Help ID hatchlings!

Hey there everyone! Hoping i can get some help from the community, Awhile back i opened a post asking for reassurance that what i bought on Craigslist truly was as sold, a Mack snow raptor female/ and a raptor male. The link can be found here with pics of both mom and dad.http://geckoforums.net/f125-morphs-genetics/102145.htm Well now the time has come where they bred and we hatched out 2 babies.(we moved while she was gravid and i think the change in climate/moving stress stoped her season, as she only laid 2 eggs)
I know its not a true "test breeding" by trying to prove genes by the first 2 babies hatched but i hoped we could do a bit of thinking.

So if mom and dad are truly mack raptor and a raptor, reptile calculator gives you a genetic outcome of half Mack snow raptors, half raptors. now i know that does not account for unknown hets.
Well here is pics of the two babies produced. IMO they are neither raptors or Mack raptors. The one is clearly a Mack snow and it does have solid black eyes. The other has no eye pigment that i can see, it does have a lighter yellow than im used to in babies so that always stuck out at me. But other than than it appears to me to be pretty much a normal with a broken back pattern. So what i take from this is that either mom and dad are not as sold or there are unknown hets. Hoped we could maybe put some heads together and using deduction maybe find out what the het are or if parents are mislabeled. Since there IS clearly Snow gene/eye pigment going on we should have a base to work with.

So the few specific questions i have to the community are this.
I'd like to hear opinions on what you think the hatching's could be only on the pics alone. not knowing the parents.
Now knowing the parents are a Raptor male and a Mack Snow Raptor female what do you think?
If the "test breeding" doesn't add up for you either, why? and what do you think could of caused it? unknown hets or parents being mislabeled?

The one calculation i did that made closest sense is if mom was a mack elcipse insted of raptor it gives you an outcome of half mack eclipse half eclipse. Id agree with that but the "normal" doesn't have eye pigment that i see(tho they were very dark for first few weeks.)
Thanks in advance for any help!



The snow is clearly about to shed il take some more pics tomorrow after she shed

If you have two visual trempers, all babies would be tremper. That means that you have two different strains of albino.

Also, two visual eclipse would also give you 100% eclipse babies.

I agree with Kristi. You do not have a mack snow. RAPTOr and a RAPTOr based on the offspring.

For your questions:
On pics alone, you have a mack snow and a normal.
The test breeding doesn't add up because you would have hatched RAPTORs.
Based on the pictures of the parents, I think you likely have a RAPTOr or some other albino eclipse) and an albino super snow that is a different strain.
As for what caused it, it's clearly because the parents were mislabeled. They very well could have unknown hets, though.

So your hatchlings could be (although there is really no way to know at this point) normal het eclipse, tremper (or possibly a different strain), and another strain of albino and then mack het eclipse, tremper (or possibly a different strain), and another strain of albino.

Given that these albino crosses are one of the reasons for this muddy genepool we've ended up with, please do not pair these geckos again. This is exactly the reason why we recommend to people not to breed geckos of unknown genetics. If you want to breed, it is much more responsible to get your stock from reputable breeders.

Never considered the two different strains of albino being a possibility that kinda changes a lot, i'l have to look into that a bit. The snow baby does indeed have solid eyes ,the normal does not. il take eye pics when i do the post shed pics . So how does that work? Parents both have solid eyes, no doubt about it. So if the above comment is true that 2 eclipse animals will produce 100% eclipse, would they not both be? Could that get muddy'd out with the albino screw up too?
I agree 100% on not mixing albinos, It honestly never crossed my mind. Ive been sitting here for weeks running all the possible hets/ different possibility of parents being mislabeled but never thought they could be 2 different albinos.......doh
So thanks a lot for the reply's keep them coming please! i've got a bit more research to do.

owsley said:

Never considered the two different strains of albino being a possibility that kinda changes a lot, i'l have to look into that a bit. The snow baby does indeed have solid eyes ,the normal does not. il take eye pics when i do the post shed pics . So how does that work? Parents both have solid eyes, no doubt about it. So if the above comment is true that 2 eclipse animals will produce 100% eclipse, would they not both be? Could that get muddy'd out with the albino screw up too?
I agree 100% on not mixing albinos, It honestly never crossed my mind. Ive been sitting here for weeks running all the possible hets/ different possibility of parents being mislabeled but never thought they could be 2 different albinos.......doh
So thanks a lot for the reply's keep them coming please! i've got a bit more research to do.

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It's possible that one of your geckos was a super snow and not a snow raptor. That will give it solid eyes without the eclipse gene. Snows can sometimes do weird things to eyes, but being albino won't erase the eclipse part. You can see eclipse by markings and not just eyes. White nose, white almost pied markings, and just the overall look of the animal.

As for the albino, the only explanation is what I mentioned above. They cannot both be tremper or you would have had all abino babies. Sorry this happened to you. It's best to retire those animals as breeders. Rehome the babies as pets. And then start over with animals with known genetics.

The snow does not look eclipse to me based on body markings. I'm curious to see the eye pictures.

I also agree with Kristi that these two should be retired, the babies adopted out as pets, and the project started over with reliable stock. Craigslist is definitely not a good place to get breeders.

A few quick eye pics first one is the snow and other is the normal for comparison



I''ll find the actual camera and take some better ones after snow sheds

Hard to tell in the pics. The first may be eclipse or it might just be dark snow eyes that will fade. If it's eclipse, then your super snow albino was het for eclipse. Still two different strains of albino though.

Hopefully these are better took with a actual camera and not a phone lol. Thanks for the reply's i think we narrowed it down as much as we can till they grow a bit more. I do agree that they should be kept as pets tho and will stop future breeding.


normal for comparison

Hmm, the eyes certainly look black on that snow, but the rest of the body doesn't look very eclipse to me. I had a baby hatch that had black eyes, but they faded as it got older and now look normal. I'm still not sure if she's an eclipse or not because I honestly can't tell. Her body markings did not look very eclipse when she was born either, which leads me to believe she is not eclipse and just had dark eyes when she was young.

Here are some pics of when she was young:
This is her the day she hatched. She had such bold markings, I really couldn't tell if she was eclipse. They are not the markings I would expect with an eclipse at all.


This picture doesn't show her eyes that well (even though they were actually that dark), but it does show a classic eclipse trait: the white nose.


This is her at about 3 months. Still not really eclipse markings, although the white nose is still there.


And her eyes. They were solid when she hatched, and then faded to almost nothing. They look pretty normal now (she is 5 months old)


Now compare these to her sister, who was a definite eclipse:

When she hatched. Definitely a white nose and solid eyes. Also notice the tail. Her bands are thinner and more spaced out. This is the sort of piebald affect of eclipse.


Eyes a little older, still a white nose and solid eyes


Eyes just before she died at almost 5 months. Not solid anymore, but still obviously eclipse.


Even at this age, she maintained the spacing in her tail and is definitely more washed out in color, which is another trait of eclipse


So what I'm trying to get at is that eclipse isn't just an eye trait. It comes with a lot of other things too, and sometimes it can be tough to tell for sure one way or the other. My mystery hatchling had the white nose and solid eyes when born, but the eyes faded quickly and the markings just didn't fit the bill. Your snow has solid eyes, but absolutely no other eclipse markings. So it's a tough call. You'll have to see what happens as it gets older.

I agree that eclipse definitely isn't just the eyes. However, there have been quite a few eclipse (especially macks) lately online that don't have many markers present. People knew they were eclipse because of the eclipse x eclipse pairings. I think that adding in other genes has changed the look a bit for many eclipse out there. Especially the ones that are not patternless stripe. It makes it much harder to ID them. For me, I always see a white nose with my babies even when they have no other markings. I've never hatched one without it. The white nose can fill in as they age (I see this mostly with my mack eclipse) and eyes can fade. For me, it's always easiest to ID an eclipse at hatching. As for regular macks, many hatch with dark eyes that fade down quickly. These are not eclipse. It's just something the mack does.

Since these are pets only and the parents will be retired, I wouldn't worry too much with the ID's. It will be interesting to see how they develop though.

I see. I'm not hugely experienced with eclipses, so I always look for the markers. I don't want to hijack this thread or anything, but Kristi, would you say the first hatchling I posted is an eclipse after all because of the white nose? She came from a rainwater eclipse x tang het eclipse pairing.

Neon Aurora said:

I see. I'm not hugely experienced with eclipses, so I always look for the markers. I don't want to hijack this thread or anything, but Kristi, would you say the first hatchling I posted is an eclipse after all because of the white nose? She came from a rainwater eclipse x tang het eclipse pairing.

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I think that is one of the ones that would have to be test bred to see. Sometimes they look like they might be and aren't and sometimes it's the opposite. That is a tricky one. Plus I can only see some of the pictures for some reason right now, so I'm probably not as accurate as I would like to be right now.

Okay, no worries. I don't really like the idea of test breeding anyways. Only the best of the best, health and color-wise will be bred here. =) This one I'm planning on giving to a friend who has wanted a leo for a while, so will not even be bred.

I can see more pics now for some reason. I do see some of the white leg markings, too, so it might be. Test breeding will let you know for sure though. Good luck!

Here's a few updated pics of the snow. It does indeed still have solid black eyes. Il keep updating pics every few months

Wow! How interesting. This is the mack snow from the beginning of the thread? It very much looks albino to me now. Are those colors accurate, or is the camera making them look lighter?

I'd love to see pictures of the other one for comparison.

Yup that's the exact same gecko. It's hatch mate was a stuggler. Not sure why but it refused to eat for the longest time. Tail got sooooo thin. Had to assist feed him back to health. It's doing good now but is a fraction of the size of snow. Because of that he hasn't gone threw as much of changes as snow has so far. Here's pics of it tho.i took pics in the same light as snow. Then took them both outside for natural light pics.

Hmm, that one also looks pretty light colored. I'm very curious to hear everyone else's opinions on whether or not they are both albino. If they are, than maybe you didn't have two different strains after all.