New Crestie Owner

[dmbfan128]

So i bought my little guy about 2 & 1/2 weeks ago and i have been feeding him crickets and trying to feed him the CGD. I was wondering how often i should be feeding him he is just under three months old. Right now i have been throwing some crickets in his cage at night and usually they are gone by the morning. I also try feeding him the CGD mixed with baby food a few times a week off the end of a wood stir stick but he usually doesnt eat it or just eats a very tiny amount. Is there a better schedule i should adopt? Because lately i have only been feeding him at night.

 

[ketz]

You might try leaving the CGD in a little cup for him to eat it out of, rather than put it on the end of a stick. Also, I think baby food is generally considered to not be very good the Cresteds, so you might want to leave that out too, baby food is too high in sugars that aren't healthy.

 

[Srt14292]

No babyfood, repashy 2 part diet or cgd mixed with some pupaed fruit will suffice, also feeding crix only once or twice a week is all you need, (generally i feed locusts/crix weekends)

 

[dmbfan128]

pupaed fruit? I bought the Repashy Crested Gecko Diet, and it says to add water. Should i just be doing that it gets pretty watery though and it tends to dry up in a couple hours.

 

[sunshinegeckofarm]

no baby food its a no no for lizards. if you want it get used to eating CGD then feed only CGD and see if you see it poop then you know its eating it. a small crestie 2-3 months old probably only weighs about 3-4 grams will not eat a whole lot so get a bottle cap or something small like that and put a tiny amount in there so maybe you can notice if it eats. You can get the 1-part Crested Gecko Diet or the 2-part Crested Gecko Diet but no baby food and once you estabish that its eating CGD then you can introduce crickets to it again and feed crickets once or twice a week that are well gutloaded and dusted with calcium. if you see its not eating too much CGD then put some on its nose nightly like a drop and let it lick it off. I know someone else has put mixed CGD on crickets in a bowl type thing and got a crestie to get used to eating CGD in that fashion also.

http://www.pangeareptile.com/store/index.php?target=categories&category_id=165
Crested Gecko Diet 1-part diet

http://www.pangeareptile.com/store/index.php?target=categories&category_id=166
Crested Gecko Diet 2-part diet

 

[darkridder]

You really dont want to mess with the CGD formula unless you have a gecko who really doesnt want to eat it because they were raised on baby food. If your gecko is pooping then it is eating the CGD fine. You can offer pureed fruit as a treat every now and again if you wish straight, but I would do it only once a month if you are going to. would go with the CGD over the part 2 right now only because mixing the part 2 can be tricky to get the proper nutrition and quite often geckos will get hooked on it and refuse to eat anything else beause of it, I have that problem with 2 geckos I had bought, both were raised on mango part 2 and would rather starve (they both lost 10g in trying to convert), I gave up and they are now the only 2 geckos who get the part 2 diet. You can use CGD as a cricket dusting also. But these guys are slow growers, often 3g is a 4month old gecko (unless you feed crickets often), so dont worry to much about how fast it is growing so long as you see poop you know it is eating.

 

[rubym]

If you use baby food my herp vet said to try and get the organic. I just buy mangos, peaches and banana and puree it and freeze it in cubes. They eat fruit in the wild so my vet said to give them small amounts mixed with the Repashy. I feed it everynight. I only do crix a couple times a week. This is just how I do it !

 

[adam&nikki]

organic babdy food is the best choice of baby food if they wont eat the cgd just give hime time and your crestie will come around to eating it

 

[darkridder]

the problem with baby food is the added sugar to it, even organic has added sugar to it. So unless you get no sugar added baby food, it seriously isnt good for them. But adding the baby food to the diet, the other issue is that is seriously throws off the balance of the food making it not as nutritional. If foods were meant to be added to it Allen would have wrote on the package that it was OK to. And the best choice to offer if they wont eat CGD is not baby food, it is harder to get them to take it. If that is the case you want to mix pureed fruit or fruit nectar with the CGD for natural flavoring and wean them off of it. If you ask any well versed owner and breeder they will tell you the same.

 

[Saille]

I absolutely 100% agree with darkridder and the others, babyfood throws off the nutritional balance of the CGD and I have seen many geckos show up with MBD and/or calcium crashes after a year or two of being fed such a poor diet.
Please, for you gecko's sake, cut the babyfood, feed it only CGD mixed as per the directions on the bottle/bag.
We always recommend CGD only to new Crestie owners because properly supplementing babyfood is very difficult, costly, and inefficient money-wise. After all, the CGD is already properly prepared, supplemented, and lab tested, proven. Why mess with a good thing?

A healthy cresty will not starve itself, and stubborn gex can take up to 2-3 months to make the switch. I recommend cutting out the crickets completely and feeding only CGD until you know the gecko is established on it. (eating it, poops in the cage)
If you are really having issues getting your crestie to eat, get a couple of crickets, gutload them ont he CGD, then dunk them in the wet CGD and tong feed them to your gecko. Then offer the CGD only for the next 2-3 weeks. If your gecko doesn't take to it, repeat. Eventually the gecko will make the switch.
Good luck!

 

[dmbfan128]

Alright so taking all your advice, which has been very helpful, i am not going to give him crickets for awhile and i threw out the CGD i had already mixed with baby food. Im going to throw together some CGD with some water tonight and leave it in a small dish for him. How much time should go by -if he doesnt poop- before i should start worrying?

 

[sunshinegeckofarm]

Clean the cage of all other poop. Paper towel is a good substrate so you can monitor whats going on. in a couple of days if its eaten CGD it will have poop in the cage. it might take an adjustment period if it was used to babyfood/CGD mix but it shouldn't be as bad as those fed only baby food. have it lick some CGD off your finger or spoon and maybe dunk a cricket in the mixed CGD n feed it to it. how old is the gecko? how big of a cage is it in? if its a small gecko i recommend a small cage its easier for them to find their food then.

 

[dmbfan128]

He is only 8 weeks old and i am using paper towel right now for substrate. He never really ate the CGD anyway so i have been just feeding him crickets. The cage is a 12x12x12 cage so it isnt too big and there isnt much in it, just a water dish a piece of driftwood and an artificial plant so that hes got some places to hide. I'll put a picture up later tonight. Lately he also wont eat anything out of my hand probably because i just moved from home back into my dorm room so its a new, louder environment.