tremper incubation method

ok to get this forum rolling i wanted to get peoples thoughs and opinions on the tremper incubation method...
any of you who do not know
he starts incubation i believe at 80 degrees to determine the sex (female), this lasts for 2 week.. after the two week he put the animal in a 90 degree incubator for the remainder until it hatches.
now what this does the manipulating of the temps is causes amounts of melanin in the animals... resulting in lighter brighter animals.....
now while they make look pretty and all it sure doesnt say a thing about the animals genetics.. i mean yeah its an albino but its light coloration isnt an effect of a genetic mutation.
to me its cheating. now while each to their own, i belive if you incubate this way you should planely state it, to me it makes a HUGE difference and personally i would not knowingly buy an animal incubated this way.
i give credit to the people who are selectively breeding their animals to achieve this putting there time and effort into the animal, which in my mind would result in a much more sound animal genetically.
because if i bought two tremper albinos whom had been tremper temp manipulated and bred then and incubated the eggs normall and hatched out brown albinos i would be pissed...... ok so lets here it and i invite you to the poll and to comment

Thing is...

This isn't an incubation method which forces the animals into temperature ranges outside that which are acceptable for the production of healthy animals (Like the old "pastel" RES "trick").

It's also a method which is widely known and can be replicated by anyone who's breeding their own animals... it's not as if Ron has made a major secret of this strategy. Rather than being irate at brownish neonates, why not just use the same methods? (Not aimed at anyone in particular, just a general question).

I frankly think that the tyrosinase positive strain of albinism represents a greater potential when it comes to the development of additional morphs, the added ability to manipulate the density of melanocytes by manipulating incubation temperature is just another advantage to the strain.

While I am wholeheartedly against the "creation" of morphs using kool-aid or photoshop, incubation temperature fluxuations within the acceptable healthy range for the species result in an animal which will not change color the first time it sheds. The tremper strain has always been represented as a tyrosinase positive strain, any brownish neonates are the responsibility of the breeder... Anyone who isn't familiar enough with the basic pigment production process and the genetics involved with the strain really has no business breeding morphs anyway (or anything else, but I'm picky about what breeders should know, this information is pretty basic).

Just my opinion though.

you have some goof points.. but i see it as being misleading
it has no bearing of the genetics the animal holds. if left at cooler temps these temp manipulated animals will revert and turn at least a portion back it its "somewhat" original color, being brownish.
all forms of albinos thus far in leopard geckos... bell, rainwater and trempers are tryonaise positive... each other them different and i think you can get your diversity there or by selective breeding but not by manipulating temps... just my thoughts

I will not use that method to incubate my leopard gecko eggs because of the really poor results I had on a "test" group of 100 eggs last year. I had a very poor hatch rate and also had an unusually high number of deformities with this group of eggs that I incubated using the Tremper method. Big temperature fluctuations and reptile egg incubation do not go well together! Oh, yeah and to top it all off, most of the geckos turned out male anyway!

I think Tremper probably had to come out a couple of years ago and explain how he incubates his leo eggs. He had been using the method for years, which is why people would buy yellow and pink/white albinos from him, breed them and get some brown babies when incubated normally.

I don't really have a problem with those who use this method to incubate eggs. They can incubate them however the want to but I do think it is only fair to the buyers that these breeders that choose to do this make it clear that their animals are a result of using this method. Lately I think there has become a sort of "stigma" attached to those breeders using this method to incubate their Tremper albino eggs, and I am pretty sure a couple of them are denying the use of the method when they obviously do use it (not going to name names here). For instance they may have announced on their website that they do use this incubation method with no adverse effects but now all of the sudden that statement is gone and they publically deny using the tremper method!

But if there is no problem with Tremper's incubation method than why do some feel the need to hide it from customers? Hmmm food for thought I guess..

How specific has Tremper gotten in his description of the methods used?

Meaning... leopard geckos aren't my favorite things, I pay attention to them because they are reptiles but only to a certain degree unless a point catches my interest (like this thread). Last I had seen, it was simply stated that the temperatures were raised after the phase of growth encompassing gender determination but before the development of pigment producing cells. Has the timeline become more specific? Has the exact method become more specific? Meaning; there's a big difference between switching the incubation temperature by ten, fifteen degrees over the course of five days or a week and then doing the same within a span of minutes.

I know that the two other individuals who have responded on this thread are a far cry away from the single pair basement breeders who might be screwing this up left and right and baking their babies, but depending on how specific a description was given, there still leaves a great deal of room for personal interpretation into the method, which might result in differing degrees of success.

I do see and acknowledge the point about the potential to misrepresent an animal, IF the animals are sold specifically as breeders, with a strong emphasis on the color as a selling point... But even then, the animals themselves are the color that they appear and they are from a bloodline or group of breeding stock which has the potential to replicate the color, it's just a bit tricker than a direct crossing of animals where the phenotype is entirely genotypical without the environmental influence.

I as well used the tremper method for the last two years. The results were not even close to what I was looking for as far as TSD is concerned. I had a total of 42 eggs between last two breeding seasons, four geckos turned out to be female. (Staggering I know) pretty upset myself. Although I only hatched one deformed gecko that ran around in circles, this wasn't enough for me to believe that it was actually due to the TSD method rather than a genetics glitch. My interpretation from Trempers site, lead me to believe that he implied to keep two incubators, one at 80-82 degrees and one at 90 degrees. I already knew that such a temperature fluctuation would surely kill or deform the embryos. I had three hovabators hooked up to rheostats. The first one kept temperatures that slightly fluctuated between 81-82 degrees. The second I used in order to acclimate the eggs up to 90 degrees over a four day period, a few times I ran into the circumstance where I had to let a couple eggs incubate at 82 degrees for three weeks rather than the two. The third incubator also slightly fluctuated between 89-90 degrees. Not only did I hatch out 96% males but the overall color of the geckos were not affected at all! I just hatched what I believe to be a patternless stripe albino, that I can almost guarantee it to be male, but is also so dark, that other than eye color you'd never know it to be albino. It too was incubated at 82 for two weeks then brought up to ninety and is currently being held at 90 degrees in it's sweater box. This year I will try holding the eggs all at 82 degrees and see what happens.

I still do not understand why this incubation technique is called "the Tremper Method". It is the "Viets, Crews, and Di Prima Method"!!!

I think in 2 years we have kind of figured out everything about the tremper method , well not everything but a lot. Date

Originally Posted by Golden Gate Geckos

I still do not understand why this incubation technique is called "the Tremper Method". It is the "Viets, Crews, and Di Prima Method"!!!

LOL sorry Marcia, it's just that most of us started out a bit later and our first time learning of the method, we learned it from the info on his site. It's just easier to relate the topic to the younger gen. leo breeders such as myself.

...we learned it from the info on his site.

Well, I know I'm an "old-schooler" (LOL!), but sometimes I get a wild hair when RT gets credit for everything, and especially stuff that he doesn't deserve credit for!