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Colossal Project
Let me start by saying that there are no known giant genes present in this project whatsoever. The roots of the project began in 2016 when I hatched a rather large W&Y Gem snow Copper Tremper het eclipse male called Colossus. He was 5g straight from the egg, easily the biggest hatchling I’d ever had and was visually quite long in structure. At a year old he was already 100g+ and now weighs in at around 130g and is 11.5 inches long.
I’ve never been a huge believer that their is a specific giant gene as such. I’m more in the thinking that when big geckos are paired together then they will produce big and bigger geckos. With that in mind, I decided to pair Colossus to the largest Copper Tremper females I had at the time, most of whom weigh 90g+.
This was the basis of the project for the first three years. Over that time I have held back three more males. Ripper, a W&Y Copper Raptor with a white head void. DeVille, a W&Y Gem snow Copper Raptor with a paradox spot on his head and Lemmy, a vibrant Gem snow Copper Tremper het eclipse, all of whom weigh 100g+.
After three seasons with fairly consistent results I decided to name the line as the Colossal line in 2020 after the big man. Over the coarse of the year I have hatched a fair number of babies that have weighed 5 or 6g straight from the egg, from all four males, which bodes well for the future.
As with all things, there is no guarantee that every gecko will end up being 100g+, but it seems that a fair percentage of the babies will end up achieving this weight. It will be interesting to see as the years go on if the average size and weight increases year on year, therefore proving that size can be affected by selective line breeding.
For the 2021 season I have kept back an additional Gem Snow copper Tremper male who has incredible colour and pattern, but yet remains to be seen if he reaches the size of the other males in the project. He has some equally impressive females to be paired with him, so even if he doesn’t quite make the colossal grade he will no doubt along with those females, provide some outstanding offspring.
I have high hopes for this project in the coming years to see if I can replicate the size of colossus, but also to enhance the colour and patterns of future offspring.