Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i recently bought a baby leopard gecko, and it is actually doing very well, but...I was advised to feed it mealworms AND crickets. as soon as i put a cricket in its aquarium, it goes after them no problem. however, he doesn't seem to go for the meal worms for whatever reason. i dust all of them in dust as well. i've had it for a total of about five days so far, and it is my first gecko...is there any way to get it to eat the mealworms, and is it a problem that it only eats crickets in the meantime? i have the mealworms in a ceramic dish...so they can't escape and burrow into the sand. if you have any pointers it would be awesome if you would let me know! thanks!!
~emily

ps. i'm in college and i leave for spring break in a couple of days...i live two hours away from school and was just wondering what the best way to transport my gecko is.

i replaced the sand with newspaper (i originally got the sand on clearance a month before purchasing the actual gecko itself, and then learned that sand is bad for them), so would placing the worms not in a dish help?

A trick I've done to get cricket eaters to eat mealworms is to pull the hind legs off the crickets & place them in the bowl with the mealworms. I know it's sounds like a pain but it will prevent the crickets from escaping the bowl & get your Leo in the habit of eating out of the bowl. If that doesn't work & your gecko only wants to eat crickets, that would still be ok. The main thing is to gut load & dust them.
Out of the all the Leos I have right know, I've got one stubborn 1yr old male that absolutly refuses to eat mealworms, so it happens that an ocassional animal gets fussy.
As for transporting, any small tupaware type container with a few holes in it would be fine. Then take the cage with you as is, hope it's not to large? But for the geckos saftey, transport the animal seperate from the enclosure.

Yes i agree with csherp here on this.

I also have 2 leos that will only eat crickets not interested in mealies at all. 1 of them i can get to eat waxies occasionally though. I have 1 as well that will only eat mealies. So they tend to pick and choose. Haha

Maybe he doesn't recognize them in the bowl as food. I tried feeding mealies in a bowl when I first got my gecko, and she wouldn't. Then I started feeding her the mealies using tongs and dropping them in front of her, poking em to make em move a bit and she takes them. If I'm away for the night, I put the mealies in the bowl and she takes them. Maybe your gecko just needs to be shown the mealies in that way first.
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0.1 ball python (Kilimanjaro)
1.0 amel corn snake (Houdini)
0.0.1 leopard gecko (Charlie)
1.1 cats (Kitty & Milo)
0.1 mouse (Creepers)