Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,

My gecko is about 6 months old now. I have always used paper towel for him, he seems to get his nails caught on the paper towel and he shakes his feet to get it off. Well i was watching his last night and he seems to shake his feet even when there not caught. So I was thinking about using that cali sand for him. I thought he was big enough now and the sand will keep it alittle warmer and softer for him. What does everyone think??
thanks

I wouldn't use calci-sand. I kept one of my males on calci-sand once and he was fine for a while. Then he ingested some and became impacted. We tried every thing to help get the sand out of him and get him to start eating but nothing worked. Eventually we had to take him to the vet and pay 100 dollars to help get the snad out. He was fine after the vet visit but I still had to nurse him back to health using chicken baby food. Thats all he could or would eat for a couple of weeks and then he started eating crickets again. Now he is a big healthy boy. I learned my lesson and will never use calci-sand again. I would suggest that you keep using paper towels or buy some lizard carpet from petco or petsmart. Good Luck!

Hello! We are fairly new to the whole gecko thing but one thing we have learned just in the behaviour of our first gecko is that sand is no good. We went to home depot and spent 10 dollars i think it was and bought him some slate rock tiles and arranged them in his tank. You can do all sorts of stuff with them. You can cut them to size or over lap them and put some sand under the tiles that overlap to even them out all sorts of possibilties. After we changed over to the slate tiles our gecko is out and about much more then he was with the sand and seems a lot happier and gung ho about hunting etc. In my opinion its the only way to go. if you get them to fit tight enough you dont have to worry about crickets hiding in cracks or your worms getting out of the bowl and burrowing under the sand and it looks so much better then paper towels!
I suppose you could use the repti carpet aswell but IMO you still have the risk of a toe getting stuck in a loose piece of the carpet and spot cleaning to me just doesnt seem to be as easy to me!

Good luck and heres a pic!

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Mike & Wendy

2.0.0 Siberian husky, Jackrussel/schitzu
0.0.2 Leopard Gecko
0.0.4 Beta's
3.1.0 Warm blooded life sucking spawns.