I've noticed something: My girlfriend feeds hers lots of calcium, but hers is showing signs of early Metabolic Bone Disease. My cousin fed his lots of calcium, his died of Metabolic Bone Disease and floppy tail syndrome. Mine has had it immobilze her twice, even though I increase calcium and make sure she eats til she's totally unwilling to eat more each time...in the case of Petri, which is the one I own, she is fine one day then in less than 24 hours will get every single symptom of advanced Metabolic Bone Disease, even though she gets fed calcium powder in increased amounts after egg laying! What is the deal with them and constantly getting Metabolic Bone Disease, despite ridiculous amounts of calcium?

All the geckos came from a different breeder from different parts of Canada, so why do they all share the same weakness?

Noticed this post because of the Metabolic Bone Disease. I have an iguana that had Metabolic Bone Disease when I got her. With iguanas it takes the correct balance of diet, heat and UVB. If any of these are not correct then Metabolic Bone Disease can result. Also oversupplementing of calcium can cause Hypercalcemia. Not sure if the same is true with Crested Geckos though.

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Does the calcium supplement that you are using also contain D3? Because I read that Crested Geckos should be given calcium with D3 in it. Not too sure how accurate that information is but it could possibly be the problem.

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Humm.. your post is a bit confusing. Let me start by saying that they don't "get" Metabolic Bone Disease (like you get a cold), they "develop" Metabolic Bone Disease (like you develop intellectual skills for example). It takes time... it's a degenerative condition and not a virus or something similar.

Second, you said "then in less than 24 hours will get every single symptom of advanced Metabolic Bone Disease". What are those symptoms?

Third, "ridiculous amounts of calcium" cause hypercalcemia like Marie said.
Quoting Melissa Kaplan: " Hypercalcemia in turn causes bone defects, cardiac changes, shock, renal hypertension and failure and death at especially high levels. Bone defects and cardiac involvement may not be apparent to the iguana owner until the condition is well advanced. Once shock and renal failure set it, it is usually too late."

Beth, some breeders say you should, others say you shouldn't. Quite a few people say D3 should be left alone for the animals to produce themselves, granting them access to UVB radiation (either natural or artificial).

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You are very right about that one, it's hard to determine what advice on the internet is solid and what is not. I try to give all my reptiles at least some exposure to UVB light as much as I can. The CWDs get it every day for around 12 hours but the nocturnal species I have which aren't supposed to need it get it also but not every day.

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Yeah, I didn't mean that I give them overall TOO MUCH...besides, she doesn't eat it no matter what the concentrations, little rugrat. Anyways, I was just wondering mainly if Crested Geckos are particularily vulnerable to this condition.

BTW, I know it's not like a virus, I've read up on it...

Oh, the symptoms: Anorexia, Constipation, loss of limb function, twitching the toes and spaced out ness. Then with some calcium fed to her, she got panniky and hyper.

She doesn't have them NOW, mind you, I just brought this up cause I realized the correlation between every crestie I know existing AND developing Metabolic Bone Disease.