Leopard gecko talk/”eco earth girl” is disliked on reptiblr, but I’ve rarely seen posts about her. You’ve briefly mentioned that she promotes irresponsible handling and care practices. Could you go into more detail about it? What are proper handling techniques for leopard geckos? Why is dried eco earth a bad substrate for leos? What other husbandry mistakes has she made that other owners should avoid?
To be clear, I have no opinion on YouTube user Leopard Gecko as a person or anything like that.
At least some of her leopard geckos no longer live on Eco Earth. She switched to EarthMix Arid. This is a specifically designed substrate meant for arid naturalistic and bioactive enclosures. She noted many pros over using eco earth in a couple of videos she made.
However, her old videos are still up and afaik she hasn’t posted anything noting that it’s not a safe substrate. When you see any of her videos, including the updated ones, the old ones that aggressively promote eco earth show up in the side bar suggestions.
I personally believe she has improved a great deal over the years. However, unless she takes those old substrate videos down, many of us in the reptile community will be constantly having to do damage control. A lot of new keepers still find her old videos first and start keeping their leos that way, citing her videos as evidence.
By advocating for using eco earth for leopard geckos, she promotes dangerous and misleading husbandry, supports her choices with “experiments” that are very poorly designed and in no way evidence that those husbandry choices are safe. She consistently defends these decisions when the dangers are brought up, and her followers will gang up on anyone who brings up the possible risks.
I hope in the future this will change. However, since her videos are monetized (something she talks about openly) I think it is she is unlikely to take down old videos that promote poor husbandry, if they’re still bringing in money.
In addition to promoting Eco Earth as a safe substrate, she sometimes uses tape inside her reptile enclosures, which is very unsafe. Never use tape inside an enclosure.
I believe the handling thing you mean might be a reference to her repeatedly handling and making videos of her very sick crestie (which she did know was very sick), bothering her while she was laying eggs, and taking a video of her immediately after she lost her tail.
Again, I believe she’s learned from her mistakes and is doing much better. My issue now is that she is not taking down outdated videos with dangerous information.
As for Eco Earth being a bad leopard gecko substrate, here are several posts on the topic:
http://tser.tumblr.com/post/173603305204/hey-there-im-trying-to-make-a-bioactive
http://tser.tumblr.com/post/161287408199/ive-tried-to-find-out-what-substrate-is-best-for
http://sunfish-exotics.tumblr.com/post/155227546522/do-you-think-you-could-elaborate-on-why-eco-earth
To be clear, I love coco fiber/Eco Earth/Plantation Soil for many, many applications! A single ingredient substrate for arid reptile enclosures is not one of them.
