Building or finding suitable housing isn’t too overly difficult for a leopard Gecko, as they can survive and adapt into a lot of different habitats. However, to ensure efficiency and to make sure your housing is properly setup to house a leopard Gecko, you’ll need the following items:

You’re going to need an enclosure, a substrate, a thermometer and a heating device. While, they may be able to survive, you want to ensure your Gecko is living in the best conditions possible. An ideal home is a 10 gallon empty aquarium that you’ve cleaned out and prepared for the creature. They aren’t exactly hyper creatures but if you can afford a larger tank, I would highly consider getting one so that they have more room to roam around. While a 10 gallon tank may be suitable for just one Gecko, if you plan on breeding or adding more in there, that’s not going to cut it and it’ll get very crowded, very quickly.

While leopard Geckos don’t have the feet that make other Geckos capable of climbing glass, you should still consider getting a net or mesh screen to put over top of the tank or cage.

1. Insects and other tiny creatures can still get into the tank and bother the Gecko.
2. Small children love putting anything they can in their mouth and getting into things they’re not supposed to. Telling them “no!” only ensures that it’s going to happen when you turn your back.
3. While cats mean well and don’t mean any harm most of the time when they’re trying to get into an animal cage, they can mess up the tank or fall into the tank which could have undesired results. You also should get a mesh screen just to ensure that crickets you put inside the tank won’t escape. It’s not common but they can climb up through the silicone panels in the corners of most tanks.

Obviously, you’re going to want to make sure that your cover has holes and that the Gecko can breathe adequately. The main important thing to remember is that they need to be warm because Geckos live in very warm climates and need to be warm throughout the day in order to survive.

An adequate home should also come equipped with two hiding spots or a boxes inside the tank as well. One of these hides is to allow your gecko to get away from the outside world in order to help avoid stress. This hide should be placed over your tanks heating pad. The second hide will be a humid hide that will serve to aid in the gecko’s shedding. This hide should be kept off the heat and needs to be kept humid.

In order to provide proper temperature for you geckos you will want to have an under tank heating pad. This pad should be place under their hide so that they have a warm place to rest. You should aim to maintain a range of 87^o F to 92^o F on the warm side and  70^o F to 78^o F on the cooler side. This will allow the gecko to regulate its own temperature by moving between the two sides. You will need to use a thermometer to keep the temperature between this range.

If you plan on placing multiple leopard Geckos in the same house, then you should be cautious about which genders you mix together because while female Geckos do not mind each other’s company, male Geckos that have matured will fight each other. This is because they’re very territorial and don’t get along too well. However, males and females may be housed together when they’ve matured and reached an approximately safe breeding size which should be 45 grams. Even if you buy them as babies, they must be raised separately until they reach the mature growth size.

Males will grow considerably faster than females and you’ll notice a pretty decent size difference between the two once they’re fully matured if they’re housed together. One of the main reasons you don’t want to house two immature leopard Geckos together is because the male will often steal the female’s food and there’s not much the female can do about it. Sometimes when you’re raising two females together, you may notice that one female starts to grow considerably faster and larger than the other female. If this happens, you should consider separating them immediately in order to prevent health problems and a lack of food for one.

Just remember that a Gecko requires daily maintenance and attention just like every other animal does. Make sure you’re feeding them on time, keeping the housing clean and keeping an eye on them if you have more than one Gecko in the same habitat.

Like just about every reptile or animal on the planet, there’s a hibernation cycle that Leopard Geckos like to follow every single year. It’s a very natural and recurring process every single year. However, it’s not actually a necessity or necessary at all as a matter of fact for Geckos that you own as pets to go through the same hibernation cycle that non-pet Geckos would. While a lot of new owners have asked about this question in various online communities, you can rest at ease that it’s safe to continue operations as normal during the winter months.

A lot of people commonly worry that it’s not going to be safe to put heat on their Leopard Geckos during the winter season, but it’s perfectly safe and it’s fine. Don’t change anything, just keep doing as you’re doing and make sure you’re doing regular upkeep to ensure that they have an acceptable living condition and that they’re healthy. Make sure that your Geckos are active through the winter as well and that they don’t stop eating or drinking. This can usually be caused by stress and when stress becomes too much for a Gecko, they’ll stop doing everything and die from dehydration.

However, if for any reason you’d like to hibernate your Leopard Geckos, then it’s actually a very simple process. Perhaps you plan on breeding the geckos or maybe you’d just like to be lazy through the winter months and you don’t want to do any kind of upkeep, everyone has their own distinct reasons as to why they want their geckos to hibernate.

All you have to do is, find that under the heater tank that you originally installed and turn it off. You want to be careful and make sure that the temperature they’re in is still 70 degrees though because you don’t want them to freeze. Remember, they’re used to very humid and warm climates, so a cold climate would come at quite a shock and may even kill them. Some owners have reported that they never had any problems with keeping their Leopard Geckos in 60 degrees during hibernation but it’s best to be safe and stick with 70.

During the hibernation cycle and period, your Leopard Geckos will obviously be far less active and you won’t see them around as much. You’ll notice that they’re eating much less and that they’re drinking much less as well. When they’re in hibernation mode, they’ll lose less weight despite not eating because what happens is, their metabolism slows down considerably. If you do choose to feed your Leopard Geckos during their hibernation process, the only do so lightly. Sometimes, the Geckos will just flat out refuse to eat for a long period of time and this is fine, just remove and throw out the crickets they do not eat for your own sanity. Unless of course that noise is something you enjoy hearing, but I myself wouldn’t want to listen to it.

Reptiles are very sensitive to the weather and the environment around them and this is why heat is usually required for most reptiles when housing them. They for the most part live in very warm climates that never get cold so you need to make sure that they always have a warm place to stay in.

Much like a human, sometimes reptiles will decide that it’s time to warm up and when they get too warm or get tired of the heat, they’ll decide that it’s time to go inside. It really depends on what the reptile wants at that exact moment.

Most people recommend using what’s known as an under the tank heater that’ll warm the entire tank while safely resting under it. There are about a million of these out there on the market and everyone has their different preferences so choosing one will ultimately be up to you.

Different lamps and heaters will come in various sizes and you should realistically look at how big your tank is and determine just how much heat you would need. Obviously, a 30 or higher gallon tank is going to require a bigger heater or lamp than say a 10 gallon tank would require. So the very first thing that you need to do is, make sure you get a heater that’s appropriate for the size you’re going to be using.

When setting up your environment/heating system for the tank, what you’re going to want to do is place the heating pad all the way over to the side of the tank. You can pick any side; it doesn’t really matter much for this part, as some people will want to set their tanks up differently. Most of these can be peeled off and the pads will stick right on the aquarium but there are some other unconventional methods out there for heating pads as well. We’ll just stick with the most common ones for this article. I sincerely doubt any leopard Geckos you put in the tank will care which side you put the heat pad on.

Make sure you’re sure though once you stick it on because once it’s on the tank, it’s not going to be removed nor should it be removed. Also, you can look into heat tape as well as it’s confirmed to work just as well as a heating pad. It’ll all come down to personal preference but either way, they both appear to work without any issues.

Before even putting any leopard Geckos into the tank, you should ALWAYS have a thermometer at the ready and available to check and make sure that the temperature is up to standard to house leopard Geckos. You’re going to be checking the gradient of the enclosure here.

TIP: DO NOT use the thermometers that stick to the side of the tank because while they may seem practical, they actually cost a lot more than the actual thermometers that you need to use and they’re only going to give you the air temperature of inside the tank and they’re not going to give you the enclosure’s temperature to determine if you’re at the efficient levels or not.

The reason for not relying on air temperature is because you need to know the common areas that a Gecko is going to reside and those are the areas that you should be checking. Other areas won’t matter nearly as much because the Gecko isn’t even going to be there. So what kind of thermometer should you be using? Essentially, the best and most efficient ones to use for this general purpose are the stainless steel aquarium thermometers that are made for this specific purpose. Most of your local pet stores or pet shops should carry these and if not, then you can always ask the employees in the pet store if they know who might carry one around your area.

The most important area to monitor over all others will be the hot spot that’s located right above the heater under the tank. It’s recommended that you check the temperatures at least once a week, while some people say they check them once every two weeks. Again, there’s nothing wrong with being safe over being sorry.

There’s an ideal temperature you’re going to want to look for and when you measure the side of the cage that’s warm, you should see 90 degrees Fahrenheit. On this side of the enclosure you will place the one of the geckos hides. Placing this above the heating pad will provide the gecko a great place to rest and stay warm. The cooler side should stay between 70 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

Leopard Geckos tend to only venture out at night and aren’t commonly out during the day, so the good news here is that you’re not going to have to spend money on any UV bulbs or anything like that. They’re night owl reptiles so you typically won’t see them out and about during the day. You can find them during the day under a cool or dark hiding spot which is why when housing them; it’s recommended you put a box or a cool structure for the Gecko to reside in.

If you notice your leopard Geckos stop eating and you have bright lights in the tank, turn them off or remove them immediately because they can starve to death if they become stressed out from the lights.

y to sell you out on the idea that you should buy heating rocks or “alternative sources” for heating the tank, but it’s best to stay with what we know works and what we know is safe.

While most reptiles require almost daily and routine cage maintenance, the good news for leopard Geckos owners is that these reptiles are not one of those breeds. You’ll be happy to know that the actual maintenance required is actually very minimal and it’s not something you’ll find yourself doing very often. One of the many and great benefits to owning leopard Geckos, is that they’re like cats in a way when it comes to cleaning up after them.

When a cat has to use the facilities or “poop” rather, it will usually find the litter box you setup for it and use that. Of course, there are exceptions but this is generally what a cat will do and Geckos are no different. They’ll pick a certain corner of the aquarium and usually only use that corner.

This goes back to having sand as a substrate and having fine grain sand at that. This makes cleaning extremely easy and in one simple scoot, it could be gone. The amount of sand that’s needed to be replaced with each cleanup is very minimal. However, you should make sure that you’re cleaning the cage at least once a week and that you’re cleaning out the cage entirely on a semi-regular basis.

Make sure when you do maintenance that you dump out all of the cage interiors such as the furniture, the dishes and anything else that you may have in there. You should thoroughly wash and make sure you sterilize every single item that was resting in your aquarium to ensure that your aquarium is a safe and clean place for your leopard Geckos. The only main thing you’ll be cleaning is feces which should be concentrated into one corner of the aquarium and you’ll also be cleaning dead crickets for the most part.

The best thing to use when cleaning your equipment is a mild bleach solution, and the most common solution readily available is putting in just one part bleach and putting nine parts water. This should be done at least once every four months but some owners will recommend that you do it more, as in once a month. This isn’t a necessity to do it once every single month, but I guess it just depends on your preference and how clean you like them to be.

The warning sign is usually when you start to see some feces that’s mixed throughout the sand, then you know it’s definitely time to clean out the cage and to renew the sand and to finally sterilize everything. However, if you’re using paper towels inside the aquarium, then you should be throwing them out and renewing them every single week because unlike sand, paper towels become useless when wet and rips apart very easily. They’re also not great at collecting things like sand is. Just as long as you remember to sterilize all of your equipment and the entire aquarium/cage at least once every couple or four months, then you should be alright.

Leopard Geckos are one of the most versatile reptiles when it comes to feeding them and what they can eat. They aren’t particularly picky and a lot of people actually like to feed them vitamins to help them grow more efficiently and to help them mature quicker. Some of the notable examples of what Leopard Geckos will feast on are: baby mice, worms, wax worms and the most common thing that’s fed to Geckos are crickets.

So, let’s discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages to feeding Geckos crickets.

One of the pros to feeding crickets to Geckos is that they require activity as they’re more stimulating to catch and eat. It’s also commonly known that in terms of nutrition, they’re far superior to mealworms because of all the nutrients they provide. Let’s just say, if you’re ever lost in a forest, you could probably eat crickets, among other things with nutrition in them. Also, they’re easier to digest because their skeleton frame isn’t as large as some common food types; this is a huge plus for Geckos that are still maturing.

However, some of the disadvantages to feeding your Leopard Geckos crickets are that it’s easy to overestimate just how many you’ll need. People don’t commonly buy them as just a single cricket, but they prefer to buy them in bulk. If you buy too many of them, what might happen is, you’ll over compensate just how much your Geckos are going to eat and you’ll forget to feed the crickets. Crickets need water and food just like everything else that’s a live, or else it dies and you’ll be cleaning your cage more often.

Crickets that don’t get eaten can also cause quite a nuisance to both you via noise and your Gecko via chewing on it. They aren’t going to harm your Gecko but they sure are going to make sure they don’t get any rest. Crickets that don’t get eaten also pose a serious health risk because what happens is, if you don’t feed these uneaten crickets, they’ll begin feeding on feces if any is available to avoid starvation and death. Then, when your gecko finally does decide to eat it, it’ll ingest the cricket that ate the feces of the Gecko and made eggs out of it. Your gecko will not have parasite eggs inside of their stomachs which can lead to more complications.

This is why while crickets are nutritious and a great meal for the Leopard Geckos, they need to be fed in moderation and only to the point where they can be handled, otherwise, you’ll be dealing with a mess. Not to mention in a poorly constructed cage or shelter, they can get loose and roam around your house chirping. I doubt anyone in the household wants to listen to that all night while they try to sleep.

You may also want to consider feeding your Leopard Geckos what’s known as “pinkies”. These are baby rats that haven’t grown yet your geckos will eat them. Another great food group is wax worms. They’re not only great for catching fish but they’re also great for feeding geckos too. A lot of owners use these to feed to geckos that haven’t been eating as much lately to help them gain weight. When Leopard Geckos become distressed, they may stop eating and this is when you can try to feed wax worms to them so that they’ll gain their weight back. They’re very high in fat content.

I believe the second most common type of food is the mealworms. They’re very easy to find, you can buy them in bulk for cheap and geckos will definitely eat them.

Some of the advantages that mealworms have over other food groups are the following:

They’re not as active as crickets and they can’t jump up or climb anywhere, so the chances of them actually escaping the structure are next to impossible.

You don’t have to provide any kind of food or water for them because once you buy them; you can refrigerate them for weeks at a time without having to worry about anything. They stay fresh for a very long time which is why they’re so commonly used for fishing.

Unlike crickets, the chance of them infecting your Gecko with their own feces is impossible because they’ll just sit in a dish until they’re eaten. They aren’t going to starve and start eating the feces around the cage.

Also, one of the biggest benefits to using mealworms is that they aren’t going to make that annoying chirping sound.

However, they do have some disadvantages to them as well. First of all, their exoskeleton and frame isn’t as narrow as a cricket, so your Leopard Geckos might have a slightly harder time digesting them than they would with crickets. They also don’t provide nearly as much nutrition as a cricket will either. You also need to make sure there’s absolutely no way that they’ll escape into the sand or else they’ll try to dig their way into the bottom or make their escape.

While you can feed carrots or small pieces of orange to crickets just a mere 30 minutes before feeding them to Gecko, it’s recommended that you wait far longer to do with this mealworms because it takes longer for them to get the nutritional value from them. It’s best to wait 24 hours as an average before feeding mealworms to crickets after they’ve fed on food or vitamins.

Basically, you want to do this in a dish because they’ll also crawl around in what’s known as the “gut load” which is basically just feeding your prey essential vitamins before they’re eaten. They’ll roll around and crawl around in this gut load and then when the Leopard Geckos eat them, they’ll be getting a good portion of all those vitamins. One of the best parts is, that they’ll have this “gut load” for several days after you put them in the dish so it doesn’t matter when your Gecko eat them, as long as they eat them in the next few days after serving them.

Some people prefer small carrots and some people prefer small pear cactus, you’ll just have to try different ones and find out which one works for yourself. Commonly, young geckos will latch onto the mealworms quicker than the adults will because they tend to be a little more cautious about what they’re eating. Male gecko will eventually eat them but it’ll just take them a little while to warm up to the new food and they usually do this once they’re starving.

Also, one of the most common myths that need to be dispelled is that when a mealworm is eaten, it can easily eat its way through the Gecko’s stomach. I’m not certain who started this one but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Nothing bad is going to happen from eating a mealworm and they’re actually not that strong. It takes them a long time to dig through the soft surfaces and they’ll be long gone before they would even have a chance to dry. No one has ever lost a Gecko to a mealworm; I can assure you of that.

Some people have other types of food they like to feed to their Gecko but just remember that it’s very important to take in consideration the size of your prey that you’re feeding to the Leopard Geckos. Obviously and it should go without saying, that smaller gecko are going to need to be fed smaller prey and vice versa. It’s much harder for a small gecko to digest larger prey and to digest prey with a large skeleton. For example, when it comes to crickets, you want to ensure that the cricket is no longer than the Gecko’s head so that it’ll digest it easily.

Feeding time is usually from around ten to fifteen minutes and how much youre Leopard Geckos will vary. Some of them can eat a lot and some of them just won’t be that hungry, so try to make sure they’re eating everything you put in there and that you clean up after them if they tend to leave a lot of their food. Make sure if you go with crickets, you’re cleaning out dead crickets and feces on a regular basis to avoid complications.