Rhadodactylus Ciliatus: Care Sheet
Housing
Crested geckos have pretty simple housing requirements. We keep our adults in standard 10 gallon aquariums with locking screen tops, and our juveniles in "large" kritter keepers. Hatchlings are housed in modified sterilite containers with locktop lids.
I keep hatchlings housed in the sterilite containers until they reach about 7 grams in size, and then switch them up to a large kritter keeper. At about 15 grams, I move juveniles into the 10 gallon containers. Each enclosure has a minimum inclusion requirement of a water dish, a house to hide in, paper towel flooring, and a little something to crawl on. We keep all
of our geckos on paper towel substrate except for one bioactive enclosure. We reccomend all new owners to use paper towel in their enclosures. The risk of your gecko ingesting loose substrates such as repti-bark, peat moss, and other "natural" looking substrates is something that we try to avoid. If your gecko becomes impacted by ingesting a loose substrate,
you can be guaranteed that it will die unless it recieves expert veterinary care (IE, surgery!). Although reported cases of impaction from use of loose substrate is relatively low, this is a chance that we are not willing to take with any of our animals, and their safety should come first before the aesthetic value of their cage floor is considered.
For hatchlings and juveniles, I like to use cleaned and emptied tubs used for butter or cream cheese. I cut a hole in the bottom for them to crawl in. Opaque containers are best as they block out light and will help the gecko feel safe and secure while it sleeps. For water dishes, I use 50 cent tea light candle holders made of
glass that you can purchase in the candle section at wal-mart. They make for inexpensive, difficult to tip, heavy and non-porous water containers. Because crested geckos are arboreal, they really enjoy climbing, so we add a decent amount of climbing material. For stuff to climb on, the sky is the limit.. We have used anything from home decorations to toys and the standard of
sticks and silk vines, so it's up to you as to what you want to add. For the most part, we like to use fake, silk pothos vines that you can buy at wal-mart in rolls for 5 dollars. These make for nice crawling material and hide crannies for baby geckos, but larger geckos over 15 grams stop utilizing them for climbing because of their weight. Before adding decorations to
cages, always make sure to clean them in hot water and disinfect them with a mild soap before using them. Everything in your gecko's house has the potential to be used as a drinking surface, so if you wouldn't lick it, don't put it in there! Here are some examples of baby cages, juvenile cages, and adult cages: Hatchling | Juvenile | Adult
Lighting and Heating
The island of New Caledonia from which crested geckos originate is a temperate climate forest, which basically for the keeper means "room temperature". Cresteds can survive temperatures as low as 50 degrees farenheit, but begin to suffer from heat exceeding 80 degrees farenheit. It is best to keep your geckos at room temperature, which is approximately 70 to 76 degrees farenheit.
Mild fluctuations in temperature will not be a bother, such as a few degrees warmer during the day than during the night. A light cycle of about 15 hours during the day in the summer is best. This lighting cycle can be provided with artificial lighting set on a digital timer, or it can be achieved with a natural lighting cycle by keeping the curtains to your windows open. If you are
keeping your gecko with live plants, a flourescent bulb will provide the UV stimulation that your plant needs to photosynthesize. It is reccomended not to leave the light on after sunset, when the gecko will want to wake up and start performing its nighttime routines. A red bulb can be used to obeserve nocturnal behavior, as the geckos can't see red lighting and will assume the light is off.
Supplemental heat is not required. Avoid using undertank heaters or heat lamps, as these geckos do not require the kind of basking light that other species may need to thermoregulate. Additional heat will stress your gecko.
Feeding
Feeding is a complete no-brainer for the crested gecko. Allen Repashy, developer of the Crested Gecko Meal Replacement Powder and owner of the largest collection of Rhacodactylus species geckos in the world, has developed a diet that is fully nutritionally balanced to feed our geckos. Information about the contents of the diet and more about Allen Repashy can be found here.
Bottles of the CGD MRP (Crested Gecko Diet Meal Replacement Powder) can be purchased at PetCo or PetsMart for about 5 dollars a bottle. Typically, these bottles sit on the shelves for some time, and while the diet takes a long time to expire and will be safe to feed, it is not usually the most updated formula. Allen Repashy is consistently making changes to improve the diet, and so it is
reccomended to purchase the diet directly from a distributor such as Julie at the Gecko Ranch or Matt at Pangea Reptile. Many people have different ways of preparing the diet, and no one way is wrong or better, so choose what works best for you: some people will use a blender for feeding large colonies, some people mix
small batches with toothpicks or ice cream sample spoons, I simply mix mine in a small locking-lid tupperware container with a teaspoon. All that is needed is to add water and mix! There is a water to ratio formula, but I always mix for consistency. The diet should drip off the spoon just about as fast as Elmer's glue would. The dry diet will keep for up to a year if stored in a sealed container,
diet mixed with water will save in a sealed container in the refrigerator for about a week to week and a half. Containers for feeding in enclosures vary even more than methods for preparing the diet. Some examples of what others use are soufflé cups, squares of wax paper, ceramic dishes, and jar lids. We use squares cut from the flat surfaces of sterilite containers. The plastic of these containers is non-porous and
seems to resist water, so when the diet dries and needs to be removed for the next feeding, cleaning is as easy as peeling off the uneaten food from the plate. For our more aggressive eaters and adult pairs, we use small ceramic dishes used for soy sauce in sushi sets. The amount of diet fed should vary from gecko to gecko based on their eating habits, but in general, hatchlings and small juvies will get a dab of food
about the size of a dime, larger juveniles get about a nickel size, subadults will get between a quarter and a silver dollar, and adults and adult pairs get as much as they want..! We feed our geckos in the evening every other night at 9:00 PM. Feeding in the evening means the food is eaten as soon as possible so that it doesn't get to sit and dry up before the gecko can get to it. Every once in a while, we skip a night of feeding and feed on the third day,
but we like to keep a regimen of every other day going.
Watering
We serve water to our geckos in two ways- we provide a water dish (see "housing" for what we use as dishes), and we mist. A hand mister can be purchased at wal-mart in the section that they keep travel kits and hair spray. Set the nozzle to a fine mist and spray down the enclosure until there is a decent amount of beading on all of the major surfaces. This moisture serves as water for the gecko to drink, as well as
a method of maintaining adequate humidity. Crested geckos do not need an incredible amount of humidity, but humidity levels should never dip below 50%. If you live in a climate that reaches brutal dryness in the winter such as where we live in Iowa, a humidifier would be a wise investment, along with the purchase of a hygrometer to measure the humidity percentage in the room. During the winter, I run the humidifier to
keep a constant humidity between 50 and 75%, allowing a cycle of dryness to occur after misting enclosures. beads of water after misting should dry up within 5 to 10 hours. If they dry faster than 2 to 3 hours, adjust your misting cycle with more frequency as needed. If there is too much humidity and moisture, mold will develop on your gecko's food and substrate, which is something that should be avoided.
If mold develops in the enclosure, clean or replace the affected spots and reduce the amount of moisture. Humidity levels that dip below 20% have the very real possibility of causing casualties of dehydration (I have experienced this.. do not let it happen to you!), so keep tabs on your gecko's hydration.
Handling
New geckos should be held as least as possible, at least for the first week or so. Giving your new gecko that week's period of adjustment is vital for his well-being. Just imagine if you were uprooted from your house, stuffed in a dark box or in a cup and jostled around for hours until you reached some other foreign home that you didn't recognize- you certainly wouldn't want to be picked up by a giant hand and fussed with
either! A settling period ensures his mental stability is at least evened out before giving him the added stress of acclimating to a new owner's smell. When handling, it is best to give your gecko a "neverending staircase" with your hands. He will have the tendency to climb up, so angle your hands to adjust for his direction of movement. Putting one hand in front of the other, keep transferring him so that he doesn't really go anywhere. Along his
never-ending travel to nowhere on your hands, he will fling his tongue out and "taste" you a lot. This is the gecko's way of smelling you and learning that you're not going to eat him. Anticipating when your gecko will jump is the art of rhacodactylus handling! Before your gecko jumps, he will put his hind feet up near his shoulders, which is a "loading of the spring" before he pounces onto his target surface (and sometimes, there
just isn't a target surface, and they jump into never-never land. This is how we get gecko names like "slingshot" and "kamikaze", LOL!). Don't worry, if your gecko falls on the floor, he's probably okay (unless you dropped him from 20 feet in the air onto concrete... then I'd be checking for injury). Arboreal geckos are built anatomically to absorb the impact of falling, so chances are he's not sustained any injuries beyond being slightly winded.
When holding your gecko (or trying to catch him), never, EVER grab him by his tail!!!!! As a defense mechanism, crested geckos autotomize their tails to avoid predation. When the tail falls off, it's gone for good, it does not grow back, so be careful! If your gecko does end up dropping his tail, it's not a huge deal. Make sure to put him in a quiet place and avoid fussing with him until his butt has completely healed. Tail drop wounds
typically close up and heal over within 48 hours.
