First Leos.... Help me please

[Brian J. Klingenberg]

To everyone,
First I would like to introduce myself, My name is Brian and I recently have acquired 3 Leos, 1 male and 2 females....

Let me first say this.... I was uneducated and had a "spur of the moment" buy when with my girlfriend while at a pet store.... These amazing creatures were on sale and well, I had a decent sized tank to start so I said what the hell....

So the uneducated employee had given some general tips and tricks... None of which were helpful or correct for the most part but I learned my lesson...

I have a 29 gallon tank with 4 hides. Although these aren't setup 100% correctly I've been doing research to fix my situation.

I bought sand, and have that as my substrate.... Going to go home today and fix this, I have COCO and slate I will be replacing ASAP along with some nice "furniture"


I guess my question is more along the lines of....

I have 1 Male and 2 females, been reading that I should keep the male in a seperate tank until the females are ready to mate or they will get stressed. Although all the geckos were bought out of the same itty bitty tank, they don't seem to fight and have witnessed over the past 2 nights all 3 were laying with each other in the warm hide....

Although I am incapable of getting another FULL setup (plan on getting another 29 gallon...) will this trio be alright for the time being?!

I'll try to post pics as soon as I can!

 

[OnlineGeckos]

If they're young geckos, they should be ok for the time being. But you want to setup a separate tank as soon as possible for the male.

 

[Brian J. Klingenberg]

Will also note I have a 150W heat lamp that is on 24/7 and a 60W basking lamp I turn on for 8 hours a day....

 

[OnlineGeckos]

Yeah I can tell you were sold a lot of things that you don't need by pet store employees. Take a look at a care guide I have, there are also lots of great care guides out there. You'll find certain things most people agree on. For your setup, you definitely want to toss the heat lamp & basking light, and install an under tank heating pad. That 150w is way too hot, and 60w is also up there. Leopard geckos are crepuscular species, they are most active at dawn/dusk & at night. The basking lamp is unnecessary as long as you supplement them properly with multivitamin + D3.

Now's a good time to forget what the pet store employees told you and do some research online for some real, good information

 

[Brian J. Klingenberg]

Yeah I can tell you were sold a lot of things that you don't need by pet store employees. Take a look at a care guide I have, there are also lots of great care guides out there. You'll find certain things most people agree on. For your setup, you definitely want to toss the heat lamp & basking light, and install an under tank heating pad. That 150w is way too hot, and 60w is also up there. Leopard geckos are crepuscular species, they are most active at dawn/dusk & at night. The basking lamp is unnecessary as long as you supplement them properly with multivitamin + D3.

Now's a good time to forget what the pet store employees told you and do some research online for some real, good information

My basement is kind of chilly, in the "cooler" area it is 75* ambient and warmer area it is in the low 90's...

I'm going to be working on moving from the heat lamp / basking lamp, and move to a UTH, but until then I'm going to have to use these unfortunately. IS there anything else I should take into consideration until I get another tank / UTH underway?

 

[OnlineGeckos]

75 ambient is not bad at all really, you only need supplemental heating if your ambient falls below 70 on a consistent basis.

For now, just make sure you test the floor temperature of your terrarium. The hot spot on the terrarium floor needs to be 90-95 degrees. You'll need to use either a temperature gun or digital thermometer with a probe to test the floor temperature. Air temperature isn't that big of an issue, as leopard geckos require belly heat in order to digest food properly. So you have to make sure the warm spot on the floor is 90-95 degrees, test it properly and you could use a thermostat or even a rheostat to adjust the amount of heat coming from the heat lamp & basking light. All this would be temporary of course while you settle in and get switched over to UTH and tiles.

And if your ambient temperature is in the 70's and 80's then you're fine, ambient in the 90's is too hot so make sure you don't place the tank in that area.

 

[Brian J. Klingenberg]

Thank you! The area under my lamp is nice and warm on the rocks, I will put a probed thermometer on these rocks to check the temperature. I have tried a rheostat on the warming light but haven't gotten any favorable outcomes.