Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i got 10 geckos in the mail tuesday, and have been spending about 2 hours a night trying to feed them. tuesday 0 ate, wednesday half ate, and last night 9 ate. i've been having to put a worm in front of a gecko and poke it to get it to wiggle/move, and even then it takes time to get the geckos to actually bite.
my question is how the hell do you get them to eat from a bowl? i've read many care sheets on all the leo gecko sites i could find but they make it sound as easy as putting mealworms in a bowl in your cage.....but the mealworms barely move in the bowl and my geckos don't even see them.
so tonight i just put the worms in the bowls and wrote down how many in each one, so i can see if any were eaten tomorrow. am i doing the right thing? or do i have to keep feeding them one at a time? my food bowls are clear lids from the cups they were shipped in, and yes the worms are alive. also a couple of the geckos shed last night/today, will they eat tonight?
and just now there was some wet poop in a tank with about an inch stain around it, is that normal? :/
thanks

I haven't had much luck getting geckos to eat from a dish either, so when I do feed them mealies I usually do it one at a time. One thing you might try is putting a bunch of mealies in a dish and warming them up real good with a heat lamp or something. After they are good and squirmy show your geckos the dish and maybe they'll realize it's food.

If your haven't already, give them some crickets. Crickets are stupid and noisy, but they are an excellent food source and their movement is great for stimulating an appetite.

Good luck!

I would advise getting younger mealworms from an online retailer. I get a few thousand medium sized mealies at a time from wormman.com. You should raise them on gutload, so they will be nourishing for your geckos. They seem to be much more active and therefore appealing to my leos. I keep them in a porcelain dish, where the mealworms can’t quite climb up the sides. The leos will come out at night and eat at their leisure. A few of my leos don’t like mealies at all, and I feed them crix, supers, waxies, or pinkies. You shouldn’t be surprised that you have to spend 1-2 hours a night with your geckos, that is part of the responsibility of owning 10 of them. Best of luck with your new gex, and let the forum know if you have any more questions.

P.S. the poop sounds normal to me, if you see another one like that, take a small piece of paper towel, and pick up the fresh poo. Toss it in the trashcan and trust me, your cages will smell cleaner.

Are all the leos being kept together??? If so this will make it hard for every leo to get its fair share of food and hides. Seperate them into groups of twos and threes (or each individually if you can manage it).
Now, getting leos to eat from a bowl is really really easy. Just put the mealies in the bowl and leave it. Leos do prowl the tank "on the hunt" and will stumble across the mealies. I don't know who your supplier is, but healthy, gutloaded mealies do move. A mealie doesn't move when it is sick, dying, or has just come out of hibernation.

Cleo
1:1 leos (6 eggs cooking)

they're grouped 4, 3, 3. the 4 are the youngest/smallest ones.
only 3-4 worms were gone from each bowl today, but yesterday i did order 5000 mini mealworms, should be here wednesday. so hopefully that will help. i will try your "training" method, thanks for the replies everyone.

Well first of all if you are keeping them together you should seperate them, this is greatly lower the gecko's stress. What i do to get my babies "bowl trained" is i first feed with a tweezers until they are established and eating well (this is optional of course) then i get one of those little hamster bowls, ones that the insects can't climb out of and place the food in there. I show the geckos the the food in the dish (by tilting the bowl so they can look into it, be careful not to dumb out the food) I do this a few nights and keep an eye on what they are eating, and they reconize where the food is and they are "trained" :-]. Good luck!