calcium bubbles?

i noticed that a couple of my adults have what i have heard described as 'calcium bubbles' under thier front arms(armpits). i have been giving about 12 to 15 mealies every other night. i dust with rep cal multi vitamins once a week, and have been doing the rep cal calcium with d3 twice a week. i also have a cap of calcium in the cages....my question is this; am i giving too much calcium? since i noticed this, i took out the caps from the affected animals. i have been keeping reptiles for over 25 years, but mostly snakes, so i am pretty new to the suplimentation systems. will these bubbles absorb after a while? am i feeding a little too much? they are deffinately liquid filled bubbles. any help would be much appreciated! thanks in advance! rick

From my research online, people that have gotten those bubbles tested said they came out to be liquid protein & fat. It has long been thought they are calcium bubbles but so far I haven't found anybody who actually had those biopsies done say they found any calcium. The few that did have those bubbles examined said the results were all liquid protein + fat.

So the common suggestion when your gecko gets these pockets is to 1) feed less, most geckos these days are overfed as people automatically assume bigger gecko = healthy gecko, and that's just not true. Also 2) supplement less, as hypervitaminosis is a very serious issue and again, most people assume more vitamins = better but that's simply not true. Too much vitamins of any kind can be toxic.

Doing both usually result in a gradual reduction of these bubbles. By the way some people think these bubbles are normal harmless developments in geckos as some female geckos would feed a lot in preparation for the breeding season, and that these bubbles come & go throughout the season. Not everybody agree with that so you have to make your own judgements. Generally I would say feed less and dust less if you see these bubbles develop with your geckos. It's better to be safe than sorry, and fat geckos are not healthy geckos.

i totally agree about overfeeding is a huge issue. i also agree that an overfed animal is not healthy. in my own research while breeding snakes, (males especially) anything other than very athletic built animals make very poor breeders! i think i will just drop my feeding to every three days, and cut my suplimentation in half, and see how they do. thanks for your help! so should these bubble go away after a couple of months, or will this take longer? thanks again!

It'll take months, it's pretty gradual. I have a female (the one that laid my first hatchlings) that has those bubbles. I'm cutting back on both feeders and supplements, and it's taking a long time so far for the pockets to reduce in size. It's getting smaller, but it has been a lil over a month since I cut back on her feeding.

By calcium bubbles do you mean gout?

not gout

gout is a build up of lactic acids, totally different than the protien and fat bubbles, that others have called 'calcium bubbles'. i have heard that there have been others who have found that it is protiens, so i will no longer call them calcium bubbles, i will call them protien bubbles...seems like the appropriet thing to call them to me....