Finished this enclosure yesterday, 40 gal breeder with natural stone and sourced plants. Seeded with Dairy Cow Isopods and Orange Springtails. Inspiration and progress pictures at the end.
Been waiting for a Leopard Gecko enclosure like this to pop up online for a decade, and decided that I’d watched enough Serpa Design content to pull it off myself!
Marty my Leo was adopted from a local, long standing, reputable pet store.
He was maybe 2 months old when I brought him home, and seemed to be healthy weight wise and full of life.
Since I got him home he has been dropping weight consistently, it has been about 6 months. I’ve been to the exotic vet twice, and have had every test for every possible GI track issues or infection twice (parasites, Crypto, protozoans, Giardia)
He was never a solid eater no matter what feeding approach was used, and super shy / easy to stress. But I installed a camera that would catch him taking interest in, and eating some bugs that were in his enclosure.
He doesn’t act sick, is still active all evening long, full of life and doesn’t belly crawl. The vet is perplexed as he looks visually in bad shape and is losing weight , yet is active and full of spunk and behaves very normally.
He also loves his vitamins, provided I wet them on his rock for him to later lick up.
He literally looks like the image that comes up when you google stick tail. But acts completely fine.
I’d also like to mention that my husbandry is one of the prides of my everyday, my love of the hobby extends into the art of trying to capture the perfect slice of nature for the animal.
Myself and my vet are truly perplexed. I’ve resorted to syringe feeding as he is the worst he’s been, hoping it will spark some appetite in him.
The best theory we have so far is that seeing that he is a Snow Mack, it’s possible there are some underlying genetic issues from breeding that are causing the problems.
My vet doesn’t even recommend another round of testing, because there has just been no indication of infection at all on the first two rounds.
I’m truly at a loss and honestly just looking to see if anyone has had a similar experience, or suggestions?