Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I never actually see my leo baby drink out of the dish, the water level looks mysteriously lower after 1 or 2 days but im not sure if that is because of consumption or evaporation (this is because i have a very shallow dish)

so now because i get pretty scared of dehydration/malnutrition i take the following methods when feeding:

1. get a mealie and get leos attention
2. lure it over to the water dish and drop mealie inside waterdish
3. gecko lunges and attacks mealie, getting the insect and a mouthful of water
4. mealie dies
5. gecko licks up water from its snout and looks at me

REPEAT

for the next 2 mealies i drop them in calcium dishes instead
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also, on occaision the animal will go into the moist hide and lick the wet paper towels, i dont know if thats a good thing or not..

I do that. All of my hatchlings hides have papertowel that I keep damp. They never drink from bowls, so they lap it up off the towel. But i make sure not to buy any scented or dyed towels, just plain. As for my adults, once i moved them off towel they quickly learned to drink from the bowl on their own.

It was about 4 months before I saw my leo drink from the dish. I assumed she had to because there was a large amount of uriate in her poop.

I also mist her daily and she licks the droplets off the wall and her snout.

Of course she hates mealworms so I use wax worms and dip them in the calcium powder before feeding.

well the way im doing it by dropping mealies into a water dish should work fine as long as it gets a mouthful of water though right?

That sounds fine...but you shouldn't have to do anything like that. If your gecko is eating and pooping regularly and normaly, than your gecko is getting its own water (probably when your not there to witness it). If your gecko is thirsty it should be able to instinctivly go to its dish and drink....even the most primitive of animals can figure this out.

well it does defecate normally and always has been so i guess its been having enough

its normal to see a lump of poo every day right?