Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just got my first leo last night and now I just want some feeding advice. First, she is in a ten gallon tank with an UTH and a 75 watt light during the day. I'm using papertowels as a substrate. Anyway I put some mealworms in a dish last night but she wasn't that interested. I picked her up last night around feeding time anyway and the enclosure had both mealworms and crickets so I think she'll probably take the crickets. I was wondering what you all use to gut load yours. I was going to buy some of that commercial gut load stuff but I think I'd rather give them what I already have at home. I read that the mealworms sort of go into 'hibernation' mode when they're refrigerated, so I'm guessing I should take them out of there to gut load them (?).

Also what do you all use to keep the crickets uh, under control? I mean, so they don't get all over the damn place?

Hi and welcome to leos! You will find searching the forums will get you better answers sometimes, as we literally answered your exact question just days ago.

Please look through the other posts, but the bare bones answer is: S/he may not eat mealworms, don't force it there is no reason to. Commercial gutloads are great we really like one called "cricket yummies", make sure you are dusting with a vitamin/mineral supplement as well. Further down the threads we explained techniques for keeping and feeding crickets (it is a long one or I'd copy it here). We have a spare tank with a critter keeper inside to avoid any unwanted escapees and use a papertowel core to select the volunteers.

Sounds like you have a good set up (thanks for the papertowels!), but what are your temps with a 75w bulb? Unless it is very cold where you are, it would seem to me that would be too high a wattage for a 10 gallon, you may want to check that and I'm hoping the UTH and light aren't on at the same time. Good luck.
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0.1 Albino Leo Gecko
0.1 Crested Gecko
1.0 Dear Boyfriend
Departed: Harvey and Spock

I have been looking through some of the old posts and I did get most of my questions answered. I just got one of the commercial cricket keepers and I think its Fluker's gut load. I put some wet paper towel in there with them and hopefully I won't make too much of mess come feeding time tonight (I know everything says to gut load for 24 hours but I gotta do a test run tonight!)

I live in CT. We were having a mild winter up until this week. It's about 33 degrees here today, yesterday was colder. My room is the coldest room in the house. My temps now on the hot side are in the mid-80's and on the cool between 70-80. I was initially only going to use the heating pad at night but I think that will stay on during the day now too, seeing as its pretty cold in my room.

Sounds good, two things:

Be careful with running the UTH and light on at the same time. It is a fire risk and usually voids any warranties, but we've had to to that when the heat was off here once. Are you checking the temperature directly under the basking point of your light? I only ask because last month someone came with a large bulb and it took us several iterations to figure out they were taking the air temp above and when they took the temp at the surface it was 100F! We only have a 45W on a 20 gallon long, so when I see higher than that I ask just in case.

Flukers is fine, I would suggest the complete load, the one that is water and food in the same cube. They are orange jelly cubes that keep better in the fridge, a good option for just getting going, nothing easier than dumping in a few cubes as they get eaten or dried out. Not a big deal if they aren't 24 hours loaded once in a while, we all have those days and it is more important that they are getting prey to eat than holding off feeding for gut loading.

33F is nothing, it is 7F here! We've been having strange weather in the US this year, but now it is finally getting to be winter here. I hope s/he enjoys the crunchy crickets tonight.
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0.1 Albino Leo Gecko
0.1 Crested Gecko
1.0 Dear Boyfriend
Departed: Harvey and Spock