Need help from all possible.

[Southern_Style_Geckos]

I have kept, and bred, leopard geckos for several years now, and I have recently had a situation that I can not wrap my brain around. I had a virgin mack snow raptor female gecko pass away out of the blue. She was kept in a 16qt tub in a rack with a warm side of 90 degrees, always had fresh water & supplements. I breed dubia roaches, mealworms, and superworms to use as feeders, which were fed calcium fortified water crystals, and fresh fruits and vegetables. I had all of my geckos tested for any parasites a month ago, and all came up clean. She had been eating, and acting normal but I noticed she seemed lethargic the night before she passed away, so I soaked her for 15-20 minutes in luke warm water, and gave her some rescu-cal orally. I can not fiqure out what could have happened to her, and would appreciate any advice. I have since sterilized all things used by all of my geckos in effort to kill anything that could have spread to the rest of the collection.

 

[acpart]

I'm sorry for your loss. I have no idea what happened to her. I had a gecko die all of a sudden about 5 years ago. I had just fed her, she went into her hide and then a heard kind of a screech, she threw up the superworm and was dead. My brother is a vet, though not a reptile vet and I brought her in the next day and we did a necroscopy and found nothing. I guess it's possible the superworm may have bitten her inside, though all my geckos crunch the head of the worm. All I can say is that sometimes, even with the best husbandry, something sometimes goes wrong.

Aliza

 

[Southern_Style_Geckos]

Thank you for your reply!

 

[Olympus]

I'm sorry for your loss! The out-of-the-blue losses are the worst.

No way to really know without doing a necropsy. Any number of totally unforseen and unpreventable things could go wrong that won't necessarily be visible from the outside. For example, a friend just had a chameleon female die suddenly, so she went to the vet to have her examined. When they opened her up they found that infertile (she was a virgin as well) egg follicles had ruptured inside her, which had led to sepsis. Another friend lost another prized breeding male, opened him up (he's a herp vet) and found that he had been born with a malformed heart which was too small and feeble to support his now full-grown body.

So some things are just way out of your control. But there's no way to know what happened unless you take her in to do a necropsy. And even then the cause may not be 100% evident.

 

[Thorgecko707]

I have done a large search of the forum and people's brains and found some info. Some causes could be stroke, aneurysm, egg follicles breaking causing internal bleeding, blood clot from female starting to ovulate. Since parasites have been ruled out from all the testing I'd say it was one of those. A necropsy would say for sure but breeders I talked to agree and suggest those issues.
I don't know if it is too late to do necropsy or even worth the effort. So far everyone agrees it's not genetic, but I will still keep an eye out and talk to others with related geckos since it is an issue we need to make sure never becomes inheritable.

For future thread searches: unexpected death, sudden death, female died, healthy gecko died,

 

[Kristi23]

That sounds a lot like what happened to one of my females. Her necropsy showed she was gravid, but nothing was wrong with that part. The only thing that showed was higher than normal levels of bacteria. I ended up treating all my adults.

The only way to know for sure is a necropsy, but sometimes it's a weird fluke thing that doesn't show up.