Ok I officially FAIL as a herpetoculturist

[T-ReXx]

So I've had this patternless tokay gecko for about a year now. I originally bought the gecko as a juvenile male. When it came in I took a quick peek, saw what looked like pores and assumed the seller sexed correctly. After quarantine the gecko was moved in with one of my normal females and pretty much left alone to do their thing. As you can see from the pics it has a glowing personality that tokays are so famous for so I didn't do any handling outside of enclosure maintenance. Now, in about a year this "male" has not called, hasn't bred, and never grew into typical male tokay body size and structure. So, yesterday when I pulled "him" out to take some updated pics I did a thorough exam and lo and behold "he" is actually a she. This explains the frustrating fact that this animal would not breed with any of the females I introduced "him" to or call, despite the fact that my other male tokays call regularly and loudly in response to each other. So I basically spent a year waiting for a female tokay to breed with another female tokay. FAIL. She will now be introduced to my largest male(a definite male, lol) and we will see if I can finally produce some patternless tokays. This story was too ridiculous not to share. The lesson is; always check sex and recheck sex again, lol. Tokays are tricky to sex to begin with, and I'm fairly good at it, but if you don't look closely obvious mistakes can be made.

She's in shed, and pissed off about it.

KISS ME

She really is a pretty girl, when she's not biting you.

For those of you who want to know, THIS is what a female looks like :main_laugh:

 

[TokayKeeper]

I had what I thought was a large male corn snake since 2000 lay eggs last season after cycling "him" for the first time. Screwing up sexing a corn is like screwing up sexing a hognose, to me. The part that sucked the most was I purchased a beautiful albino female corn from Don Soderberg at the 2010 Arlington NARBC expo to breed to my "male" only to have her lay eggs a month later. I now have a male snow I picked up at this year's NARBC. So, I'm only off 2 years now.

 

[Pinky81]

I don't know anything about Tokay's but this story gave me a chuckle! Remember every pro started as a rookie!!! Very cute Gek!!!

 

[T-ReXx]

Oh I know, mis-sexing is pretty common, even among pros. What's funny about the whole situation is simply due to my own reluctance to handle her(she's PARTICULARLY nasty, even for a tokay) I spent a year trying to breed two females.

Another interesting point about this animal is that now that she is done shedding I can see she is obviously going through a color change. She is developing patches of light blue in various places, there's a large one on the base of her tail that's how I noticed it. She does have a regrown tail but the color change is happening above the regenerated section and also can be seen on her body and feet. When I bought this gecko she was a solid grey animal that would fire up a dark green with a white belly. These patches of color resemble the same blue seen on "happy" normal tokays and powder blue patternless animals. I do know certain calico tokays have been known to start off as green or normal looking animals and change gradually over time into the black and white panda contrast. But these aren't white or black patches as seen in those animals. There's so little known really about tokay genetics and this is both confusing and exciting. Hopefully now she will reproduce and I can see what kind of genetics might be behind this.

 

[Pinky81]

I wouldn't wanna take her out either LOL No with that attitude LOL!!!

 

[latshki]

thats sweet man
you need to post some pics of her since shes done shedding
hope you get some sweet olives with this new male

 

[fuzzylogix]

Ted, if and when she lays, i would like to get one of the offspring from you. Just keep me in mind

 

[T-ReXx]

Ask and you shall receive. Here she is all shed out, and slightly less angry today. She's in with Demon now, and he's courting her, so we'll see what happens. She's not fired up here, but you can get a general idea of the patches I was talking about.

Shawn I'll keep you posted bro, assuming they breed sometime this week I'll expect eggs within a month and hatchlings by July/August assuming all goes well. I'm not sure what's going to come out; she was sold to me as an "emerald" but then she was also supposed to be a male. I originally thought she was an olive patternless which is a recessive morph but I suspect she may be a blue headed green, which is codom. If the babies look normal I'll be holding back a male to grow up and breed back to her.

 

[Northstar Herp]

I've been laughing about this since 11:15

Is it common for them to have pseudo-pores?

 

[robin]

*points and laughs*

 

[T-ReXx]

Kev: all my females have pore "dots" only the males have larger ones that exude wax.

Robin: shutup.

 

[slayer]

Thats some "Duh!" moment there Ted. This gave me a nice chuckle

 

[Dragonslare]

Hey Ted,

What are the gloves for? LMAO :main_laugh: , I'm going through the same thing here, I had 4 African Banded Velvet Gecko's sent to me in Feb. they're supposed to be 2.2., they all look sort of female-ish to me, problem is there kind of small and they just won't stop biting me!! even with a lited Mag. glass, I can't tell, they won't hold still, they just turn and bite!!
miniature TOKAY's!

Joe M.

 

[T-ReXx]

Hey Ted,

What are the gloves for? LMAO :main_laugh: , I'm going through the same thing here, I had 4 African Banded Velvet Gecko's sent to me in Feb. they're supposed to be 2.2., they all look sort of female-ish to me, problem is there kind of small and they just won't stop biting me!! even with a lited Mag. glass, I can't tell, they won't hold still, they just turn and bite!!
miniature TOKAY's!

Joe M.

Normally I don't bother with gloves(reduces sensitivity) but with this girl they are absolutely necessary, lol. Have you tried putting them in a clear deli cup and looking from below? I used to do that with tiny delicate fast moving geckos.

 

[Dragonslare]

Hey,
Yep! I tried that, my problem is that there kind of small, didn't realize that, there only about 4-5 in. total. I asked some questions, but never got any answers, wanted to how obvious the males where, bulge sacs at the base of the tail, even my young LeafTails are very obvious and in the females do they develop calcium sacs in there necks like WhiteLined and Day Gecko's.
There's not a lot of info available on these nasty little buggers! (disadvanage with working with stuff outside the box!but it sure is fun, I'm keeping real good notes on my Cave Geckos and Halmahera's, HEY, hows your Halma eggs doing, they got to be close, I'm at 110 days) now good thing there bite doesn't pack any kind of a punch, but they do hold on, but nothing like the female Tokay I had, she was evil!! she would actually charge, leap, bite, clamp down and hang on!!!!OMG!!

Joe M.

 

[OneFootedAce]

Okay okay, I'm guilty of this too, I admit lol.
I bought a "male" Leo, 3 months later, after quarantine, I paired him up, and nothing. I kept them together for a week, until I realized that this "male" was actually a female...
You're not the only one my friend, you're not the only one.
*embarrassed*

LOL

 

[T-ReXx]

I found another clutch of Halmahera eggs yesterday actually, bringing me up to 8 cooking. They're a very prolific species. The oldest clutch is a couple of days over due by the average standard, but they still look good so I'm not too concerned yet. Working with oddball species can be sort of an information vacuum but somebody has to start somewhere right? Over time data can be combined to put together something publishable, maybe. I have no clue on the African Velvets, I only started seeing them regularly over the past year or so and I've never kept em, I prefer larger geckos.

Have you asked around on GU? There's a lot off ppl over there who keep oddballs and might have some answers for you.

Not all tokays are bad, lol. I have a couple of "tame" animals and even the snappy patternless girl calms down a bit after a little while. They're just not "prepackaged" like leos or Rhacs, you have to work to earn their trust and even then if you do something they don't like they will let you know, lol. I enjoy the tokay personality; they're a challenging species to work with but also fairly easy to reproduce once you figure them out, the spunk is just part of what they are.

 

[Dragonslare]

Hey Ted,
Lucky Dude!, I've only gotten two clutches from my Halma's! total of 4 eggs, and 2 of those where infertile, when I thought my Halma's where gravid I asked about those and got a whole lot of odd info, from incubating times of 80 days all the way to 180/200 days, from cooler temps all the way to scorching, one person even told me high temps and almost no humidity!the deli cup can't be very moist, but they need very high surrounding humidity (at least thats what I've found, but they haven't hatched yet ether.)

Joe M.

 

[norin radd]

you called it tokay??!!!...well here in philippines it's common to see tokay gex..but in the near future they will be extinct!!??..'coz many local people hunt them down(poor little gex!).