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CRESTED GECKO CARE SHEET!

General Information

Tan Tiger Crested Gecko.

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Crested Geckos (Rhacodactylus ciliatus) are a medium sized nocturnal gecko from New Caledonia. They spend most of their time up in the trees although they do often venture nearer the ground. They reach about 8 - 10 inches in size and their longativity is currently unknown, this is due to them only being rediscovered in 1994 after a presumed extinction. Since their rediscovery they have entered the pet trade and their popularity has grown hugely ever since. Like most geckos they have sticky toes, they also have a prehensile tail with a sticky pad on the end allowing them to climb most surfaces, they can also jump fair distances making them very agile. They become very tame with frequent handling and make great pets.

Housing

Due to their arboreal nature they prefer an enclosure with more height. A good sized enclosure for an adult would be the equivalent of a 20 gallon tall tank. Exo Terra glass vivariums in the 45x45x60cm size make perfect enclosures for adults, with this size being perfect for a pair. If you are housing more than one gecko together, please make sure there is only one male per enclosure to prevent fighting. Just like leopard geckos, it is not guaranteed that multiple animals will always get on, so you should always have the resources to house them separately. You should make sure their enclosure has plenty of hiding space as they will make use of this during the day when they are resting. Having plenty of foliage will give them this hiding space and also give them space to explore when they are awake at night. You can also add pieces of bark, driftwood etc to create an environment as natural as you like. You can use real plants if you wish, these geckos are perfect for naturalistic setups as they thrive in these conditions. You should mist your geckos enclosure in the evening, this will normally trigger them to drink the drips from foliage etc. This method seems to give them all the water they require but I do make sure a small bowl of fresh water is always available just to be safe.

Substrate

So what substrate should you use on the bottom of your vivarium? This depends on whether you are creating a simple or naturalistic set-up. The options you have are listed below, along with any advantages and disadvantages of each one.

Eco Earth - Advantages: easy to spot clean, holds humidity, looks natural. Disadvantages: can cause impaction if ingested.
Moss - Advantages: easy to spot clean, holds humidity, looks natural and can mix with eco earth. Disadvantages: Can be ingested, can mold.
Paper Towels - Advantages: no risk of impaction, easy to change. Disadvantages: looks unnatural, hard to spot clean.
Newspaper - Advantages: no risk of impaction, easy to change. Disadvantages: looks unnatural, hard to spot clean.

Heating

Crested geckos, like all reptiles are cold blooded, so they need to thermoregulate. What this means is that they move around in their environment to regulate how warm their bodies are. However, crested geckos are slightly different to many reptiles in that they thrive in temperatures around the mid 70's. This means that in most households they thrive at room temperature. So if you live in a house with central heating you should not need to add any other heat source to the enclosure. They can handle night time temperatures into the 50's as long as they are able to warm up during the day. If you feel that you do need to add a heat source you must be very careful not to overheat your crested gecko. They are very sensitive to high temperatures and anything above 85* can be fatal. If you do want to add extra heat I recommend to use of a small, thermostatted heatmat. This must be monitored using a digital thermometer, ensuring it never reaches temperatures above 85*. The heatmat should be placed on the side of your vivarium (outside) where they seem to spend most of their time (near their hiding places). The thermostat probe should then be placed onto the mat and the temperature set and monitored until it is correct. I would not recommend using a heat lamp as they often get too hot.

Lighting

Crested geckos are nocturnal so they do not need to be provided with UV light. Because of this there is no need to add any lighting if you don't want to. You can add a low wattage (you don't want to add any more heat) red or moonlight (made by exo terra) light bulb so you can see them when its dark. If your vivarium is kept in a darker room you may wish to add a low wattage, or energy saving light bulb (gives off less heat) to give them some light in the day, just so they can tell when its day and when its night. This should be controlled by a timer so it gives them a set light pattern.

Food / Supplements

Crested geckos give you a choice when it comes to feeding. You can give them a diet based on livefood, or a diet which contains NO livefood. If you wish to take the livefood route, you can use most of the common feeder insects available, including crickets, locusts, small roaches and the odd waxworm as a treat. I don't tend to give them mealworms as they never seem interested. A varied diet is always best, so changing what food you use every now and again will benefit your gecko. It is important to make sure you gutload any insects before feeding them to your gecko, this ensures they are full of the nutrition your gecko needs. You can buy insect food from most of the livefood suppliers, which do this for you, or you can make your own. You can use oats, fresh fruit and veg etc to feed your insects prior to giving them to your gecko. If you feed crickets make sure you do not leave any left over crickets in the vivarium for too long as they can munch on your gecko while its sleeping, not something you want to happen. If feeding livefood, you must also supplement your insects with a calcium and multi-vitamin powder, for this you need to dust your feeder insects with a calcium / vitamin powder before feeding them. How often you need to do this depends on the age of your gecko. For babies, dust with calcium 5 days of the week, and with a multi-vitamin 2 days of the week. For adults, you can cut down to calcium 2 times a week and a multi-vitamin just once a week. An easy way to dust your insects is to put some dust in a bag, drop the insects in, shake the bag and then tip the insects into the vivarium.

If you want to give them a diet consisting of no livefood then you have several options which are listed below. These are complete diets and need no extra supplementation.

Sandfire Dragon Ranch (T-Rex) Crested Gecko Diet - This comes in a powdered form, you mix it with water and give to your geckos as a paste.
Repashy Superfoods Crested Gecko Diet - This also comes in a powdered form, again you mix it with water and give to your geckos as a paste. With this diet, you have the option to buy a "base" powder and then different "flavours", with this you can give your gecko a different flavour food each time, making the diet more varied.

Cleaning

Crested geckos tend to defecate all over the vivarium, not in one place like a leopard gecko would. You should spot clean the vivarium daily as this will help keep your vivarium free of bacteria. A full clean out should be done when needed, how often this is will depend on how you have your vivarium set up. If you have a naturalistic set up, you can go longer between full cleans, as the natural bacteria present will take care of some of your cleaning duties. Otherwise every week or so will be sufficient. During a full clean you should clean any furniture in the vivairum with a reptile disinfectant. If you keep the vivarium clean in this way you should minimize any health problems.

Breeding / Sexing

Crested Geckos are very easy to breed in captivity. The first thing you need to do if you want to breed your geckos is to make sure you have a boy and a girl. Sexing mature crested geckos is really easy, you will see 2 obvious (and normally huge!) bulges at the base of a males tail, along with pores. A female crested gecko will not have these bulges. The next important step in breeding your geckos is that both animals are healthy and old enough, breeding ill or young geckos can lead to major problems. Males can be bred from around a year old, and females should be 15 - 18 months old before breeding and weight around 35 - 40 grams. You should make sure your breeding females are being fed high quality, gutloaded and dusted food to ensure they have the reserves needed to produce eggs. It is important that your females get plenty of calcium, as this is used greatly in egg production. You should check the calcium sacks in the roof of your female geckos mouth once a month or so to check she is not running low on calcium reserves. You should introduce your geckos in late February / early march and they should mate quite quickly, you should keep an eye on the pair, ensuring the male does over breed with the female. If he does they will need separating, or you can add more females to take the stress off just one individual. Once they have successfully mated the female will be ready to lay her first eggs within the next month, you need to ensure she has somewhere to lay her eggs. You can make her a laying box, which must be big enough for her to dig and move around in. This should have a small opening and contain a damp laying substrate such as vermiculite. Now is the time you also need to make sure you have suitable means of incubating the eggs, you can buy and incubator or make your own. If you want to make your own, all you need is a polybox, a heatmat and a thermostat. Crested gecko eggs should be incubated somewhere between 72* and 80*, around 76* is best. There is currently to proof to say that crested geckos are temperature sexed like leopard geckos. Once your female lays her eggs you should carefully transfer them to a small tub of damp, but not soaking wet, vermiculite. You should place a few small air holes in this tub and place it inside your incubator.

At 76* the eggs should hatch in around 60-70 days, hatchlings can be kept in smaller versions of an adult setup. They should be sprayed with water several times a day, and once they are a few days old they can be offered food. If you feed your hatchlings on one of the powdered diets they will not grow as quickly as hatchlings fed on a livefood diet, this is nothing to be concerned about and they can still go to new homes by the time they are 6-8 weeks old, provided they are eating and shedding well.

Morphs

Crested geckos come in many different patternings, below is a list on the current crested gecko colour / pattern variations. It should also be noted that crested geckos can change somewhat in colour, depending if they are "fired-up" or not. "Fired-up" is when they are at their brightest / most vivid and can be down to the temperature, their mood or the time of day, they tend to be most "fired-up" at night.

Patterns:
- Harlequin
- Tiger
- Flame
- Pinstripe
- Dalmatian

Colours:
- Buckskin
- Red
- Orange
- Green / Olive
- Yellow