| Chaotic Nights Reptile |  | | Where Reptiles Rule the Night |
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We care for our lizards a bit differently than many breeders. We want to let you know exactly how we care for them here so you can replicate that care and keep your new lizard happy. On our links page we have provided links to our feeder suppliers but many of these feeder bugs can be acquired at reptile specific pet stores.
LEOPARD GECKOS: Eublepharis macularius
Feeding:
We feed our full grown leopard geckos a combination of the following feeder bugs: Silkworms, phoenix worms, orange head and turkistan roaches (we have our own colonies after purchasing starter bugs), crickets and superworms. The roaches and phoenix worms have an extremely high nutrient content whereas your mealworms that you get in most petstores are the equivalent of potato chips which is why you should vitamin dust mealworms and crickets. We gutload our crickets and roaches using chicken feed from a local feed store and produce such as carrots and sweet potatos. We also provide our leos with caps of calcium powder as they self regulate calcium intake.
We feed our hatchling and juvenile leopard geckos phoenix worms, mealworms, small crickets and small roaches.
As far as how much we feed, all of our leos get fed daily. Our breeding females have not dropped weight while laying, our males have grown large and colorful and our juveniles grow strong, colorful and quickly. They are very active and healthy. Many people say to feed a juvenile one or two mealworms a day, we are finding that this is not enough food. They love the phoneix worms and seem to be quite content to eat 10 or so of them each day.
Housing:
Our leopard geckos are all housed in a MINIMUM 20 gal long tank, we have a few in a 55 gal. We have no more than 2 leos in a 20 long, usually a male/female pair that we are breeding. We do keep some females together if they are not breeding. We feel the 20 long is the MINIMUM suitable tank. Leopard geckos get 10 inches long and should have room to turn around, climb up a bit or explore. Do not let them get higher than 6 inches in the tank, if they fall they could get injured or die.
Our tanks have a combination of 12x12 slate tiles from Home Depot and reptibed in them. Since leopard geckos are primarily rock dwellers we have tried to mimc that. We have tiles stacked to create hiding places, we also have cork bark pieces and rocks to provide them surfaces to crawl on and explore. They seem to be very curious and like to explore new surfaces and hiding nooks.
We have an under tank heater on one side of the tank where we put a humid hide (tupperware dish with a hole cut into the lid and filled with damp moss) so they can thermoregulate when needed. They do not have lights as leopard geckos are nocturnal and do not require UV. The ambient temp of our house is between 77-80 and the under tank heaters provide them a warm spot.
CRESTED GECKOS:
Housing:
We house our crested geckos in custom tanks from Jason Perillo at Protean Terrariums (link is in the link page). We have two 5 ft long tanks that are divided the following way. The tanks are 30 inches high, 20 inches deep and have dividing pieces of glass every 12 inches. So each crestie has a 30" h x 20 " deep x 12 " wide tank. We have about 4 inches of reptibed in each tank as a substrate, we mist the tanks 3 times a day. They have cork bark, driftwood and plants/fake vines to climb around on. Although they are nocturnal I do give them lights to provide a higherup basking spot that they seem to like to hang out on.
Feeding:
We feed our cresties Crested Gecko diet as well as give them vitamin dusted crickets twice a week. They LOVE to hunt crickets. It provides mental stimulation and mimics the natural diet better we feel. We usually take the Crested Gecko Diet out when there are crickets in the tank as the crickets seem to love to drown in the CGD. We give them 48 hours to eat their crickets and put the CGD back in. We usually give them about 8-10 4 week old crickets each time we give them crickets as pur cresties are full grown now.
The minimum size tank we feel a full grown crestie should be in is at least at 18x18x24 Exo Terra or something of similar size. Crested Geckos get to be 10 inches long so we feel they should have enough room to move, jump, turn around etc.
We hope this information helps you keep the lizards you get from us happy and healthy in their new homes.
Chaotic Nights Reptile.
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