Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi. I'm a new owner of a Leopard Gecko. I'm a research fanatic so I spent quite a lot of time educating myself beforehand. I decided to buy an adult (well, 11-month old) instead of a juvenile. I weighed the pluses (got an almost full grown one that isn't as skittish and no surprises as far as the pattern) and the minuses (probably not held a lot in his lifetime so will take some time to get him usw to being handled by me and my children - will do it very gradually over the next few months.)

I purchased from a very reputable breeder (vmsherp.com) I couldn't find any posts anywhere that had anything pattern of negativity other than they aren't the cheapest place to buy. Been in the business for years (20).

He arrived safe and sound, very health looking and is getting use to his luxury accommodations in his 30-gallon long tank with designer textured tile floor, UTH heater which takes up just about 1/3 the surface area of one end of the tank, beautiful naturalistic looking hide on the warm end next to a humid hide and a calcium dish and a hollow tree looking thing with a couple areas to hide and a water dish at the cold end. (I chose textured/rough finish tile over carpet and sand after much research and deliberation. It's really nice looking. Let's not get into the substrate argument, I learned it will go on forever.

I have a rheostat hooked up to the UTH and the center (hottest) area of the UTH is averaging 90 degrees in early morning to about 93 in afternoon give or take a degree or two depending on the day's weather, measured using a wireless digital BBQ thermometer with probe resting on the tile and tip in the middle of the UTH area. (the UTH is horizontal in the tank so there's 1-2" border of tank bottom from the edge of tank to the edge of the pad and the pad ends at just a little over the 1/3 mark of the length of the tank.)

I'm awaiting a thermostat that can control the UTH and a humidifier if desired by measuring temp and humidity and will be returning the ZooMed rheostat to PetSmart so I don't have to mess with the rheostat setting anymore. (I won't bother with the humidifier, we have good humidity range in the northwest, typically around 50% in our house - (you can see I have another thermometer with a humidity gauge I borrowed from my wine cellar sitting in the cold end showing 54% humidity.)

The cool end of the tank is typically mid to upper 70's in the day and lower 70's in the morning. If it is a hot summer day here in Seattle (which is mid to upper 80's) the room temp will be upper 70's to low 80's. Cooler days the cold end of the tank is about 70 in the morning. In the winter I will probably use a low (40-60) watt infrared bulb on top of the tank to keep the temp from dropping below 70 on the cold side.

From what I can tell, he has a textbook perfect setup just about (obviously setups will vary on personal preference) but I can't think of anything wrong with the setup.

I purchased adult/sub-adult crickets for him (that's what the breeder fed him) which are about 7/8" some with wings others without and his head is about 1 to 1-1/8" wide so I don't think the crickets are too big. (Breeder send he fed him 7/8 crickets) I of course gutloaded them for at least a day using some fish food I had. I bought some smaller 2/3" crickets for him yesterday and am currently gut loading them on fish food, carrots, and apples and will give those a try tonight. I've gut loaded mealworms on fish food and carrots and tried hand feeding them to him at night and then just tossed a few in the calcium dish where they pretty much sit there alive, but pretty lifeless. I put the rest in the fridge (already gut loaded.)

I was tossing 2-3 crickets in, in the evening around 8 (it stays light here this time of year until about 9:30 but he is furthest from the window and cage doesn't come close at all to getting any sun.) I know you are not suppose to leave the crickets is, as they will nibble on the gecko if they are hungry and there is nothing else to eat, but I found that all they do is just hide in the hollow tree thing all night. Then I take them out in the morning. They want nothing to do with the Gecko and he wants nothing to do with them right now.

We totally left him alone the first couple of days and then when trying to feed him I've briefly lifted his hide when I drop the crickets in. A couple times I briefly gave him a couple of pets on the back and also gently put him on top of the humid hide to see if he would go in (which he did briefly). He seems calm and healthy looking and not minding being picked up briefly.

Now I'm already full aware, especially with adults, being shipped overnight to a completely different environment will usually cause them to stop eating for a while. The breeder's information says one week isn't that unusual and sometime they won't eat for as long as 2 weeks. So I realize this post may be a few days premature, but frankly I want to make sure I'm doing everything right.

So I think my setup is good, temps are right, offering a variety of gut loaded food. He just won't eat. He does come out of the hide at night and sort of tries to climb up the side of the tank like, this isn't my home, how do I get out of here? But that's about it. If you lift the hide for a bit to watch him, he basically slowly walks around in circles, calmly, sort of like, "whoa, where's my roof go?"

So any suggestions on how to get him to eat again? I'm thinking of offering him some fresh waxworms that come in on Thursday but realize those are high in fat and should be only offered as treats and wouldn't want him to expect those as his diet if it is the first thing I get him to eat! Like I said, the breeder only fed him crickets gut loaded with a changing variety of food. Then I heard there are bigger, more nutritious mealworms called, superworms, maybe I should try those too?

Could his hide be to hot considering the surface temp outside the hide is about 91-92 most of the time? (I think I'm splitting hairs here.)

Should I not leave the crickets in overnight? Even so, he never comes out of his hide when I drop them in so how long to wait before taking them out? An hour? Seems better to leave them in there if it is only a couple of them but I heard they can stress him out running all around but they just end up hiding in the hollow trunk thing all night. I had fake plant stuck to the side by the tree thing and took that out because the crickets were well hidden in that thing. Looked nice though.

Should I remove the hollow trunk thing and just put in one of those half of a piece of hollowed out tree trunk looking hides which is much simpler than the tree thing, easier to climb up on top of, and fewer places for the crickets to hide? Of course a black plastic to-go container bottom with a hole in it would serve the same purpose just not look as nice.

I'd also like to get a bit shallower calcium dish with straight sides but all PetSmart had is the sculpted ones and so I just used something from the kitchen (I realize a large lid works fine too.) A rectangular dish would be perfect as then it would leave less places for crickets to hide.

My guess is, I'm doing everything pretty much right and it just could take another week before this guy eats!

Any suggestions are appreciated. Here's pictures of the cage setup and the Gecko. His name is Kecleon which is a lizard-type Pokemon (Kecle for short.)

First off, good on you for doing research beforehand. It sounds like your enclosure is set up pretty well, but there's one thing I see that could stand to be better (and this may just be the perspective of the shot and the fact that it's sometimes hard to judge scale). It looks to me as though that tree thing is not a terribly "secure" hide. "Secure," to a reptile, means low, dark, and close. Basically, somewhere they can be sure they're not seen from outside and where they can feel the walls around them. That tree just doesn't look like it fits that description to me, which may mean that the little guy is being forced to choose between security and temperature. Apart from that, don't lift his roof off unless you've got a good reason to - that's just going to stress him by making him feel less secure.

I'd say give him 2 days of not bothering him at all, then try tossing in some crickets and see what he does. At 11 months old, he could easily still be growing, and growing geckos do not starve themselves, so he will eventually eat unless there's some sort of health problem.
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0.1 Albino Leopard Gecko - Tigger
0.1 Crested Gecko - Pooh-Bear

I second the hides, even if you just throw a opaque plastic container in there near the cool end.

My gut says the gecko is too warm. 93F isn't necessarily too warm, but I've often found that the behavior of scrabbling up the glass (especially on the cool end) means one of two things: pick me up or I'm too hot. Like humans, they have their preferences too.

I use the same kind of thermometer you've got for my oven and I can't get two of them next to each other to read the same thing, so I would caution against trusting it /-5F at best. (Mine seem to be off by about 4F)

Usually tile is harder to keep warm, but 1/3 of the tank area is about as high as recommended and if you've got an especially "hot" or high wattage UTH that could easily be too much for your specific gecko's comfort. IMHO, I would turn down the UTH a bit, aim for more like 88F and see if the climbing behavior stops.