Last July I got a pair of Coleonyx variegatus variegatus. They are
wonderfully alert and fearless little geckos and I enjoy them a lot.
What's driving me crazy is that although the female lays a pair of eggs
every three to four weeks, I can't seem to get them to hatch. For the
first few months, I figured my problem was excess humidity, since the
eggs were getting moldy. In December I started incubating them on
moist Turface (similar to seramis) instead of sand or peat or coconut
fiber, which I had used previously, and things looked better. The
December eggs were infertile, but the January 15 eggs were large and
looked really good. Two weeks ago, one dented and got moldy. I
transferred both eggs to dry sand, and after the moldy one continued to
deteriorate, opened it to find a dead embryo, almost mature but not
"term". The second egg continued to develop, but then started to show
a dent, so I transferred it to fresh Turface. The dent levelled out,
and the embryo looked good - I could even see the stripes through the
membrane. A couple of days ago it started to collapse and today I
opened the egg to find a mature but dead hatchling.
Meanwhile, the eggs laid on Feb 12 developed to the blood disk stage
and stopped. The ones laid on March 9 still look good. Of all the
eggs this fecund little gecko has laid in the past seven months, I've
only managed to hatch one, and that hatchling seemed to have something
wrong either with its vision or its brain - it would try literally
hundreds of times to catch an insect, and always overshot and missed.
It was really painful to watch this. It never managed to catch anything
other than tiny waxworms. It never caught a fruit fly, cricket or even
a mealworm. It didn't grow much if at all and died after several weeks.
I'm running my (home made) incubator at about 80F (27C) for these
eggs. I had been keeping a wet paper towel in there to keep the
humidity up, but took it out a few weeks ago. I open the incubator
about once a day for ventilation.
I'm wondering now whether there is something wrong with the female,
that she is not producing healthy eggs. I feed her crickets, mealworms
and the occasional waxmoth or waxmoth pupa. Her tail is really thick
and her appetite unbounded. She is very alert and active. She always
has water and Miner-all I available. I keep a bit of Herptivite in the
dish with the Miner-all. I feed the insects bran and veggies like kale
and carrots. The male spent much of the winter snoozing on the heat
tape, but he's out and about now. The female showed no signs of
wanting to slow down for the winter. They get natural light (latitude
~43N) and about 12 hours of artificial light daily.
These geckos are at least 5 years old, possibly more. I think they
were wild caught as adults. The only strange behaviour I've noticed is
that they eat the smooth silica sand I started using in the nest box
instead of play sand, when I had a theory that the eggs might be
picking up mold from the play sand. This silica sand goes right
through them, but they seem to eat a lot of it. I know that mineral
cravings can cause animals to eat dirt, but they do have the Miner-all,
and by the foot prints in it, know where it is.
Any suggestions, no matter how obvious, would be much appreciated!
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