Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I got my first crestie yesterday. I did a good deal of research first, so I'm rather confidant that my little guy will grow up well. I have Burton in a 10g tank with coconut fiber substrate, a coconut shell hide, fake plants, a screen lid, heat lamps, and a humidifier. I'm feeding Burton CGD, with occasional crickets for exercise. Burton is a baby crestie, I'm not sure how old.
I'm just looking for any tips on raising my baby and would like to know about any common problems I should watch out for.

Oh, and my boyfriend is trying to convince me it would be neat if Burton could live with our Chinese water dragon when Burton is full grown. I'm rather against this idea, as I'm not sure their requirements are similar enough, and I don't want my crestie getting eaten. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Sounds like you've got the diet part right.

Cresteds generally do ok at room temp, presuming that like most humans, you like your rooms to be in the 70-75 degrees F range (20-24 celsius, if you're in one of those "sane" countries that uses the metric system ). Given that, unless you've got Burton in a cold room, the heat lamps are probably unnecessary. Just make sure his/her enclosure doesn't get above 80F/27C for any length of time; cresteds get stressed if they get much above 82 or 83 for more than a little while, and in fact I've seen them flip out, throwing themselves at walls of their enclosure, when this temperature is exceeded.

I'm curious what exactly you mean by a humidifier? Did you get some sort of automatic misting system? If so, cool, just make sure it's set to let things dry out at least some of the time in order to avoid mold.

Be prepared to buy a larger enclosure (or get one of those screen toppers like sleepygeckos uses), as when Burton is an adult s/he will want more than 10 gallons of space - 20 is considered adequate for one adult crested, and remember that being arboreal, a tall enclosure is preferred to a long one.

Finally, I would not put him/her in with a water dragon; mixing species in a tank is sometimes successful, but usually it's just asking for trouble. In fact, on reading a care sheet for water dragons, their recommended temperature range is actually hazardous to cresteds' health (84-88F, whereas 80 is really the max for cresteds). Also, the size disparity between them could easily lead to the dragon deciding to be predatory toward the crested.

Here's hoping this helped, and if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
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0.1 Albino Leopard Gecko - Tigger
0.1 Crested Gecko - Pooh-Bear

Well, my boyfriend keeps his house at about 65f so the heat lamps keep the enclosure at about 73. The humidifier is some reptile humidifier we picked up at Petco for our water dragon, but it wasn't enough for her 40g tank (she has a cool mist room humidifier from Walgreens now). It's kind of helping, but I still have to mist him every so often. I fully plan on a larger enclosure when Burton gets larger, we just happened to have two empty 10g tanks. He's about the size of my pinky right now, so I figure he'll be good for a while yet. I'd add a photo if I knew how to do it on here...
As far as the shared enclosure goes, I figured it was a bad idea. My boyfriend just gets crazy ideas sometimes.
Thanks for your input!

Happy to help; like I said, if you've got any other questions going forward, please ask away. As far as the photo goes, I've linked the photo gallery upload page on here for you. If you upload something to there, you'll be able to add it to any of your posts easily.
Kingsnake Photo Gallery

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0.1 Albino Leopard Gecko - Tigger
0.1 Crested Gecko - Pooh-Bear

They just finished uploading to photobucket, so i'm going to tr that before uploading them again.
" alt="Image">

It got kind of blurry when I had to resize it... Also, it would be great if someone could tell me what morph Burton is.

i think s/he is a Harlequin but he could but a Flame, am sure someone else well say for sure, but in the mean time heres a link to a site that may help,
http://www.ciliatus.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=42&Itemid=195
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1. Leopard Gecko: Larry
3. Cats: Midnight, Tiger & Fluffy
rip. Crestie: Tuki

Going to say, Harlequin. He/She looks beautiful. Where did you pick it up? Local reptile show? Breeder? Either way Good luck with her a keep her posted. btw, nice name for her XD

Alright don't give me too much crap, but I got Burton at Petco. We went to all three Petcos near us, and the reptile guy at this one is very knowledgeable. I paid $50, so I wanted to know if I got a good deal for the coloring. I named Burton after Tim Burton. If Burton ends up being a female, I'm going get a male and name him Edward. I suppose he'd have to be Edward Stickyfeet though, not Scissorhands.

Thanks for your input!

I got two of my geckos at petco, one was up for adoption at $10 and is absolutely beautiful when fired up. She's a simple little yellow and olive tiger but I bought her for companionship not beauty (although she has proven to be very beautiful). I figured that being at such a low cost some ignorant fool would come in with their child and be conned into buying her so as to save her from a fate less fortunate she came into my care.

The other is a male, I bought him at another, much larger petco for the full price. I want to say he's a patternless but to be honest i think his body isn't even sure what he is. I've found him in all sorts of different modes from a rusted out orange to a slate gray with things ranging from marble striping to nothing. He has dalmatian spots, some of which are red and he has some scaring here and there. His temperament has shown to be most relaxed and I couldn't be happier I paid the money I did to get him.

I *never* buy from a pet store that I have witnessed first hand neglecting their charges, and when informed don't immediately show concern or a determination to fix the problem, and have it fixed by the next time I return. I have stopped visiting 5 stores in the D-FW metroplex because they cannot fulfill my expectations of what a pet store should do, And I pray that each and every person on this website follows a similar mindset.

Point is; If the store is doing my job I feel they are entitled to a portion of my paycheck. If I feel they stop doing their job, they can go bankrupt for all I care.
Just know the facts before you enter a store because you get mixed information from people being pressured to make a sell.

agreed, besides which, a lot of petcos are supplied by allen repashy, so they're high quality animals.

>>I got two of my geckos at petco, one was up for adoption at $10

adoptions should be free, otherwise it's a sale. someone at that store was doing something wrong.

>>Just know the facts before you enter a store because you get mixed information from people being pressured to make a sell.

we aren't pressured to make a sale, we don't work on commission, and i regularly send people elsewhere for certain purchases. i couldn't care less how much we sell. those people who are giving out inaccurate information are simply ignorant and should be asking another employee for help if they don't know the answer, instead of making things up. but the managers can't constantly be standing around listening to what every employee is telling every customer, so these things happen. ultimately, it is the responsibility of the consumer to do their own research from several sources before purchasing an animal.
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4.1 snakes, 4.3.2 crested geckos, 0.1 gargoyle gecko, 0.0.2 red-eyed tree frogs, 2.0 devon rex cats, 1.0 betta, 0.1 sun conure, 1.0 lovebird

You just covered everything I was going to say Olstyn