A loss and a curse

Remember that Flying Gecko male I posted about? The one that was the most beautiful Flier I'd yet to see? Well, he never started feeding and didn't make it, despite my fight to save him. Long story short - I've had four beautiful, healthy female Ptychozoon kuhli that I've desired to breed for about a year now. In that time I have been entirely unsuccessful in acquiring a healthy male. I did pick up a male from the Hamburg show in February. I never even had a chance with him. Then I acquire this new male at the October show, after a long period of being too broke to afford buying one and having it shipped from elsewhere. This new male had everything going for it - gorgeous, mite-free, and at least looked healthy.

The progression of decline of my gecko, and people's attempts to help me, are in this Repashy forum thread. I took the wait-and-see approach for a while, hoping he would acclimate and then develop a feeding response. That didn't work and he became grievously thin from lack of food and probably dehydration as well. I decided to intervene, administering water and watered-down crested gecko diet via syringe in the mouth. But it was too late - he was too weak to lick moisture on his own, and did not demonstrate much ability to swallow. I was able to get some nutrient and moisture into his stomach over two days, but it was too little too late.

I still have much to learn about acclimating wild-caught geckos, and still count myself lucky in acclimating four females without any trouble at all. I will have to carefully review what I did, and what other people's experiences are on the gecko forums. I will probably revise my Ptychozoon account on my website to reflect this new experience.

Despite over a year now, I am still male-less in the Ptychozoon department. My desire to work with this species and learn all I can about them still burns strong, but I am becoming more convinced I am cursed and will never end up breeding them.