Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is it normal that a leo might want to stay on the cool side of the cage? Its roughly 77 degrees (77-80) on the cool side and about 90 on the warm side. I felt of the bottom to see if the UTH felt too hot and it just feels warm so I dont think its TOO hot or anything.

Where are you taking the temperature from? Is it a probe type thermometer that lays on the actual substrate, or one that measures air temperature. The two can be VERY different.
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2.2 Corn Snakes
1.2 Leopard Geckos
1.1 Crested Geckos
1.2 Green Anoles
1.0 Russian Tortoise
3.2 House Cats
0.0.1 African Millipede

RIP
Alice, Bruno, Lars

it measures the air temp =(. its about 1.5 inches off the base of the tank. I dont have a temp gun or anything either and I didn't see where petsmart had a thermo for the base of the tank.

PS- she's still on the cool side of the tank.

((For the Picture)) The left side is the cool side and the right is the warm side. A small UTH is on the right side as well as a 50 watt red heat lamp above (which doesn't seem to put off a WHOLE lot, but the temp is 90 over there still. She's in the log on the left right now asleep.

Ok so in my picture, on the left side, thats a thermometer. I tore it off and laid it on the floor above the UTH and under the red lamp and its 105 degrees! I turned off the lamp because I know they need belly heat more than heat from the air above. The bulb is only 50 watts so I didn't think it would get that hot! I'm going to lay it on the other side now and see what the temp is there. Someone let me know what you think it is and if this is an accurate ground reading please!

-Sean

Hello , just some suggestion's
but
a good site to get reptile supply's is petmountain.com ( you can aquire a digtail therm for about 3-4 bucks? i belive it's where i buy mine

also I use only a UTH and that's it i dont use the red light at night really at all
as long as the UTH is 88-90 for hot side and about 75 for cool side you should be fine thats what i use
( if you cant control the temps try to get a reostat or thermastat ..

you also said your gecko was from petsmart ? could you post a picture of her .. i would like to see if she is looking healthy or might need a reptile vet check up ,
what i mean is geckos from pet stores arent really great to buy from becuase sometimes they can get sick and you end up getting them to a vet ( as they dont take care of them right )
your gecko should have a fat tail ( they store food in there tails ) and she/he should be active too

is she eatting ? just wondering ...

also do you have a humid hut in her tank ? its usually in the tank so they can shed and is a important aspect that they need.
( if you dont have one go to the store ( dollar tree ) . get a nice sized tub for your gecko.. cut a little hole in it and put papertowel in it and mist it with a bottle make sure its misted

and do you have water and pure calcuim with no d3 in the cage ? ..
and also get a stool stample and send it to your closest reptile vet to make sure your gecko has no parasite's .

sorry for the lexture as you might know some of this stuff but i would raither see you take care of it then them pet stores and im sure you will
good luck
christina

Thanks for the site! I'll definitely go look at it now.
See the reason I have a red light period is because I want to SEE her. Otherwise the question is "whats the point of having her if you cant see her?" I keep reading about how you can't have them around light but then I see pictures of people either feeding in the light or holding them in a lit room, etc.

Right now the temps (at the ground) seem to be around 78-80 on the cool side and 90 on the hot side now that I've had the lamp off for a while.

Yeah I got her from PetSmart, I'm not going to take a picture right now because she's asleep and I've stressed her out enough I'm sure by moving stuff around a lot. She's a normal and she's about 5 inches long with a decently plump tail (as plump as it gets for being young). She ate 3 crickets last night (the day I brought her home) and then this morning she ate one cricket... but I had just fed her last night so I didn't expect her to eat much of anything. I'm going to try again after it gets dark tonight. Crickets are a pain in the arse so more than likely I'm going to try to switch her to meal worms and offer crickets only once or twice a week perhaps. And yeah I dusted them with vitamins/calcium. I read you aren't supposed to dust at every feeding?

There's a humid hide in the tank, its in the center of the tank/picture I posted. She hasn't attempted to go inside of it yet.

the water and calcium (no D3) are in the front of the cage in the picture. Her stool looked like normal stool but of course she could technically still have parasites.

She's active at night or when you disturb her she'll get up and walk around.

Hello , just some suggestion's
but
a good site to get reptile supply's is petmountain.com ( you can aquire a digtail therm for about 3-4 bucks? i belive it's where i buy mine

also I use only a UTH and that's it i dont use the red light at night really at all
as long as the UTH is 88-90 for hot side and about 75 for cool side you should be fine thats what i use
( if you cant control the temps try to get a reostat or thermastat ..

you also said your gecko was from petsmart ? could you post a picture of her .. i would like to see if she is looking healthy or might need a reptile vet check up ,
what i mean is geckos from pet stores arent really great to buy from becuase sometimes they can get sick and you end up getting them to a vet ( as they dont take care of them right )
your gecko should have a fat tail ( they store food in there tails ) and she/he should be active too

is she eatting ? just wondering ...

also do you have a humid hut in her tank ? its usually in the tank so they can shed and is a important aspect that they need.
( if you dont have one go to the store ( dollar tree ) . get a nice sized tub for your gecko.. cut a little hole in it and put papertowel in it and mist it with a bottle make sure its misted

and do you have water and pure calcuim with no d3 in the cage ? ..
and also get a stool stample and send it to your closest reptile vet to make sure your gecko has no parasite's .

sorry for the lexture as you might know some of this stuff but i would raither see you take care of it then them pet stores and im sure you will
good luck
christina

I think really it depends on the leo if it wants to be holded more then another gecko , ive herd you can hold them twice a day about and
the its the younger ones that the normal light is bad for them but if the light is off there fine .. i see no need to not to be able to see them ,
i have 16 leopard gecko's and i hold them all every so often at lease twice a week ...
some can be very friendly while others just dislike to be holded period ..
its up to you ,.... i guess -

christina

Yeah I'm going to try not to let her discourage me against leo's period (just because SHE wont be friendly doesn't mean others won't be). I also just need to learn when to feed (time of day) and when to expect her to wake up for the night and such. I have her tank on my desk and I'm thinking of moving her to another room to give her more peace haha.. maybe it'll help her relax.

i have geckos across from me so i dont think she/he will be that stressed out ... unless you hold them to much

feeding times very , ... people feed different .

my older gecko's morely adults love to eat cricket's and my hatched ones love mealie worm's so it all depends i guess at what they like either way there good staples to choose .
i feed both .. and they both like either

just give her/him some time ,
your gecko should start eating
good thing is if she eats shes not stressed from the move ...

to the good stuff
i feed around 9:30 in the morning to my small babys / juvies
and adults
dont be so worried that they wont eat at every meal )
and at night around 10 pm ish .. or later .
my geckos are piggys i guess xD just make sure they dont get over weight either some people feed every other day ,

hope this helps .

Well she eats but sparingly. The first night (last night) she ate 3 and today she ate one this morning and I left one in the tank with her tonight when I went to Subway and its not there now so I assume she ate it. So after seeing she ate that one I put a few in the cage with her and she didn't really go after them (then I took the hides out so she could see everything in the cage - still didn't go after them) so I finally took the crickets back out and put the hides back and now she's just kind of standing between 2 hides. I have it dark in the room.

I'm probably going to move her to a different room because I have to do work at this desk and can't leave it dark in here all the time (and the red light was heating the entire room so I had to turn it off).

Have you tryed to leave mealie worms in a dish with pure calcuim in it ?? like put 5 small ones in ( also depending on size )
and see if she eats them while your gone ?? .. i do this all the time and it work's , expecially when i buy neo geckos they just love mealies ( i just bought 3 from petco two weeks ago and they were eatting mealies the same day , ... i guess it depends on the gecko too and she possibly might have parasites but you cant really tell like you said unless you send in a stool or weeks shes not eatting .. a gecko not eatting is a sick gecko

got any pictures yet ?
heres one of my new ones i saved

I left 3 fairly large ones in the dish with calcium and she hasn't really checked them out yet. I put one in front of her earlier and she looked interested but didn't eat it. I think she just needs time. I'm going to give her a couple days to settle in and then I'll worry if she doesn't perk up or eat more.

no pic just yet. Gonna wait a couple days. I tried to take a couple but they keep coming out blurry. If I could hold her and have someone take a picture it would work out (or if I could just move her period). I'll try one more time and post it even if its blurry.

here she is. She looks ugly in the picture lol. oh well. She's nothing all too special. Just a normal. but at least you can see the tail in it.

The tail doesn't look bad. Any idea how old it is, or at least how long?
-----
2.2 Corn Snakes
1.2 Leopard Geckos
1.1 Crested Geckos
1.2 Green Anoles
1.0 Russian Tortoise
3.2 House Cats
0.0.1 African Millipede

RIP
Alice, Bruno, Lars

she is looking good maybe she just eats crickets ? what size are you feeding her that could be a reason ? .. too usually they eat a certin size .. the crickets should be the size to there nose to there head to eat ,

maybe shes just shy ? too

crickets should not be left with the gecko though they will stress the gecko out and she wont eat ,

have you tryed to put like 5 crickets in and left the room ? for like 2 mintues and then take them out?? jusr a thought from the way you said it it sounds like you did this method already ,

christina

the crickets are about the size of her head. Some a little too big it looks like. but I haven't tried giving the big ones yet.

I tried leaving them in there with her and she didn't really go after them. Maybe one and then she'd stop. this morning it seemed like she just couldnt find them cause she struck at one and missed and then couldnt find it again. I tried taking everything out of the cage and leaving her with the crickets but I think it just stressed her out (since she just got her and was stressed to begin with, know what I mean?). tonight around 10pm or so I'll try again.

She's sleeping in the humid hide for the first time (even tho I dont think its wet in there at the moment, I hadn't sprayed it yet today) so thats good but its gotten cold here and its getting hard to keep the temp up without it getting too hot. Might have to look into a rheostat...

reostats are fine but as long as your house stays with the same temp becuase if it changes so does the reostat you alaways have to mre ajust them

im going to be getting thermastats becuase you can keep it at the same temps alaways

you will just have to wait a week and see what happens she might just be stressed

well today made me realize I definitely need a rheostat or something to adjust how hot the light gets. The heat lamp was necessary today because the house itself was getting too cold so I had to keep turning on the lamp for 20 min and turning it off when it got to about 95 degrees and letting it cool back down a bit and off and on with the light to keep everything about 90 degrees. if that makes sense. a rheostat would have been nice to just set the lamp lower so it wouldnt get TOO hot and I could just leave it on constantly

have you tryed putting tile down ?? i usually do this so it soaks the heat kinda so its not as hot it works well usually i also just put paper towels down so its a easy clean up..

just a though ? .

eh, money is a factor at the moment. The UTH doesn't get too hot, its not hot enough. The lamp is what gets too hot.

by the way, what kind of container do you keep your crickets in? I have mine in this small thing thats a pain to get them out of and I can't really clean it out at the moment so gut loading isn't going well because of it. (but I'm sure eating period is better than not at all)

i have a 10 gallon for 500 1/4 inch crickets and
15 gallon for 1000 1/2 cricket's

seems to work just put some egg crates in one corner and i usually give just normal oats from a store and chopped up greens misted ... for food

and i use a deli cup to get them out just pick up a crate and shake them in it ... according to how many you want and put the calcuim in the deli cup makes it much easyer to coat them ,

I actually put them in one of the wire fishing containers and its working well for me. I dont want to be keeping as many as you are lol. I only have the one wee little gecko at the moment so buying 9-12 at a time works for me. And I've just been putting potatoes and "Cricket Yummies" in with them.

The gecko (who I'm thinking of naming Sahara... not sure) seems to be happy though! =) she's eating much more. Ate 4 crickets this morning and will probably want to eat tonight. She walks out of her cave and just stands there like "um... food... now..." =)

by the way, one cricket in my container got little tiny wings and became white-ish and soft and I waited until today to look at it. Is it one thats trying to breed or what? I hadn't seen that before.

PS- my crickets are a pain because they keep dying on me before I can feed them to her >.

make sure the humidiy is low like 50 or lower humidiy kills them that could be your problem or
they are adult crickets and are just dying after reaching there peak of living .

and when they become white there molting ( shedding )

oh ok well I threw it out. it was too big for her anyway.

hmm yeah the humidity in my room is probably around 42-43. can't be helped too much because of where I live.

it wouldn't let me post again... said it was a duplicate so I changed the name of the title.

she looks to be about 5 inches long but I'll try to measure her tonight when she wakes up