Juvenile leo stopped eating & I've tried EVERYTHING. Help!

mariecicc

New Member
Messages
1
Hi, we have a 7 month old leopard gecko who *was* a fantastic eater of crickets and mealworms. She'd eat from our hands, she'd eat from the tongs, she'd hunt; we dusted her crickets with calcium and vitamins once each a week. She never had trouble eating. Now all of a sudden a week ago, she stopped. Nothing had changed in her environment; she just stopped. I would drop crickets in there at night and at least she'd eat those occasionally but I still feel like she's not getting enough. My understanding is because she's 5" long, she should get 10 eye-width sized insects every other day. She's definitely not been eating that. We thought maybe she was just suddenly no longer interested in being hand-fed and only wanted to hunt at night when we're not watching, and still had hope when we saw that the crickets we'd dropped in there at night were gone in the morning, but as of yesterday, she's no longer touching those either. She's by herself in a 20 gallon tank with a warm humid side (90 degrees, and misted 2x daily with distilled water) and a cooler dry side (75 degrees). She has UV light & a basking bulb during the day, a ceramic lightless heating bulb at night, and a 24/7 heating pad, all on thermostats. I've tried changing up her diet by adding Dubia roaches and she shows no interest. The big ones are slow enough to catch, but too big to feed her, so we got her little ones, and although she should be able to eat them, they're so fast that she doesn't catch them. Now, when I go in there to feed her at night, she surfs the glass constantly, trying to get out. She's interested in us holding her, but not in eating. All she seems to want to do is escape now, and when she's finally done with that, she goes into her rock lair (with moistened sphagnum moss in it) and will stay there most of the day and night. She doesn't have parasites. Her tail is still thick and healthy. I've shown the Scales n Tails dudes pictures of her tank setup and they say everything is set up perfectly. So my questions are: 1) What do I do to get her to eat again?, 2) At what point should I start seriously worrying? (even though I'm already there), and 3) What do you think caused this sudden drastic change in behavior? Thanks for any help.
 

acpart

Geck-cessories
Staff member
Messages
15,119
Location
Somerville, MA
She's a bit young for it, but she may be ovulating and that messes with the appetite. Some of my leopard geckos can go off food for a fairly long time. Keep offering and hang in there. As long as the tail isn't getting a lot thinner, she's probably fine.

Aliza
 

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