leopard gecko info please :)

[amanda509]

okay, now that i have a job, i will be setting up for a pair of geckos to breed. the only place around that has them is the local petco, and hopefully they're not too stupid to miscare for their leopards. so heres some questions:

1.) ive read they have to be around 8 months to breed, how can i tell their age in the pet store? petco doesnt know the age of any of their animals, even though there is a clear price difference between adults and juvies. adults being close to $50 while their juvies are $20...

2.) if i happened to get a juvie, what is the likelihood of being able to tell the gender? the staff are clueless, but ive seen my fair share of photos to kind of know, at least in adults.

3.) they have a wide range of morphs, so is there a common, but not too common type of morph that may be in the large bunch of geckos they have? (pics)

4.) what are the signs of an ill gecko? last time i was there i saw one laying under the log tunnel with it's eyes open, arms along the side and breathing heavily, does that mean it was ill? there was also another one laying in a weird position, is that normal? what characteristics will i be looking for, for a healthy gecko?

5.) im pretty sure they do not have a bowl of calcium in with them, unless it is hidden, theres not really a question here, but its something ive noticed.

 

[jannb]

My daughter left me her leopard gecko and I knew nothing about them and one of the senior members here fluxlizard sent me this info. I found it very helpful. I hope you will too.

Hi Jann,

Sounds like your daughter was doing pretty well with the lizard.

I don't think I still have a care sheet - maybe in old backup files somewhere. They are pretty easy though- I'll summarize briefly.

She may only be in middle age at 10 years old- many live over 20 years and some closer to 30. I gave one I hatched out in 1994 to a nephew and he's grown and the gecko is still his pet! He has fed his mainly mealworms from a mealworm colony I gave him in 94, along with occasional insects found around the house or yard (small town no pet shop).

I think the easiest way to freerange would be to make some sort of pen- they aren't great climbers so the walls would only need to be slick (plastic? plexiglass?) and several inches high.

The way I kept mine was usually in long aquaria like yours in display type setups with sand and rocks and driftwood as breeding groups of 1 male and up to several females depending on the size of the tank. One nice thing about these geckos- they all used the potty in the same part of the tank consistantly. Made cleanup very easy.

In the bottom I put a few inches of sand- deep enough to bury a tupperware type sandwich box like folks incubate their chameleon eggs in. The boxes are about 6" to a side and 3" deep approximately. The box had an inch or so of sand/peat mixture which was kept damp. I would use more than one box if I had more than one female in the tank. I cut a round hole in the middle of the lid an inch and a half or so across- just wide enough for a gecko to go through. The box was then placed into the sand, and a fine layer of sand dusted over the lid to keep the light out, and then some sort of cave put on top of the whole thing (I used all sorts of things for caves). This created a hide that had a dry cave on top and a humid cave down below it, and this doubled as a nesting box. A nice dark, humid hide of some sort is very important for proper shedding- bad sheds can cause serious problems for toes with these guys because their skin is so delicate. They also often just prefer the humidity when hiding/sleeping.

I only used normal incandescents for heat a few times when I played around with housing them with other lizards in larger enclosures (desert iguanas, collard lizards- works OK, but I learned the hard way that when these others get pregnant they get ravenous and eat anything including gecko tails, so I stopped housing them this way after a short time). The geckos basked under the lights in the evenings, but they weren't really necessary and of course like yours, went off at night. I used a variety of heat sources otherwise- undertank heat pads, hot blocks and rocks buried deep in the substrate to keep the lizard bellies off and spread the heat a bit in the sand, red and blue night incandescent bulbs, ceramic heat bulbs, etc. All worked fine as far as the geckos were concerned- never saw a big difference in how the geckos looked or reproduced as long as some heat source or other was available (And somewhere in my files I have an old paper I found published from the 1970s or early 80s where a large colony was kept in a medical lab without any heat other than room temperature and they reproduced for them there over many generations). These guys are very hardy.

I used calcium with d3 most feedings and never saw one have problems related to d3 (as does my nephew on his since 94). I haven't kept leopards in several years and I'm not current on gecko thinking. Back when I was into geckos, getting enough calcium into the lizards seemed to be too much of a preoccupation for many keepers. They would put small bowls of calcium into the enclosures for the lizards to eat the calcium directly from the bowl in addition to dusting. I never went to that extreme either and the geckos were fine- bones well formed, eggs looked great even at the end of the season.

Your superworms should be fine as a staple- even mealworms have worked well this way for many breeders. But probably it is better for the lizard if you can get more variety in, so by all means continue tempting her. I used variety myself because I used variety for everything else and figured it was better- if I can feed all insectivores the same way on a day it makes things easier too.

You might try large insects if you want to tempt- I remember mine like big grasshoppers and roaches and took immediate interest in these sorts of items- was a bit of a fight to take them down and eat them sometimes.

That's kind of it. Sexing isn't too hard- males have a V shape arrangement of strong pre-anal pores above the vent.

One other tip- go easy on waxworms. I never had a problem with occasional use but I didn't use them much. But I had several people over the years approach me with leopard geckos hooked on waxworms that would refuse everything else and eventually stop feeding altogether.

Maybe you already know all this- hope something in here helps with ideas!

 

[amanda509]

My daughter left me her leopard gecko and I knew nothing about them and one of the senior members here fluxlizard sent me this info. I found it very helpful. I hope you will too.

thanks!

 

[amanda509]

anybody else?