Any Advice - Leo fading fast (sorry for long post)

[Missinova]

Ok.. so here is the story...

We bought my son a leo for his 14th birthday about a month ago from the local petstore... I thought we were doing everything right... Had the enclosure well before the gecko and all of the stuff (UTH, Slate substrate, hides, etc. etc..)

Set it all up, and then my son went with us to the store and picked out the gecko.. He picked the healthiest looking one out of the bunch of them that were there... (in retrospect they all were very tiny and not at all like the geckos I see in pictures on these forums, much smaller and tail not as thick) and brought him home, and let him settle in... We thought he was doing fine.. he was eating, about 4-5 crickets/day at first, then gradually less and less... Then just stopped eating. We have calcium in his cage and dust his gut loaded crickets with calcium + D3...

His tail was never really thick to begin with, but it did thin out to the point now it looks like a rats tail. If have gotten him to eat a little, a cricket here and a meal worm there, but not enough to get him to improve. Now he has started to get lethargic...

We took him to a herp vet yesterday... The vet says he is very small and under weight... they couldn't even get a weight on him.. so he figures he is just under a gram... But other than the size and his tail being so thin, he said the little guy doesn't look sick... he didn't think he had parasites or an infection; however we will treat him anyways... Just in case. He gave us some kitten food to try and get him to lick off of his face, as well he said to give him .1ml of water twice a day.

Now we started that last night, and this morning my son says the little guy is peeing all over the place... There is a small bit of poo, and urate, and a big puddle of liquid all around it... no blood or anything, just seems like he's getting rid of more than he is taking in and he said he looks even thinner this morning... and went over to the bathroom spot and fell asleep.

I told the vet where we got him, and he said he would go to the store to take a look, but he felt that particular store was one of the better ones in the area for looking after the animals there...

I fear this little guy is fading fast... We love him and want to help him if we can...

We have another gecko (an adult) that is not housed with him at all, in a different room actually, and she is doing great... So I don't think its because we aren't doing what we are supposed to be doing... We monitor the temps closely, keep the environment clean, gut load the feeders, change water, provide supplements, etc. But we are beginners at this, and I would hate for this little guy to suffer due to our ignorance.

Anyone else experience this and have a positive outcome or have any suggestions?

 

[Jordan]

how old is he?
do you have any lights in your housing? like UV or anything. cuz theyre bad.

at first i would have said parasites or illness, but if the vet has checked and its negative then i dunno.

i think you have done the right thing taking him to a vet.

is there anything that could have caused him a lot of stres? first of all the moving would have been stressful. was he left to settle in? cuz that can stress them?

i cant think of much else, erm hopefully someone with a bit more experience and knowledge of illnesses can come in. ive not had to deal with too many sick geckos.

but i wish you luck and last of all, try and keep a bowl of mealworms in his house at all times so he can eat if he wants and hopefully he will.

 

[T-ReXx]

Has the gecko been tested for Cryptosporidium? It's a specific test, seperate from a general parasite test. "Pencil tail" and the other symptoms sound suspiciously like Crypto to me, and geckos carrying the parasite can look surprisingly normal for a long time then suddenly go down hill.

Good luck with him.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

Pet shops usually house a number of geckos together on sand. There is a common situation where the smaller ones don't get enough food due to aggression from others, so when they see they have food all to themselves will eat like there's no tomorrow. You might go back in the store and casually look at what they have left and see if any others are displaying what looks like a thinner than should be tail. This would be a sign of parasites, and they are highly contagious. If your vet didn't run a fecal test there's no way to say the animal doesn't have parasites. For such a small one it wouldn't take much to drag them down in a hurry. If it is indeed less than a gram- that's smaller than most hatchlings Unfortunately babies are very fragile and much more difficult to care for than a juvenile. You don't mention a substrate, but it should be on paper towel until it's bigger. A small enclosure is best as it helps them feel more secure. like a critter keeper. We use gatorade caps as dishes for food and water for babies, they are shallow enough for tots to get their nourishments. Small mealworms can be put in the calcium dish and left for them to feed when they want, but change them daily so they will still be wiggly. The kitten food you mentioned, is it Hills A/D? That's good stuff and has an appealing taste so hopefully your baby will take to it and lick it up. If you have a babyspoon to put it on his nose you can add his fluid to it as well, did the vet recommend pedialyte? Good luck with your little one, I hope he pulls thru Please keep us posted.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

Has the gecko been tested for Cryptosporidium? It's a specific test, seperate from a general parasite test. "Pencil tail" and the other symptoms sound suspiciously like Crypto to me, and geckos carrying the parasite can look surprisingly normal for a long time then suddenly go down hill.

Good luck with him.

The scariest parasite of all for which there is no treatment yet. A healthy looking animal can be an unsuspecting carrier if it has ever been exposed to this dreaded disease. Keeping my fingers crossed this is not the case in your situation, just a very small gecko that is having alittle trouble settling in. By the way, it shouldn't be handled except to change it's paper, to keep the stress level at a minimum. And remove any hides, etc when feeding, so it can't scamper away.

 

[Missinova]

Thanks for the responses...

We really don't know how old he is... the pet store said when we got him that he was about 4 months old... so that would make him about 5 months old. The vet told us from his size that he could pass for a 2-3 month old.

We do have lamps, but not UV... just a red night lamp that is on all the time, and a normal daylight bulb that is on a timer for 12 hours.

The terrarium is lined with slate tiles with papertowel over it, and the temp on top of the slate usually reads about 90 - 92 degrees... on the cool side its down to about 75.

We have to handle him in order to get him to take the antibiotics and de-worming suspensions... I really don't think this little guy is going to make it, but I'm not giving up trying to help him.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

Leopard geckos do not require lighting and it has been known to cause stress. If he is the size of a 2-3mo old, he is way over 1gram. He might not be over 1oz tho. Herp vets measure small animals in grams and dose meds by that weight. If there was no real diagnosis, may I ask what the meds were prescribed for? Are you measuring heat with a probe thermometer over the heat pad?

 

[Dog Shrink]

esp. if this fella is red eyed, any light could cause stress. Like Laney said, a heat mat and maybe a ceramic heat emitter if you need to make up the difference in temps is all he should need to keep your habitat at the proper temps. What wattage is the "daylight" bulb, and if it is a true daylight bulb and not just a house bulb (what is that incandescent?) you put into a regular lamp then it does provide a UV value, hence the description "daylight" or grow bulb. Also this time of year you do not have a 12 hour day/night cycle in the USA. Simply keeping the leo in a room with a window should provide the proper day/night cycle he needs. I keep a 15 watt incandescent bulb on my leos tank simply because he is in a dark room, and for my own selfishness as I think his tank is pretty but it's such a low wattage it only adds 2-3 degrees of heat to his tank and is so dim it doesn't bother his eyes. Do you have an under tank heat mat on the hot side of your leo's tank? Also provide 3 hides, one on the hot side, one on the cold side and one moist hide. I know usually people take the word of the pet store employees as gospel and 99% of the time they are wrong. Let's make sure your habitat is properly heated and set up first, and hopefully that will help alleviate a lot of this little ones issues right off the bat. Can you post a pic of the little darling so we can get a good idea of his morph plz?

 

[LZRDGRL]

If your gecko's tail is that thin and if you notice his belly thinning out and his hips sticking out, it's probably time to euthanize him humanely and not to prolong his suffering. Sorry! If you love him, this might be the kindest thing to do for him. You need to weigh whether treatments and meds will put even more strain on him or whether there's really any chance of recovery.

I got a gecko from a pet store once, and it had flagellates. Those are protozoae. It doesn't even have to be crypto; they die of flagellates, too. Your vet can give you Flagyl, but the smaller the gecko is, the less likely it is for him to recover, since the meds are hard on his liver. Mine died and was much bigger than 1 gram. The vet costs were over USD 125. You can adopt and raise another gecko for that and do something good. I actually went back to the pet store to look at the others that were in the same cage, and they were just as thin and fading away, so I was pretty sure they were all infected. I went back to talk to a representative at the store, because I thought they shouldn't sell any more of those, but then I saw the cage was empty, so they must have had taken them out already. The vet informed me that flagellates are very contagious (through water and fecal matter), and when they dry up they build spores and thus could fly through your room and get into your other cages, too. People can get them, too (they develop diarrhea then and are sick for about 2 weeks, and that's it).

It's good that your other cage is in a different room, just in case. I would disinfect my hands when handling both gecko's water dishes, so you don't transfer anything from one to another--if there is anything, that is. Also, if a cricket from the sick one's cage escapes, don't catch it and throw it in the healthy one's cage, since that might transfer diseases as well!

It might not be parasites, of course. I bought a gecko from a show once (it had a thin tail but a big belly), and it died three days later of hemorrhage. Maybe something internal is wrong. You most likely won't be able to help this little one. You can try if you think it's worth while for him.

Chrissy

 

[Dog Shrink]

You should always try to be optamistic when treating any animal esp. when a child is involved. How would it look to the child to just give up? I just re-read your first post (for the OP) and I saw that you said you dusted with calcuim and D3, what about a multi vit? There shouldn't really be a need to dust with calcium if you're keeping a dish of calcium in his cage 24/7 and using a good multi vit.

 

[Missinova]

This is a picture that was taken just after we got him... I don't have a current pic... He was always small and now that I know more, I probably wouldn't have bought him looking like that, but we have him now and I want to help him if I can.



He doesn't have red eyes...

We have an UTH and we have a thermometer with probe over the UTH touching the slate on the warm side.

I just spoke to my son he said that he threw up what looked like a cricket and cat food.

 

[Dog Shrink]

If he threw up that could just have been too much food at one time. Simple small diets such as just the cat food or just 1 cricket (which actually I think meal worms might be better for this lil fella at this point) would put less stress on his already depleated system. Over feeding can be just as harmful as under feeding at this point to avoid re-feeding syndrom. Also like Laney said seeing if you can get him to take a little pedialite by eye dropper or a dab on his nose could help any electrolite balance he might have going on from dehydration. Also reptiaide to help boost his system and bring up his appatite.

 

[Missinova]

I told my son to turn off the daylight bulb and leave him in the dark for a bit... We are in Canada, so our days are getting really short now... Its not light until 7am and getting dark at 6pm now...

I looked for Reptiaide at the pet store but they didn't carry anything like that... Do I need to get that from the vet? The vet didn't mention anything about it.

The vet said the little guy didn't look sick to him, just underweight... I don't know why he decided to treat him for worms and infection. But he did.

He won't eat mealworms on his own, but we have tricked him into eating a couple before... I put about 5 mealworms in his cage in a clear shallow container that they can't get out of, but he won't have anything to do with them.

So should I be giving him the vitamin powder as well? I don't mind spending the money, its not about money for me. But I don't think the vet will do anything more for him.

 

[Jordan]

the vitamin powder should be dusted on the mealworms. and make sure you count how many mealworms you keep in his dish overnight, because you can count before you go to bed and again when you get up and know for SURE if he's not eaten, not seeing him eat doesnt mean he isnt eating, so this test will help you find out for sure.

from the picture, he looks 3 months max. and looks more than a gram.

good luck.

 

[Dog Shrink]

Here is a link for the repta-aide http://www.reptilesupply.com/product.php?products_id=1062 you can get it locally if you have a pet co store near you or maybe even the pet shop you bought your leo at, and obviously you can order online as well. Also you might want to send a private message to Khrysty, she runs a leo rahab and rescue facility. She would be well versed in the use of repta-aide. Hold on I'll see if I can find her user profile for you. Here you go. http://geckoforums.net/member.php?u=19059 You have 5 posts so you should be able to send her private messages. Just click on her user name and send member a PM should be an option.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

The vet said the little guy didn't look sick to him, just underweight... I don't know why he decided to treat him for worms and infection. But he did.QUOTE]

Were any kind of tests run? Fecal? Were you asked to bring in a stool sample? One of the biggest problems we face as herp keepers is having access to a QUALIFIED herp vet. Many will see our animals, but do not study any herpetology related subjects to be current with species information. They are great with dogs, cats, even birds and a few other exotics, but not herps. Prescribing meds without a confirmed diagnosis can be very harsh on an animal's body, especially such a small one. I question this based on your statement.

There is a sticky at the top of the health and medication section of this forum called gecko soup (or slurry). Take a look at it and see what else you have to put some together. It will at least get some nutrition in his little body. Not too much at one time tho, or he will regurge. Handling should be at a minimum! If you drop stuff on his nose he won't need to be picked up, thus reducing stress. Everything needs to be as simple as possible for his sake.

 

[Missinova]

My local vet does not do exotics... I had to search for this vet and he was almost an hour away... It was listed on a Canadian reptile vet directory...

I really don't have much choice...

 

[Khrysty]

Just a thought: Is the gecko still that size? I don't know how small your hands (or your son's..if that's who is in the pic) are, but that does NOT look like an "under 1 gram" gecko to me. He looks like he's between 3 and 5 grams, actually--about newly hatched gecko size. I've seen some pretty small guys before, and he seems a bit bigger than you described. And that tail does look small, but not detrimental.

If he's worse looking than the picture displays, could you give us an updated one?

And, like Kel said, feel free to PM me and we can talk about your little guy. As was mentioned, I do run a rescue and rehab facility and have dealt with a lot of non-eating animals before. I might be able to help.

 

[Missinova]

Ok I just quickly took this picture... he was under his hide and I just lifted up the hide and stuck my hand behind for a size reference...

As you can see, he has certainly deteriorated since the picture before which was taken the end of September.


_MG_3872 by Tonja Renee

 

[Dog Shrink]

Thank you Khrysty. I was hoping I wasn't over stepping a boundary, but I see your devotion to these lil ones and dind't figure you'd mind the referral.

The lil one does look thin to me in the tail but not anorexic, just young... could this just be a case of a pickey baby?