Bad Guy Ember gecko....

[Pasodama]

Absolutely. I agree, with you, 100%.

 

[nlcoe]

The issue I had was I bought the "ember" glow thinking they had ember in them. So I am a little upset that I bought these thinking they where embers and they are not so now I am at a loss. My project is not ruined but it is set back by a year or two.

 

[kouneli]

Nikki, not only was the gecko named after a specific morph, leading you to believe that it contained the same genes as that true morph, but also he wont disclose the genetics that animal might have. That's one of the biggest no-nos in breeding. That's why there are pet quality animals...such as animals from test breeding. Why would any breeder want to buy from him (or anyone else that doesn't say what their animals may be het for)? When a breeder is working on a project, they usually don't want surprises such as mp popping up along the way...or in your case, no mp when it should've been a sure thing. What else is this animal het for? Problem is is that we don't know, all because James won't come out of hiding and say the possible hets. He doesn't have to say EXACTLY how he went through the project, but simply state the exact recessive genes involved. Sure, he has said Tremper, but no mp. But is there mp further back in the breeding? What about other genes being involved? To me, without him disclosing the genes that he knows are involved and at the same time calling something that isn't (calling them embers when they are not...or even involving that morph name in a project that does not include the genes necessary to produce an ember)...just makes all of his geckos pet quality in my eyes. Even Ron has disclosed what genes were involved in creating the galaxies.

 

[nlcoe]

So I am out $900 on these geckos that are pet quality and he won't give me my money back. He keeps referring me to his terms of service, but he just ripped me off. He doesn't want to accept any blame for ripping me off. So now I am screwed over, I was wrong in trusting him. Now I feel I am not going to be able to truly trust any breeder.

 

[Kristi23]

So I am out $900 on these geckos that are pet quality and he won't give me my money back. He keeps referring me to his terms of service, but he just ripped me off. He doesn't want to accept any blame for ripping me off. So now I am screwed over, I was wrong in trusting him. Now I feel I am not going to be able to truly trust any breeder.

There are plenty of good breeders out there. Don't let one bad experience ruin that for you.

 

[imabirdmom]

Nikki, I tried to stay out of this but feel I need to also add my 2 cents. In October 2013 I purchased a 1.3 group of giant/super giant Sunglows from Ember Gecko. If you are only out $900 feel lucky. I spent $1345 on my group. I thought I was spending money to get the best stock out there. My geckos had issues right away and I contacted James with the fact that they failed to eat. Eventually they settled in but I will never say they were big eaters and eventually quite trying to make them eat a strictly mealworm diet and began offering them dubias and hornworms but it was always a fight to get them to eat especially the smallest of the 3. I put them into breeding when they hit the 1 year mark in June 2014. In July I sent him this email "I have some questions. I purchased a lavender stripe male giant, 2 super giant sunglow females and one giant SG female. I put them into breeding in June because I wanted them to all be 1 year before I bred them. It didn't go well. One female retained eggs and I lost her at the vets. That was the giant female. Then one of the SG females stopped eating suddenly and her abdomen was huge so I separated her figuring she was gravid. Next day she dropped her tail. I blamed myself figuring it was the sudden change back into the rack. That was over 3 weeks ago. Her stomach is still huge and she's laid no eggs has eaten 5 mealworms total and tonight her upper abdomen is turning black inside. Her stomach is seriously huge but after the last failed attempt at the vet and having just had a health crisis with my dog I'm reluctant to take her to the vet. Any ideas? I'm sick about them. The male I got several normal high yellow babies out of him bred to a HY SG female I had and I have 4 eggs in the incubator out of the other SG sunglow female from you but I had so hope for a several SG sunglow babies to help offset the $1350 I paid for them. I know there are no guarantees but do you have troubles like this? I feed my geckos a varied diet of superworms, mealworms, hornworms and the occasional cricket. They get their food dusted with Repashy LG dust every single feeding and my girls had calcium armpit bubbles prior to going into breeding and my single female left from the 3 is 104 grams coming out of breeding and still looks great. I'm sick about what happened but determined to go on. Any advice/direction appreciated." I was desperate to know what he might know about my problem. Prior to this I had been breeding Petco leopard geckos together as a hobby and had been for about 4 years. Never lost a single gecko adult or baby and suddenly I have this crap going on. The next day I received this reply. "James Steinert <[email protected]> wrote:

Kathy,

Sorry to hear you have had such bad luck. Diet is a big thing. Note in our care and feeding we specifically only feed standard 1in mealworms and never vary from this diet. We never dust the feed as this puts them off the food. Instead we gut load the worms as per our gut loading article. We do provide vitamins in a cap in the cage at all times. note the type we use in the care instructions.

The one female at 103 grams is very big. Good luck with her and your male.

Have you ever read Ron Trempers book on Leopard Geckos? This is were we received all of our Leopard Geckos education over the years.

James

Thank You for your interest in Embergecko.com"

Apparently breaking from the 1" mealworm feeders killed them?? I then asked him "K Smith
7/16/14
To: James Steinert
I was mostly wondering what you make out of the female with the dark belly and the huge abdomen ever see anything like that?" and never got a reply. The 103 gram female that was very big and he wished me luck over gave me 4 eggs. 2 died in the shell. 2 hatched and both had strange underbites (I still have one of them as a pet) and had "floppy legs" when they were born. No idea why. I mega dosed them with calcium and they eventually walked normally but I would NEVER breed them. Their mother went on to blow up like a balloon like the other had. Vet ended up spaying her to save her life. She had masses of half formed eggs inside her and vet said he was surprised she laid anything at all because her female organs were unlike anything he'd ever seen. So for $1350 I had over $1000 in vet bills, the original giant male that came with the group, a spayed female and her messed up daughter to show for it. Oh I did have a bunch of high yellows from him I didn't keep because it wasn't the color I had wanted. Someone I FB I was talking to about this said they had lost a female SG to similar symptoms and said James told them that he'd seen that in his own geckos and that it was 70% fatal but never said what it was or what caused it. I'm guessing hornworms or dubias (eye roll). Same year this cluster you know what happened I had 50 babies born here out of my normal group which included females 3 from a couple local breeders and a lovely male from Ron Tremper. I don't know wth to make out of what happened but I know it was NOT diet related. I have the emails if I need to post them here as proof but not going to clog this post with ancient history but making it clear you are not the 1st nor will you likely be the last.

 

[nlcoe]

Thank you for your input on this. Is there anyway to stop him from selling these poor animals. Well I guess its just educate others and ask them to not buy from this man.

 

[imabirdmom]

I am completely vocal whenever I hear anyone even thinking about something he has. Never been so sorry I saw a website in my entire life.

 

[6jasteinert]

Hi everyone, James here with Embergeko.com

I want to thank you all for participating in my little experiment. You are all awesome!

Let me explain. Several years ago a customer of mine came on this site and pulled the biggest scam on you all i have ever seen. This was the guy who claimed i sold him a Sunglow and it never grew out to Super Giant and some how it was my fault. Well long story short you guys ate up his story and never ever even thought maybe this guy was nuts. Well he was and i told you he was, but again who did you believe. so i did the good breeder thing and offered him a refund even though he had the gecko for a year. He sent me the animal back and wow, to my amazement it had a broken leg that had healed poorly. Gecko died a week later. I suspect this may have effected it growth!

I have to say this sort of pissed me off!

I decided that day that if i ever find myself in this situation again on this site i would run a little experiment on you all. The fun begins.

Nikki Coe, truly sorry you had a problem with your geckos. Unfortunately you never ever informed us of the problem. Wow, you insisted on this site that you had email us numerous times. You never did and golly gee you even finally admitted it on the first part of this thread.

But what was amazing was that you still you managed to garner support for your argument that we were the bad guys. you are a pissed off bunch of folks with clearly nothing better to do with you time. Any of you that actually sell geckos know you cant just give people back there money for no reason just because they ask for it. 3 months later i too long. sorry Nikki, your bad.

Anyway i am rambling. The experiment begins.

So i planted some fuel on the fire. Nikki kept asking about the Ember Glow genetics and our Ember genetics. so who would like to guess was the one thing i said to egg you all on?

Come on you can figure it out. LOL The comment about our ember not having MP genetics. Really you ate this up. how the hell do you create embers any other way. Seriously, you guys talked in depth on this for pages and pages. Wow are you gullible.

Sure brought out the haters. I have had many many of my breeder friends contact me on this and i have to say its been a good time.

For those of you claiming i sold you 100 grams plus geckos and you managed to kill them and claim i sent you unhealthy geckos. Wow. How many of you have ever even grown geckos this big? and of the ones that have, did their health make a difference in how big they got, sure as hell does. Big geckos don't get big unless they are healthy. How do you all read stuff like this and not question that?

The other part of this experiment is this. when you last pissed n me over the Sunglow incident, my search increased 10 fold, as it has again in the last few days. so if you all want to keep this thread going i am all good with that.

Thank you!

 

[Kristi23]

So James, if your emberglows are MP, how come none of them look like MP? How was it possible for an ember x emberglow not produce a MP? Your last post made you look like a pissed off breeder who go caught doing something wrong. You think your experiment was smart and made you look good? It made you look like a liar. Nothing more.

 

[Pasodama]

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive".
Just remember that any speculation was brought upon by yourself. After all, you made the statement that your Embers were not based on Murphy Patternless. Plus, some other statements elsewhere.
You could have been professional by giving an appropriate answer/explanation. That would have gotten at least some measure of respect.
Instead, we get this drivel (post #89) from you.

 

[Pasodama]

So James, if your emberglows are MP, how come none of them look like MP? How was it possible for an ember x emberglow not produce a MP? Your last post made you look like a pissed off breeder who go caught doing something wrong. You think your experiment was smart and made you look good? It made you look like a liar. Nothing more.

............

 

[Kristi23]

My best guess is that they are mostly trempers (het eclipse/mp). The ones on the site look like trempers I see from other breeders. If that's the case, he's making a name for the morph combo that is very misleading to newer keepers/breeders. IMO, that is not ok. Nor is the behavior I've seen here.

 

[6jasteinert]

Seriously, you pissed on me first by not questioning the validity of this persons claim. Just like you did the last time i had a run in with this site. you guys always choose the low road and never verify a single claim. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

In the years i have been in this business we have sold thousands of animals, and it goes to say not everyone is happy and not everyone is credible. i have had customers who bought geckos and then killed them for fun and contacted us the following day to say the gecko arrived dead on arrival. then we shipped them replacements and found out from a friend of the person that they had killed them for fun. I have had people put place their geckos in hot water to help them pass eggs to have them only cook their gecko and then blame us for the outcome.

It can get old sometimes and it can take the joy out of doing your best to be a good responsible breeder.

Then to have a site like this one crap on you. shame on you.

As for Nikki Coe, i cant take anything she says at face value. I still cant fathom that no one picked up on her claim that she emailed us numerous times and we ignored her requests. Then she outright admitted oh golly i didn't email them. Not a single comment from any of you. what is wrong with you people, wake up.

This site needs to learn to act responsibly and verify a claim before they drag breeders over the coals. Just you all wait until you are on the receiving end, then you will understand.

I wont comment again on this site. You will notice i never had an account here before this and have no interest in what happens here in the future.

 

[Kristi23]

Seriously, you pissed on me first by not questioning the validity of this persons claim. Just like you did the last time i had a run in with this site. you guys always choose the low road and never verify a single claim. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

In the years i have been in this business we have sold thousands of animals, and it goes to say not everyone is happy and not everyone is credible. i have had customers who bought geckos and then killed them for fun and contacted us the following day to say the gecko arrived dead on arrival. then we shipped them replacements and found out from a friend of the person that they had killed them for fun. I have had people put place their geckos in hot water to help them pass eggs to have them only cook their gecko and then blame us for the outcome.

It can get old sometimes and it can take the joy out of doing your best to be a good responsible breeder.

Then to have a site like this one crap on you. shame on you.

As for Nikki Coe, i cant take anything she says at face value. I still cant fathom that no one picked up on her claim that she emailed us numerous times and we ignored her requests. Then she outright admitted oh golly i didn't email them. Not a single comment from any of you. what is wrong with you people, wake up.

This site needs to learn to act responsibly and verify a claim before they drag breeders over the coals. Just you all wait until you are on the receiving end, then you will understand.

I wont comment again on this site. You will notice i never had an account here before this and have no interest in what happens here in the future.

I was worried about Nikki's animal, yes, but mostly I worried about the genetics issues/questions. That is my first concern (not that any animal should be sent sick and I'm pretty sure you'll be getting more people replying here soon).

If you chose to walk away and not answer questions/concerns, that shows a lot about you. Yes, we can all have bad deals or crappy things happen. It's how we deal with the situation that defines the type of person/breeder we are. Lying and then saying you wont' reply any more is beyond immature and irresponsible.

You can chose to talk like an adult and fix things or you can walk away and see what it does to your reputation. You've been around long enough to know how tight knit us leopard gecko breeders are.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

So James, if your emberglows are MP, how come none of them look like MP? How was it possible for an ember x emberglow not produce a MP? Your last post made you look like a pissed off breeder who go caught doing something wrong. You think your experiment was smart and made you look good? It made you look like a liar. Nothing more.

That is all I took away from his post. His genetics claims and his naming schemes appear to be inaccurate. Naming less as more is not responsible practice.

 

[GeckoLabs]

Maybe the larger issue is that people do not need to question the validity of recurring stories against the same breeder, given the number of 'virgin' juvenile-subadult females shipped recently that have gone to not only ovulate, but produce offspring, despite your claims of them never being with a male.

Your arrogance and ignorance in your responses is certainly not helping your case, and lying to egg on an 'experiment' on a public review forum regarding your business is dumb, at best.

As my input regarding embergecko:
I received a pair of Tremper eclipses from James last year, both supposedly from Giant x SuperGiant pairings.
The male was roughly 9 months old upon shipping, and arrived at a healthy weight, and the female was roughly 4 months old, at a meager 23g (doesn't seem Giant to me- but gave the benefit of the doubt.)
NEITHER animal would eat for weeks; not just the typical 2-5 week acclimation period, but 9 weeks for the female, and 10 weeks for the male. During which time, the female dropped to 13g,not becoming sickly thin, but simply losing body mass, and the male dropped from 87g to 72g (not a terrible cause for concern.)

I had emailed James multiple times after the first 3 weeks had passed attempting to figure out how they housed their animals, their supplementation routines, feeding routines, etc (unfortunately no longer have the emails in my inbox as I have shifted to a new email address, but if he's so diligent regarding keeping track of emails he should have no issues finding them .) Only after I believe was the third email did I receive a response, which simply redirected me to the care sheet on their site, which did not have any of the information I had asked, aside from stating that they fill the food bowl with X amount of mealworms every Y number of days.

I was finally able to get mine to eat steadily after weeks of syringe feeding GGG slurry and carnivore care once they finally accepted it. The male has gone on and done great. The female has gone on to barely push 55g, certainly not giant by any means, despite being from acclaimed G x SG pairing.

Less than acceptable customer relations, regardless of how many animals you produce in a year.
Since my experience, I have warned people to avoid them, as my experience was certainly not the only negative one to be had, and more continue to accumulate.

 

[GeckoLabs]

Oh, and additionally, a recurring trend in purchased animals from Embergecko is that they arrive drastically different looking than the photos provided on the listings; so are the pictures edited or do you gutload feeders to color boost?

 

[mikew1234]

We're forgetting the point of the thread to focus on his genetics. Were the animals shipped gravid? What's wrong with the gecko that's deteriorating? Did he send an animal which he knew was sick? Why wasn't a phone call placed after the emails weren't responded to? He has his personal number right on his site. Three months is a long time to balk on getting in touch with someone. I know if I was having problems with animals, and was getting no answers I would find any means possible to get in touch with them.
The genetics weren't questioned until James chose to play games, or whatever he's doing. There's other issues than the genetics at hand.

 

[kouneli]

So you lied about your embers not having mp just for kicks? Geeze...what else have you lied about? Why should anyone trust the genetics on your geckos now?