Got My Adopted Leo Today!

[ZEKESMOM]

I will get pics up tomorrow...but have a few questions for now....
First let me say that the tank that this beautiful animal was in was "extremely filthy" and it stunk worse than an uncleaned litter box!!! Got everything sanitized and dried. It is a girl She must have had 3 inches of nasty sand and an inch of filth on top of that...the water dish was really really gross.
Ok....so she really seems to be healthy Not to bad with handling...had to move her out of the tank to clean it.....seeing as she has not been regularly handled for years now.
I have put her on paper towels...has a couple rocks in there and a branch with leaves...a rock water bowl and I put in a dish of calcium, a few crickets and some leo food that they had....Plan on picking up some meal worms tomorrow. I have a jar of vita life vitamin powder that came with her....is this ok to dust the crickets with? I read in a post here that if I dust the crickets to not dust the meal worms and that I can just leave a bowl of meal worms in the tank and replace as she eats....Is this right?
Also how long do leos live? This girl is 8-10 years old!
Ok so maybe she is not so good with being handled. Decided I could not wait to post pics and picked her up for the hubby to take a pic and she swung around out of nowhere and latched on to my finger LMAO....didn't hurt just freaked the crap out of me...got her off my finger and she attempted to eat my finger 2 more times!! Can any one tell me what kind of leo she is?? Thanks for any and all answers...Oh she does not have a name yet???

[mlededee]

she doesn't look as bad as i expected. definitely good to hear she is in a nice clean cage now though.

i'm not familiar with the vita life powder but if it is something like herptivite or reptivite it should be okay. just dust the crickets and you don't have to dust the mealworms. you can leave mealworms in a dish and replace as she eats them. after a few days take out any mealworms that remain and put them back in the container you keep them in and add new ones. this ensures that you are always offering gut loaded worms.

15-18 years or so is an average leo lifespan. the oldest male leo lived to be 29, the oldest female almost 22 years old.

i'm not great with leo morphs but i'd guess maybe she is a high yellow. she also has a little bit of carroting on her tail which is nice.

[ZEKESMOM]

Thanks Emily What is carroting? LOL
As for a clean tank....It and everything in it was soaked and scrubbed with a bleach solution....It looked clean but after going back into to the bathroom to check on her I realized that it still "reaked" Think I am just going to go buy a new tank and everything to go in it!

[mlededee]

carroting is the orange on her tail.

it is hard to get the smell out of anything wood or porous. if its a glass tank you should be able to get it smelling okay but i'm with you on ditching everything else and replacing it.

[ZEKESMOM]

went to a leopard gecko breeder site today to look at picks....see that she has a carrot tail but the high yellows that they had did not have spots all over them???

Oh forgot I wanted to ask a question LOL....Because she is 8-10 years old and has always been housed by herself.....should I not get her a buddy to live with her? I am concerned that it would totally stress her out having "another" in the tank..

[mlededee]

i say high yellow because she doesn't have as many spots as a normal and looks a little brighter in the pics too. i looked in the leopard gecko manual (the one by phillipe de vosjoli) and there was a pic of a high yellow that looked similar to her. of course there is a lot of variation in high yellows, probably all the way up to ones that don't have many spots at all. i could be wrong though--like i said--i'm not that great with the leo morphs.

if you do decide to get her a cagemate make sure to get one that is the same size as she is and female. i don't know that she would necessarily benefit from a cagemate--leos don't require companionship so that is mostly up to you. i can't really say how she would react--i don't know if they become solitary once they live alone for a long time.

[ZEKESMOM]

Thanks Emily...she is going to be living by her lonesome since they do not require companionship

[mlededee]

i'm sure she will be happy. you have already improved her quality of life by a bazillion times!