"In early January 2000, I found a cute pair of geckos that I thought looked a little skinny. I felt sorry for them and since I have about 20 other Leo's in a breeding colony, I thought I could easily fatten them up and make them healthy and happy again. Little did I know that this would be the biggest mistake I had ever made with my animals.

I had bought many healthy geckos from this chain store and never had any problems, so I didn't bother to quarantine these animals. After about three weeks, they started getting skinnier and becoming lethargic. As they began to show signs of diarrhea, my other geckos started to lose weight as well. They appeared to be absorbing their tails. By the time my other geckos began to become lethargic, they original pair of sick geckos were dead. They appeared to have starved themselves to death even though they had only stopped eating a short time before they died. What had killed them and what was killing the rest?

It took only a few weeks before more geckos started dying. After several expensive trips to the vet, and several stool samples later, we were no closer to an answer than the first day I noticed something amiss. And they were still dying. My vet finally suggested that I have my most recently deceased gecko tested post-mortem for diseases through a procedure known as a necropsy.

After waiting for a week, I received the bad news. My geckos had been infected, via the new geckos, by a waterborne protozoan called Cryptosporidium. The disease was called Cryptosporidiosis. There is no cure, and for leopard geckos, it is 100% fatal. The bad news didn't end there though. Once exposed, these animals would always be carriers, and would some day die of this disease. Any animals that come into contact with them are immediately infected. This meant that all of my surviving geckos had to be destroyed. I was devastated. All of my precious little four legged children were condemned to death. The hardest day of my life came when I took them all to the vet to be euthanized. I said my good-byes and watched through teary eyes as my vet gently took them from my hands, and took them away to be destroyed.

In the coming weeks I tried to find out as much as I could about this terrible disease. I found out that it was very resistant to disinfectants. The only way to kill it on surfaces was a 10% bleach solution. This means that these infected animals MUST BE DESTROYED in order to keep them from infecting other animals or even humans. I also found out that the problem was not local, but indeed all across the country. I started receiving letters from people all over the country whose animals had been infected. Soon after that, I was in contact with people all over North America whose animals had been infected. They just had never been able to put a name to this killer.

This killer called "crypto" had indeed gone unnoticed by so many until reaching epidemic proportions - this largely due to the difficulty of diagnosing it. It is very difficult to detect in stool samples, the usual method of diagnosis, due to the fact that it is shed by infected animals quite irregularly in the stools. Usually, the only way to effectively and reliably diagnose this disease is by a necropsy of a deceased animal. This doesn't do a lot for those unfortunate critters already exposed. Although usually found in terrestrial geckos such as leopard, fattail, and banded geckos, it has also been reported in the deaths of bearded dragons, snakes, and other species of geckos.

The only cure for this disease is prevention. You must ALWAYS quarantine new animals. If they are not 100% healthy, and if you have ANY doubt at all, do not introduce them to your colony, and seek the advice of a qualified HERP vet. Please don't make the same mistakes that I made. Don't let my tragedy become your tragedy."

- Anonymous.

Crypto is NOT over yet.

"I stopped in the local (Eugene, OR) Petco this afternoon and had to run back home to get my camera. The leopard geckos were in horrible shape! All of them looked an inch from death. I talked to their "Reptile Specialist" and was told that "they were fine". He claimed that they weren't eating because of the substrate that they were kept on. I tried to explain about Crypto, but he was just humoring me. This "reptile specialist" then told me that the 'REALLY BAD ONES' were not for sale at this time. They were ALL bad! He then claimed that a few were OK, because they were eating now. I let him know that they were all still bad and to separate them from the other animals before it spread. He said that he would have to ask the store manager (who was on vacation) if that would even be possible."

Please contact PETCO and demand they stop selling obviously sick animals:

Brian K. Devine, CEO
Petco Animal Supplies, Inc.
9125 Rehco Rd.
San Diego, CA 92121
Tel.: 858-453-7845
Fax: 858-677-3095

If you purchased a reptile from a Petco store that was later diagnosed with Cryptosporidiosis, please contact Tracy Willis.