it doesn't register to her. Her eyes look clear, but recently she's been keeping them squinted or closed. I don't know if it's an engery related thing, or if maybe they do bother her, or what.

 

Based on what you're saying, moving her is probably fine. And maybe being in a slightly more confined space might actually seem safer and therefore less stressful. Poor baby, I don't even know her but I feel really bad for her.

 

I think I will move her. The 10 gallon is in my moms room, and it's pretty busy room, so I'll put it in my room, put the little one in the 20 long and Amelia in the 10. I guess I could give her back her heat lamp?

 

I imagine so. Just monitor her closely.