Hey there!

I just recently became a leopard gecko owner about a week ago, and it seems I've run into some problems. We purchased our gecko, "Noodle," at Petsmart last Sunday. She seemed healthy and alert when we picked her out and brought her home. The image above is from the first day.

The first night we had her, we fed her 28 small crickets. 28. I read that you're supposed to feed her however many she will eat, then remove the rest and take note of how many you should feed her in the future. Well, 28 seems like a rather crazy number to me, so I was hoping that trend wouldn't continue. A friend mentioned she seemed thin, and when I picked her out, we discovered she was in a tank with a large male that was most likely eating a majority of the food. So I thought it was good that she ate her fill, no problem.

I went to the store the following day and bought larger crickets. I compared the small ones to "potato chips" and the larger ones to "full chickens." I figured a couple of larger ones would fill her up and require her to eat less of the smaller ones. After the second night's feeding, I found that she'd thrown up all of the larger crickets. I hopped online and read that they may have been too large for her and to just feed her smaller ones. Fair enough, more potato chips it is.

So the next night, I dusted all of her crickets in calcium powder and fed her. She ate seven small crickets before I went to bed. The next morning, she'd thrown them all up again. D: I don't get it! She pooped a couple days after her 28-cricket feast and it wasn't runny or discolored. Now, it's very watery and sort of green (no blood, though). She hasn't eaten since Tuesday and doesn't seem interested in crickets. Could her diarrhea be linked to her lack of eating?



From what I've read, it needs to be warm enough in the tank to help her digest her food, otherwise she may regurgitate it. I have a heating pad under one side of the tank (the right side in the image), so she should be good, right? We also have a desk lamp set up above her during the day, as shown. The day time temp on the warm side is about 85-90 degrees.

The only other thing I thought was that the day she ate the larger crickets (Monday night) was the day she had a bit of an adventure. I forgot to cover her cage and she escaped during the night. We found her the next day hiding on my desk, but could the stress of that and lack of heat have made her sick? I haven't owned her long enough to know if she's behaving lethargically, but the puking and runny poop is telling me she's sick.

She's still "under warranty" if anything does go wrong, but I don't want to have to return my Noodle for some other lizard. Should I try and feed her mealworms or something? Could the calcium I'm dusting her with be making her sick (I use Fluker's calcium powder)? I know that sounds odd, but the 28 crickets she ate the first night were not dusted, and the two times after that when she threw them up, they were dusted. At this point, I just want her to keep her food down. I have the cage covered with a towel to help warm it up, but still no progress and no eating. I only have a week or so left of my 14-day warranty, so I'm thinking it may be best if I just return her. I just feel bad since I've grown quite fond of her, but I don't know what else to do and wasn't expecting that I'd have to take her to the vet right after buying her. Any suggestions or tips? Anything I may have missed?

I appreciate any advice and sorry this is so lengthy!