Please help!

I feel your pain Tiger. I am very sorry for your loss. At least she had a wonderful keeper and a comfortable, well cared for life while she was with us.

TG, I am sorry I didn't see this last night. It does sound like MBD. The gargoyle and crestie diets are carefully formulated to be balanced for the geckos, and if you add anything other than water on a regular basis, they need either some calcium and herp vitamins added back in to the food or added on bugs that they'll eat. I'm going to check the crestie caresheet to make sure that is clear for other keepers. I feel like I failed you and your crestie.

I know you tried to take very good care of her, and if her appetite were bigger, the nutritional balance might have made less difference because she'd still have been getting enough. Eating just the minimum, though, it becomes even more important that the protein and calcium get packed in there. I am very sorry for your loss and I hope you won't give up on cresties.

Hey condolences TG, as mentioend above it might well have been something congenital or a condition pre-existing and certainly not a reflection on your care and efforts. I am terrified to get into geckos as I am sure I would not be able to keep up with them.

Thank you Marla. Please don't feel that you failed me. You were nothing but a huge help. Besides, I had heard from others that they feed baeby food with the diet or that it was okay to do thise w/o any mention of having to offset things with calcium, supplements, etc. That's not even made clear on the bottle or in the books I have as to the need to offset such a chnage when adding the diet to anything but water. I too think that because she didn't have a bigger appettite (or seem to care for crickets) that made it more difficult. She was also very young when I got her (maybe too young for the breeder to have sold her to me?) - she was only 2 weeks old when I bbrought her home. She had just turned 3 months old on the 8th.

I will not give up on Cresteds. I will, however, be sure I buy an older one, handle it to make sure it's not too stressed and will likely get a different color/pattern so as to not remind me of "lil Bit' too much. I think I might try to get one from Robbie Hamper. Besides, I had just spent close to $200 on a custom made cage and supplies for her. It was too big for her current size, but I was going to take some time growing live plants and getting it all fixed up for when she was bigger.

Thanks again Smulkin!

Generally the breeders will hold on to them for the first month or so to make sure they're well-started, so that may have been part of the problem with this one. It is surprising that she didn't like crickets, as all of mine love to hunt, but I guess every species can have a picky eater come along. It sounds like she was going to be absolutely spoiled if she had made it, and I'm sure your next one will thrive now that you have experienced about the worst that can happen with them. An older one would definitely be a better choice, and I can certainly understand your wanting to get one that looks different. I hope the changes I've made to the caresheet make it clear to readers now what the dangers are of not balancing changes in the diet so maybe we can prevent its happening to another gecko. If all goes well, I should have a couple of cresties that could be re-homed around the first of the year (they should hatch around Thansgiving or a little after). I want to keep one, but I'd be delighted to re-home the other with you if you wanted.

Thank you Marla - as always. If I haven't gotten a new one by then I will certainly keep you in mind. :)

Glad to be able to help at least a little. :)

tiger sorry to hear of the loss , 2 weeks is way to young Imo for the breeder to have let the animal go. Its a pretty big learning experience to get the hang of starting these little guys out . I started out trying to use the CG diet and had a couple failures with my first few babies and quickly switched back to the tried and tested crickets baby food and a healthy helping of calcium,they seem to need a good bit of calcium from hatching till about 4 months old. I think I would stick to that feeding regiment unless you have a very well started crestie that has been started on the CG diet by the breeder
Btw there are also several reports from some breeders around that have experienced a complete halt or extreme reduction in egg production when switching to the diets indicateing possibly not enough protein in the diet and possibly calcium aswell. there is no telling what industry does to a good thing once they get ahold of the rights to it

May I ask what everyone else's feeding routine is for their cresteds?

I feed fresh hatched babies daily , both insects and fruit, they tend to start better on peaches and apricots for me I dust the insects daily until they are about 4 months old then I start feeding on an alternateing days bugs one day fruit the next, dusting with calcium every time on the bugs and once a week on the fruit