Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a thirty gallon tank in which I plan on keeping three or four cresties (preferably two or three females and one male). I was wondering if I could get one crestie now, and introduce others later? Could I introduce them one at a time? For instance, could I get one male now and intruduce a female further down the road? And then another one a little later? I want them to have enough space and not fight... should I just buy four babies off the top and keep them together or would it work spacing them out a bit? Please let me know and thanks!
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1.1.0 Ball pythons (Diablo, Mercedes)
Soon to have 0.1.0 RTB (Kinky)
0.2.0 Cats (Kate and Clarice)
1.0.0 Rabbits (Milosh)

starting with babies or juvies in this hobby is always going to be the way to go if you're trying to save money. you could get 3-4 specatular juvies for what 1 or 2 specatcular adults will cost.
buying them young also gives you the advantage of knowing about how old they are, and how they've been raised. there are a couple of drawbacks however, and the main one is the obvious one. you could very well end up with multiple males which you should not house together. the second major thing is breeding a female when she is too young. a male could technically breed between 20-25 grams, and if you get the geckos at the same age/size, then that is what size your females will be. 20-25 grams is WAY too small to effectively breed cresteds in the long run, and you should be worried about the health of your females if they start producing under 30 grams, and preferably over 35 grams before breeding. look around and see what you can get a sexed pair for, and compare it to buying a few small cresteds that you can raise yourself.

agreed on all the above opinion

and also whether you get them at the same time or not, you should watch them closely to make sure none are losing weight (being bullied away from food or too intimidated) and all shed well etc.
just always keep an eye out no matter when you put whatever sizes together and if you see a problem then you should seperate
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Rachel
Hatching Herps
1.0 bearded, 3.8.16 crested geckos, 1.1 gargoyle gecko, 1.2 corns (reg, butter, caramel), 1.1 ball python, 1.1 sinaloan milks, 0.1 rubber boa, white's tree frog

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll just get a couple of babies to start with and see what happens from there.

Just a curiousity question though... Can you put an adult with babies or vise versa? I know with beardies, the adults would pick on the babies and might possibly eat them. Can this happen with cresties?
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1.1.0 Ball pythons (Diablo, Mercedes)
Soon to have 0.1.0 RTB (Kinky)
0.2.0 Cats (Kate and Clarice)
1.0.0 Rabbits (Milosh)

i would not keep geckos of more than a few grams difference in with one another. a few grams will not matter as adults, however a 10 gram crested could every easily eat/kill a 4 or 5 gram crested. it is fairly unlikely that it would be eaten, but if one gets hungry enough it will likely try. also, you have to rememeber that most animals attack something that is moving before they really know what it is.