New to Gecko's

[wyntyrose]

Well being the overly generous person I can be for animals I now have a Leopard Gecko. He came with a 30 gallon aquarium that has a sandy bottom a piece of wood he hides under and a water dispenser thing. My husband grew up with Iguana's but we have no experience with Gecko's so I was wondering if I could get input from more experienced owners. I have no clue what is the "right" food to feed, the former owner told me a few crickets a week and that is all that is needed. So please help me, LOL, so I can give this little guy a good home. Thank you

 

[Dog Shrink]

Welcome to the forum First off do you know how old this LG is? Second Get him OFF the sand. They can ingest it with their feeders and you run the risk of impaction. You can use regular white paper towels or floor tiles for substrait, (check out the thread that says show off your enclosure for ideas) but here is a pic of my enclosure just to give you an idea of what a good natural set up looks like (tooting ma horn here). This is a 20 long with self adhesive simulated slate vinyl tiles from home depot.

As far as feeding that is going to depend on his age. I feed my 7 mos old male LG 4 super worms mon wed fri, then 4 mealies on sunday for a treat, and I dust with repashy calcium plus icb 1-2 times a week, but you can dust with each feeding. If you only dust 1-2x a week, then you'll want to keep a gatoraide cap with some plain calcium in it for him to lap at at will if he feels he needs it.

For his hides you really should have 3. One on the hot side, one on the cool side and 1 moist hide. You can keep mosit sphagnum moss or damp paper towels in there to aide with shedding. Mist every couple few days on the moss or paper towels. Hides don't need to be fancy, a lot of people just use tupperware dishes with holes cut in them for their hides.

Heating is going to be your biggest issue with properly caring for your leo. A hot side temp of 90-93 is optimum. I back my heat off if it gets to 98. You do not need UV lighting with leos, they're noctournal and the UV tends to stress them out. Simply the light from a window should suffice to keep his day/night cycle accurate or you can put a regular incandescent 15 watt light bulb (which will give you about 3 degrees of heat) just to keep him on schedule if it's a dark room. A under tank heater should be all you really need to make the temps right for the hot side. They need that temp gradient to help them balance their body temps. I use a cobra heat mat which puts out a consistant constant 100 degrees and my hot side is always with in range. Make sure you have a probe thermometer directly on the floor OVER the uth so you are getting accurate rreadings. Ambient temperature really doesn't matte with leos. Belly heat does, and they rarely bask so you don't need a basking spot like an iguana might.

Well I think that's a good start. There's some good care sheets in the stickies you might want to get into as well that go into more detail.

 

[Jordan]

i guess Kel pretty much gave you all the information you need.
But id like to add as a constructive criticism and not trying to sound mean... But please try and research the animal BEFORE getting it. especially if what food they eat isnt even known.

And what do you mean a water dispenser btw?
A bowl of water should do for them.

 

[Dog Shrink]

Reptile water dispensers:

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=reptile+water+dispenser&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

sounds to me Jordan like they were doing someone a favor hon and might not have had the time just yet in this situation to read all they should. The previous owner had said "a few crickets a week" which sounds like it came from kind of a lousy situation where it was uncared for, and told her what it ws eating, they wanted to know THE RIGHT stuff/way to feed it.