Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can bibron's geckos live with anoles that are in a 60 gallon tall tank.It has climbing areas,caves and plants.I also am keeping a crocodile gecko with my anoles too.Can you tell me about bibron's geckos?

jeeeeez...is anyone else sick and tired of people asking "Bibron's Geckos with Anoles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", "Can a tokay live with a crested?", "Geckos living with anoles?", "sharing the habitat", etc.? RESEARCH PEOPLE...none of these have the same care!!! GOD...go ahead, go put a tokay with a crested, med. gecko & flying geckos & a Tokay gecko, etc...come back in a month and tell us how its going...while your at it, go mix yourself with a bear, and lets se how you like it...

Stop mixing species,Why do u have reptiles then.U are two diffrent species.Same with u and cats and dogs.Thats just like are some dogs friends with cats.Yes they are!!!!!!!!!!!
What in the world is your problem nas 36!!!!!!!!

Mixing different herps with different needs is a bad idea, as well as bad judgement. If you like your herps and want them to thrive KEEP THEM SEPERATE!

Some dogs like mine carry around scars from brief encounters with cats. And she wasn't even crammed in a box with one. At any rate,that's apples and oranges. Follow our advice and buy two cages, or go ahead and try it anyway and find out for yourself. And don't ask questions if you're only going to listen to what you wanted to hear in the first place.

You can keep any reptiles together as long as they have the same requirements and aren't smalllarge enough to eat each other. Simple as that. Ever keep a community fish tank? same concept.
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Reptiles are not fish. Fish LIKE to be in groups. Reptiles hate groups. Reptiles are also not treated broadly with antibiotics before they get to your house. And most community fishtanks, unless you stick with realy safe (boring) fish, end up with some fish loss due to fighting, stress, and disease. I'm sure there are reptile community tanks that will work, but you need to accept some risk and possible reptile loss. If this is your bag, go ahead. But if the question is 'can I do this without worrying about bad consequences', the answer is NO.

I have never had problems mixing species of reptiles that have the same requirements and are of equal size. I suppose if one gets cheap sick reptiles {or fish} and does not quarantine them first one would have many problems regaurdless. It boils down to cage size. If one tries to put too many herps in the same small cage, there will be problems just like keping too many fish, mammals, insects, arachnids, birds, molluscs, etc. Its common sense.
I am tired of these blanket statements meant to keep people from making stupid mistakes, but just because one doesnt have time to fully answer and explore the person's question, doesnt give the "experts" a good reason to just say "no". Others who are at different levels of herp keeping may take these statements as absolute, and they are not, believe me. If you get tired of the same questions, dont answer them.

It's all a matter of the amount of risk one wishes to take. Keeping them together is riskier than keeping them apart.
I wouldn't take an extra risk with a reptile that I considered a pet. What was the person asking when they said 'can I?'? I take it to mean 'can I do this without any risk?' The answer to that is no.

well after 20 years of laborious study, I am still learning things about the sociological characteristics of reptiles. I never knew..........

Ok... maybe oversimplisitc... but compared to common aquarium fish, they don't like groups. I can't think of a reptile that does BETTER in a group than it would on its own.

Oh, I can think of a lot. Being in the Gecko forum, what about Ptenopus garrulus???Don´t oversimplificate things

I would like to see you house some prehensile tailed skinks in solitude and tell me the results of that. Oh? He died cause he was stressed? Yeah no [bleep] shirlok theres plenty of reptiles that need compaions. As for fish, only schooling fish stick together. Dont make assumptions if you dont know fish. I dont see people puting cichlids with neon tetras yet I do see barbs with a pleco. Same with reptiles. Tokays dont go with leaf tails just because theyre the same size. Experience is the key to knowing what lives together. I in no way disagree that the safest way is to keep reptile species seperate, in most cases even isolated from the same species. But this does apply to each and every one of them and in no way should stop you from setting up a nice community tank with a bit of research.

Typically, mixing species is not a good idea, for several reasons:

1- Even if all of the animals are roughly the same size, larger lizards will take dominance over smaller ones, or even may consider the smaller lizards prey (you'd be surprised how large a meal some lizards might go after, especially if they're in a stressful, cramped cage situation). Also, when you first acquire the lizards, they may be the same size, but if you are not familiar with the species, you might end up with one lizard that grows to be twice the size of another. Also, what if one species is more agressive than another? The mellower animals would again end up being picked on, and eventually become ill and die if not eaten.

2- Any "community" terrarium (a term used by fish keepers, any enclosure containing more than one species) must be BIG. Every species must be allowed its own space, its own basking spot, its own hiding spots and its own feeding areas. You'll need at least double the space that you'd usually provide the species who needs the most.

3- Any animals you mix must come from the same habitat. Aside from the absolutely ludicrous idea of mixing desert species with forest species (which, and this should go without saying, NOT be done), even if two animals come from the same place, it does not necessarily mean that their needs are similar. Microhabitats within larger ecosystems are home to tons of species, and the conditions in microhabitats can be drastically different from the rest of the area the animal comes from.
Imagine this example: You have two lizards that live in the Amazon. However, one is a ground-dwelling skink, one is a tree-dwelling gecko. Although they both live in the same forest, the skink needs slightly cooler temperatures, higher humidity, places to burrow... A totally different habitat than the gecko, who lives in the forest canopy, would need different food than the skink, an arboreal set up, different temperatures and humidity, etc... Two very different needs from two animals that come from the same place.

4- Disease is common among many reptile and amphibian species because so many of them are still wild-caught. Bacteria are almost a guarantee (and other microorganisms could possibly be infecting one or more lizards), and even if they happen to be a kind of bacterium that is not harmful to one of the species you are keeping, if the other animals come from the other side of the world, their immunity to this particular organism is likely non-existant, resulting in one or more sick animals who will need to be separated and get veterinary attention.

With all of this in mind... I myself have one mixed-species enclosure in my home. It is a 33-gallon, forest-jungle terrarium, that houses one green anole, Anolis carolinensis, and one Asian flat-tailed house gecko, Cosymbotus platyurus. Both species have similar needs and temperaments, both have been quarantined before being introduced to each other, and as an added bonus: The anole is diurnal, the gecko is nocturnal.

So, even though it's not advisable because there's so many things that can be wrong with a community enclosure, it's still possible to do. Like my terrarium, small, non-tempermental house gecko species and green anoles seem to be fine together if allowed their own space. I've also been told that green anoles and American green tree frogs, Hyla cinera, can co-exist in a properly set up habitat. Although lizards and treefrogs can sometimes co-exist, putting snakes, chelonians (turtles, tortoises and terrapins) and salamanders together with lizards is not a good idea. The vast majority of these animals have care requirements that are too different, and many recognize the other as food.

Also, if you want to mix species, each animal must be properly quarantined for at *least* 60 days (90 is better), and tested for sickness by a vet. For more information on quarantining reptiles and amphibians, see my article: http://www.acc50.attcanada.net/jinx/herps/quarantine.html

Christina Miller
Herptiles.org

thank you christina, for your time and effort. THAT was a very good post indeed. If only you could post the same one everytime someone asked about keeping different species together, therewould be alot less friction on this subject I think.

*phew* Just glad I had some time to actually type up a helpful response! I'll probably just copy/paste the jist of it next time someone asks lol

Christina Miller
www.herptiles.org