Crested gecko's

CarolM

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Good Morning All,

I am thinking of getting a crested gecko.

Any advice on best care, and enviroment etc that I need to know about which is not the nonsense from pet shops?

Thank you

Carol
 

method89

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They are very easy to care for. They don't need live bugs for food. They can eat food paste (Repashy). Fairly tame fairly quick. They don' t require a lot of space.

They are also kinda boring... Unless you are night person with excellent night vision. They are nocturnal and very active at night especially if you give them isopods or crickets to hunt.
 

CarolM

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They are very easy to care for. They don't need live bugs for food. They can eat food paste (Repashy). Fairly tame fairly quick. They don' t require a lot of space.

They are also kinda boring... Unless you are night person with excellent night vision. They are nocturnal and very active at night especially if you give them isopods or crickets to hunt.
Cool. Thank you.
I don't really want one who requires a dry environment and don't want to go too big either, so it limits me a bit on what I can get here in Cape Town unfortunately.

Thank you for the advise.
 

method89

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Cool. Thank you.
I don't really want one who requires a dry environment and don't want to go too big either, so it limits me a bit on what I can get here in Cape Town unfortunately.

Thank you for the advise.
They enjoy a bit of humidity. They come from New Caledonia, while in a completely different ocean is only a bit north of you, as far as latitude goes.
 

Srmcclure

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I've had one before. Super cute and really cool looking, but like they said, kind of a boring pet lol. One of my managers ended up taking it from me so that their small child could watch it do a whole lot of nothing hahah. His name was Taz
 

CarolM

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So I got myself a crested gecko. The breeder said that he thought it would be female, but obviously we will need to wait for confirmation. Anyhow here is my baby and her name is Kahli.

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She is still very skittish around me. But I am exercising patience. I stick my hand in every night and just wait. So she can at least see that I am not a threat. So far she has not come to me of her own accord but I don't mind. she will eventually. She is a juvenile, so how often is she supposed to be eating? I do have crested gecko food out for her every night and I have tried hand feeding her some roaches. She was not interested. She did take the meal worm though. So I have put two small Turkistan roaches and two small Dubia roaches into a glass bowl in her enclosure and I am leaving them in there overnight. So that she can climb in and eat them if she wants to, but they cannot get loose into her enclosure. So far though she has not been too interested. Hopefully she gets interested soon. I wonder if I should take out the crested gecko food and see if she will eat the insects then?
 

Tom

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We have one. Mr. Creampuff. He looks a lot like yours. He's my daughter's lizard and lives in her room. We use a variety of the powdered diets and he gets a fresh batch, along with fresh water, every night. He's shown no interest in eating any bugs, so we gave up trying.

I've found the care info for these to be pretty uniform, and as far as I know, accurate. We've had him for a couple of years now and he seems to be thriving at room temp with no lights or additional heat. We mist the cage once or twice a day and only see him at night. He's been super cool about handling on the rare occasion that we get hm out to show him to people.

He still has his tail, but I read that they can drop them on a whim, so we are very careful with it.

I don't have any pics, but I'll get one to post here.
 

CarolM

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We have one. Mr. Creampuff. He looks a lot like yours. He's my daughter's lizard and lives in her room. We use a variety of the powdered diets and he gets a fresh batch, along with fresh water, every night. He's shown no interest in eating any bugs, so we gave up trying.

I've found the care info for these to be pretty uniform, and as far as I know, accurate. We've had him for a couple of years now and he seems to be thriving at room temp with no lights or additional heat. We mist the cage once or twice a day and only see him at night. He's been super cool about handling on the rare occasion that we get hm out to show him to people.

He still has his tail, but I read that they can drop them on a whim, so we are very careful with it.

I don't have any pics, but I'll get one to post here.
Cool. Okay noted. If you cannot get yours to eat live bugs then I will stick to a meal worm every now and then as a treat. I also give her the powdered food. The breeder says that they do eat crickets, but I really don't want to keep any crickets at all. What would I do with them when they grow too big for her to eat? Although there is Phoenix who might eat them. I will have to give the crickets some thought. But I think that I should first test a cricket out and see if she will actually eat one first. One of my neighbors has crickets for his chameleon, so maybe I can ask him for a small one. Phoenix is getting nice and full now, He has put on some weight since we took over his care. And he has bonded very well with Jarrod my son.

I would love to see your Creampuff. What a cute name. Did your daughter name it? Maybe your daughter can give me some tips. As it seems that she is doing a fine job looking after Creampuff.

Does the size of the enclosure matter? In other words if it is too big when they are juvenile, is it a problem? Some people have told me it is fine and others have told me that if it is too big then they cannot find their food? I have her food ledge on the side where she likes to spend most of her time, which is by the plants. And so far she seems okay. I can see sometimes that she has licked her food and other times I cannot see if she has or not. She did eat the meal worm but the roaches she has left completely alone.

I have also read about the tails so I am very careful with her and her tail as well. I have put a low level UVB tube light in her enclosure to make sure that she gets a little bit of UVB at least. I could not find any arcadia UVB lights here so we had to go with the zoomed brand. Phoenix also got a new one the desert 10.0 T8. That was the only one they had available unfortunately. Since we put it in his appetite has definitely increased, but I am not sure if that was the UVB light or him just getting used to Jarrod and bonding with him.
 

Toddrickfl1

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Awesome, very cool looking.
 

CarolM

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Okay, So she likes crickets as well as meal worms. ?‍♀️
I guess I will be getting some crickets. Sigh I really did not want to get them. Maybe I can train her to expect insects from the tweezers and then one day trick her with a dubia roach instead of a cricket. Might be worth a try. I tried taking a video of her grabbing the cricket but it did not come out very well. It is difficult trying to feed her with tweezers with one hand and then filming with the other hand as well. So this one is the best I could do in the dark. She was finishing off her second cricket.

 

ComeNT8kIt

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So I got myself a crested gecko. The breeder said that he thought it would be female, but obviously we will need to wait for confirmation. Anyhow here is my baby and her name is Kahli.

View attachment 302344
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View attachment 302352

She is still very skittish around me. But I am exercising patience. I stick my hand in every night and just wait. So she can at least see that I am not a threat. So far she has not come to me of her own accord but I don't mind. she will eventually. She is a juvenile, so how often is she supposed to be eating? I do have crested gecko food out for her every night and I have tried hand feeding her some roaches. She was not interested. She did take the meal worm though. So I have put two small Turkistan roaches and two small Dubia roaches into a glass bowl in her enclosure and I am leaving them in there overnight. So that she can climb in and eat them if she wants to, but they cannot get loose into her enclosure. So far though she has not been too interested. Hopefully she gets interested soon. I wonder if I should take out the crested gecko food and see if she will eat the insects then?


They’re kind of spotty on eating in the beginning. We have a crested and a gargoyle which is about the same. We leave food out for them every night in either the Pangea or Rapashe brand and their stomachs are so tiny it may look lik they didn’t touch it but every once n again they’ll clean it out. We do give them small crickets once a week or so. Ours are still pretty tiny yours looks to be a decent bit older but diet is probably still pretty the same
 

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CarolM

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They’re kind of spotty on eating in the beginning. We have a crested and a gargoyle which is about the same. We leave food out for them every night in either the Pangea or Rapashe brand and their stomachs are so tiny it may look lik they didn’t touch it but every once n again they’ll clean it out. We do give them small crickets once a week or so. Ours are still pretty tiny yours looks to be a decent bit older but diet is probably still pretty the same
Oh wow. Your are sooooo cute.
 

CarolM

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They’re kind of spotty on eating in the beginning. We have a crested and a gargoyle which is about the same. We leave food out for them every night in either the Pangea or Rapashe brand and their stomachs are so tiny it may look lik they didn’t touch it but every once n again they’ll clean it out. We do give them small crickets once a week or so. Ours are still pretty tiny yours looks to be a decent bit older but diet is probably still pretty the same
Kahli is 3 months old. And good to know re the crickets. Thank you.
 

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