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Crossing 2 tremper albino giant lines. Getting a NOT albino giant? Any help figuring it out?

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1.7K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  Hadria Wells  
#1 · (Edited)
So, hear me out, maybe someone can explain what happened here.
I got two
(long line breed, pure, I know the breeder personally) "Tremper Albino Giant" (male and female).
Male: ♂
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Female: ♀
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Amazing colors, really good size (male it's around 32 cm or a bit more long, female it's around 30 cm, that's 12 inches and up), the only problem this breeder has it's that it's not entering new blood, therefore, his animals are heavily inbreed between them (this has a good explanation though, since 2014 imports into my country from foreign animals it's almost forbidden, the only viable way to get new blood it's snuggling a gecko and pass the boarders, but that's not only ilegal, but very risky if you get caught).

Adopted them as babies, a couple weeks old, a year ago. There's absolutely ZERO chance of retained sperm from another male.
I didn't know at the time if the female had any issues laying eggs, I wasn't aware
that the inbreed was so bad, until AFTER I mate one with the other, the female had issues with her eggs, and I talked about it with the original breeder. Since it was her first year, I thought it wouldn't hurt if, just this year, I got a couple more giant tremper albinos.

This are her egg account:
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(The one in purple it's the "brother" of the one ""I want to know what happened"" egg, that just like the others went to waste)

And no, I'm not "bad at incubating them", if you see my previous posts here, you'll notice that all other eggs were born fine. I try to make new mixed blood from different morphs that haven't been done before, so I can inject some new genes into long-inbreed lines, trying to make animals healthier by offering animals that carry HETs (although might not look like X or X) and might be used either by other breeders or simply as healthier pets, and trust me, since the ban to enter animals, breeding leopard geckos for pets it's not an issue, there's always demand for them.

Anyways, thing is, yesterday night I woke up to this 9 cm long "baby" from the albino tremper giant couple:
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And...as you can see, it's not an Albino at all.

I have diligent records on my geckos, mainly because I have OCD and I only have two males and 5 females (including the couple in questions). So I'm completely sure it wasn't an error of not marking my eggs right (the other male it's a Mack Snow, and surely they're all in different enclosures).
The date that egg was in, there wasn't even any other female laying eggs (not even a couple days before and/or after that particular cluch).

So, if I didn't screwed up, they descent from (pure) Tremper Albino giant genes, ... what happened??? 🤔

Things to consider, during January and February it's summer here in my country, we had a severe heat week/s where temperature didn't drop from around 36° Celsius at best, although I had the air conditioning unit on to keep the room temperature as low as possible, the room did went up to around 31° C., but I figured the worse case, I'll just be getting males (temp inside the Zoomed Reptibator incubator was meassured with 4 different things between the probe, the digital thermo-hidromether, the old school thermometer in the GEO, and then the incubator itself. And they all marked the same, so I know there wasn't anything "weird"). But then, this very week, I had 3 babies from different parents being incubated during the heat wave born... "Off".
One has a defect on one of its leg fingers, it's "glued" to the other next to it. The other has a "lump" on its head. The third one is an "albino that's not albino".

Sorry for the long post, but I've covered all things and I'm still on the lookout for answering this in a way that makes sense.

SO!, if anyone wants to share it's theory about it, I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance 🙏
 
#2 ·
I have theories:

1. Congenital deformaties could be from vitamin deficiencies in the parents. Try sprinkling cricket food with vitamins to gut load the crickets being fed to your gecko with nutrients.

2. Your two geckos have two independent lines of albino. At least one of the parent geckos is not pure Tremper albino but pure for the other albino gene. And the other gecko is pure Tremper albino but is not pure for the other albino gene. This sort of thing is pretty common in species with two or more albino mutant genes. And 3, 4 or more generations down the line, a breeder gets bitten. I have read that Tremper albinos incubated at low temperatures are darker than at high temperatures. That may be a way to separate the pure Tremper albinos from the pure other line of albinos. The Tremper albinos will still carry the other albino gene though, unless you want to go through another series of testing to select out the unwanted albino gene.

Theories require testing. Good luck.
 
#4 ·
1 - I don't use crickets. I use dubia roaches, superworms and, when little, mealworms. All dusted with calcium +vitamins. The diet it's balanced and full of calcium, protein, a bit of fat (but not enough to make them obese), and I have a lot (around 30 or to 15 depending on if I have little ones or not on the incubator), and this two are from another breeder, and the only ones making strange things. So there's not much room for improvement on the food, here there's some other insects that are just popping up on breeders (like black soldier fly worms), but pretty much have the same nutritional value of a well feed Dubia roach.

2 - That much I've theorized...but it's still not a concrete thing because I can't find "when" down the line this might have happened. I'm keeping the "regular color" little one, he it's a "giant", and I'm sure, even if not exotic enough, will be a astonishing big guy loaded up with a lot of color and a huge size. So he most likely won't be crossed with anyone, but still, I'll love to know what and when down the line, this happen. So I can at least know if I ever cross anyone else in that family, with what I should (and shouldn't) to prevent issues.

Thanks, I'll handle over some of the others to different breeders I know to sort out if anyone can keep the "giant" but discard whatever issues the line has. 🙏