Older tokay not eating

Hi guys/gals, my family and I are new to the world of geckos and we inherited a 15-year-old Tokay Gecko from my mother in law who could no longer care for the animal. I am a python guy generally, but this little gecko is just super awesome and has tons of personality. The issue is he has just completely stopped eating and is dropping weight fairly rapidly. I did take him to the local reptile vet and we started him on some carnivore food paste (Emeraid Carnivore). I have been monitoring his weight and he is currently down to 50g's so we are feeding him about .25 ml of the paste twice a day by syringing the food in his mouth, which the vet showed us how to do this safely. Other than then weight issue the little guy seems to be in great health. We have tried feeding him crickets and waxworms, but he just not interested in anything. My vet breeds geckos and said that he would bring me a few dubia roaches to offer as a food item as well. I have him in my quarantine enclosure for now and know I am meeting his needs of heat and humidity because my environments are strictly controlled. My question is, is this typical for these guys to abruptly stop eating? is he just getting old? Or could it just be a stress thing? we haven't had him very long but we just love this little guy a ton, so any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated. we recently dropped off a stool with the vet and we are waiting on the test results to come back.

Welcome to GF! I'm not personally familiar with tokays, but I do have a lot of other gecko species. It's not unusual for geckos to refuse to eat, sometimes for weeks, as they get used to a new environment. I have some leopard geckos that are "permanent residents" and don't eat for weeks in the winter. However, for the most part, these geckos are not losing weight. In my opinion that's the only concerning thing. Hopefully the stool sample will reveal something. I don't know if the gecko will allow you to hand feed it (hold it in one hand and gently push a feeder at its mouth). Keep us posted.

Aliza

Thanks for the reply. I moved him into the quarantine enclosure shortly after I noticed he was no longer taking food. Basically, I wanted him away from my other herps. We just got the stool results back and everything seems to be normal. We are going to continue feeding him the carnivore liquid diet and offer him some different prey items as well. I have tried to feed him using a pair of tongs but that hasn't worked so far. I agree the weight thing is very concerning, I'm used to some of my pythons going off food for months at a time, but they never drop weight like this guy has. I'm weighing him every other day and going to slowly start increasing the amount of food we give him to at a rate of .10ml every week per the vets advice. I'll keep posting the little guys progress.