Help me decide! To rescue or not to rescue?

[Nynecho]

Okay so every so often my local pet store gets in some new baby leopard geckos. They are all different kinds of morphs, so please don't discriminate or make your opinion biased just because they aren't breeders.

Anyway, for the past couple weeks, there's been one I've been looking at, i thought he was albino since he was so pale and his head was so pink, until I got a look at his tail and it was clear he was a hypo, not an albino.

Now i went home and checked on the computer, since I had never seen a hypo of those colors and so pale, almost white with a pink/lavender head.

This sounds crazy, but he resembles one of the first white and yellows ever produced.

So anyway, I didn't have any money at first to spare, but now I do, and I've confirmed he is a male.
I don't have much space for males, but I can rearrange my hatchlings and perhaps find him a space.

The thing is, after the time i spent NOT buying him, he began to have shedding problems.
Now he is about to lose a couple toes. I may be able to save one, but the other toe looks like it's ready to fall off (unless he has a paradox spot on the toe, which is unlikely)

Do you think he is worth taking in and growing? Normally with babies from this store I would just get them to shipping weight and re-home them, but do you think I should keep this male? I'll post a picture soon, I just wasn't able to get one yesterday.

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention he is pretty healthy for his size, he has a decent tail and a bit of carroting on it. He isn't pale from being neglected or anything, he is actually very healthy looking pale.

 

[PoeticPlural]

I would rescue. But I am the rescuing kind. I just got my first Leo two days ago from a breeder but am already debating one in my local pet store.


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[stager]

You are not rescuing by buying only encouraging the store to get more so yet another will suffer. In my opinion the only thing we as consumers can do is boycot places that mistreat animals all together.

 

[Olympus]

At the risk of sounding like your mother, I'll share a couple thoughts, for whatever they're worth. In your post you mentioned that you hadn't had the free money to buy him (and geckos at stores usually sell for, what, like $60ish?) and that you didn't really have the room for another one. So it begs the question, do you need another one?

I've rescued reptiles from really horrific conditions in people's homes, people who had "collected" too many animals, become burned out or run out of resources, and the animals suffered neglect as a result. Just last year I was called to a woman's house who felt she couldn't care for her pets anymore and left with a chameleon and a dozen crested geckos, all of whom were so neglected that it took the chameleon 6 months of antibiotics to get over her severe infections (the geckos were better off, but filthy, thin, and riddled with bite wounds from overcrowding and fighting over food.) So we have to be careful as reptile hobbyists not to fall into the trap of "collecting" animals, but to think carefully about what we can each handle responsibly and to not get more just for the sake of getting more. Because I know it's tempting, and geckos are relatively cheap, easy to care for, and require very little space, so it's easy to suddenly find yourself with a number of them. But since you admit that you don't necessarily have a lot of free cash or room, I'd think carefully about where your limit really is (since you have 10 already.) What if he turns out to need a vet visit for things do you have the resources to spare, realistically?

I don't mean this to sound patronizing or anything, honestly, but I watch well-meaning people get way over their heads all too often.

 

[Superior Reptiles]

Hey when you buy geckos from these stores (even though you have great intentions on saving the poor gecko) you are showing to them that people like the geckos and so they order more to sell which will inevitably result in more innocent little geckos dying