Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Put it together today getting them Tuesday, I'm also placing egg crates in the front.

that setup looks really nice.

the only concern is, that it may be a bit too decorated. a lot of the time crested geckos can have a tough time finding food, i have seen people decorate there tanks so densely that the crested geckos come close to starving because they have such a hard time finding food.

make sure there isnt a lot of places for the crickets to hide and also monitor the weight of your gecko and make sure he/she or they are all eating ok.

i would consider setting up a 10-20g tank for the sole purpose of feeding crickets. your cresteds are going to have a hell of a time trying to satisfy their bellies in that tank. i would hold out on teh egg crates, it looks perfect the way it is.

I will feed mainly T-rex crested gecko food and once a week feed insects, mostly orange head roachs which I breed and keep them in a glass ash tray where they can't escape from. I'll always place this in the same area, crested will have no problems

Nice setup! I'm sure your crested will love it. I too have a natural setup (will have to post pics) and I just feed him crickets/worms in another cage (Critter Keeper).
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Looks purdy.....but to echo the other 2 posts.....they'll never find their food, trust me. BTW, what size tank is that anyway?
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run around searching under logs and rocks until they find things?
they wait for something to walk out in front of them and grab it. or they see it off in the distance and stalk it. if you throw 15 crickets in there, my bet is you'll clean the cage and find maybe 2 or 3 that they didn't get.
the main reason i would worry about the crickets would be for when eggs are laid and crickets getting to the eggs. not the cresties starving to death.
i'm not saying some cresties may not do very well in that set up, or that some crickets may not be eaten, but that would be the least of my concerns when you should be more worried about impaction or something.

it is not at all uncommon for crested geckos to starve in setups like that. in fact i know someone who insisted on having a setup very similar to that with a running waterfall and was warned not to and she had to get rid of her crested gecko (which was her sons) because it nearly starved to death.

in a setup like that they can actually starve very easily. it looks really nice like that, but you have to be concerned about them finding food.

that's interesting because i have several more elaborate cages for just about all of my lizards which i've had in extremely healthy conditions for several years. ranging from frilled dragon, veiled chameleon, uroplatus sikorae, lineatus, and ciliatus.
if you only toss a couple crickets in there you'd have a problem, but if you toss 20 crickets in there they will eat fine.

overall it is not recommended, even by professional breeders, maybe it works for you but i definitely wouldnt recommend it to everyone.

thats just my opinion though.

it has also been noticed that when setups are really elaborate they are also much more difficult to keep clean and because of the work involved most people dont like to clean them.

i like to keep it simple.

i definately agree with your final statement. which is why i choose to leave many of my cages simple as well. however some species it is almost impossible to simplify the cage or they will not do very well. mainly uroplatus species from what i've worked with.