I have never seen a reptile that had hypercalcemia (too much calcium) from oral supplements. The danger of hypocalcemia (too little calcium) is far greater and I always recommend dusting of food. It is very difficult to provide too much calcium with oral supplements. You can absolutely overdose and cause problems with injectable calcium.
Dusting every feeding is not necessary though and every other feeding or so is more reasonable. Also make sure you aren’t making little cricket ghosts-they just need a very thin layer of powder.
I know lots of keepers that supply a small dish of calcium powder and in theory it should be fine, I have never had luck with it and it just sits there unused. Just make sure you are keeping it clean and replacing it often.
Make sure your calcium powder is just calcium with no added vitamin D. You can overdose vitamin D as well as other vitamins. Maybe once a week a vitamin powder can be added to food. Repashy Calcium Plus is a good calcium supplement with added vitamins. I like that it has pre-formed vitamin A in it as some reptile species have trouble converting beta-carotene into usable vitamin A.
Gutloading can be done with commercial cricket foods or you can provide fresh veggies and some low fat dog kibble.
Finally, I highly recommend a low output UV bulb even for leopard geckos. Reptiles need UV light to “unlock” the dietary calcium and make use of it. No amount of supplementation can overcome a lack of UV. I know leopard geckos are touted as not needing UV, but recent studies indicate even nocturnal reptiles absorb and use UV, they are just better at using very low levels.
TL;DR: Use a calcium supplement every other feeding. You can use a multivitamin supplement once a week or so.
Eco Earth is a very bad choice for leopard geckos.
Contrary to what you’ve heard, it can cause serious impaction. Eco Earth is not “dirt” like a leopard gecko would encounter in the wild. It’s actually shredded coconut husk, which is fibrous. Sand and Eco Earth (coco fiber) both pose a serious risk of impaction.
In addition, Eco Earth retains far too much moisture to be a good choice for leopard geckos. It’s great for species who need a humid habitat, like crested geckos. However, leopard geckos are from arid habitats! They need humidity under 40%.
If you have a new gecko, I recommend that you have the newcomer on paper towels for the first four weeks. This allows you to monitor the gecko and make sure it is healthy. You can easily find and examine feces. I also suggest a wellness checkup and fecal from the vet before moving onto another substrate. Quarantined, new, and sick leopard geckos should be on a solid substrate.
The BioDude’s bioactive substrate is a fine choice for a leopard gecko, if you are comfortable doing a bioactive enclosure for your leopard gecko. Buying the substrate from him does take a lot of guess work out of it.
However, there are still a lot of considerations for designing an arid bioactive enclosure that make it harder to do than a humid bioactive enclosure. The substrate needs to be kept at the proper moisture content to keep the humidity down, yet provide a humidity gradient for your leopard gecko and retain burrows, and because of the substrate depth you will need to use a heat source other than a UTH (unless you set up a split substrate or otherwise design the habitat to accommodate it). Although you can maintain the enclosure with the BioDude’s substrate and not go bioactive (purchase clean up crew invertebrates, etc.), it would be an expensive prospect, as you would need to spot clean regularly and occasionally replace all the substrate.
My recommendation is not to go with an arid bioactive enclosure to start. However, if you’re willing to put in the work to thoroughly research and maintain it, it’s possible. I personally would suggest setting up and maintaining humid and tropical bioactive enclosures to get a feel for bioactive first.
If you do choose to go bioactive you can mix your own bioactive substrate as well, and not purchase The BioDude’s.
Substrates that are a good choice for leopard geckos include:
Paper towel (and butcher paper, newspaper, kraft paper, etc.)
Slate tile
Ceramic tile
Excavator clay
A properly designed loose substrate mix of topsoil, sand, decomposed granite, and organic components, preferably bioactive
The tile chosen should not be slippery and should have a flat back so as not to cause uneven heating.
Other options that are safe but that I don’t recommend personally include:
Astroturf or “grass mats” – they are easier to clean than reptile carpet, by soaking in a disinfectant solution often, and do not catch claws like the reptile carpet can. Run a bead of silicone sealant along the edges and let it cure, to prevent unraveling. A bead of hot glue is another choice. Check often.
Sand mats – more difficult to disinfect and so will need to be replaced fairly frequently, making them expensive, but they are attractive; it is generally best to provide other surfaces such as flat rocks and wood, or use sand mat plus another solid substrate, since the sand mats can be rather rough to constantly walk on.
In addition to using a solid substrate like tile, paper towel, or a mat, you can provide a digging box for the leopard gecko as enrichment, which contains a safe loose substrate mix. This is a safer way to provide loose substrate enrichment for newer reptile keepers!
In general it is a great idea to provide several different surfaces for your leopard gecko to walk on, for enrichment. There’s no reason to limit yourself to just one choice.
At least two behavioral measures of good welfare increased in captive leopard geckos with every type of enrichment used.
(With the exception of the visual enrichment, which was a mirror that let the geckos see their reflections.)
The Citation: Meredith J. Bashaw, Mallory D. Gibson, Devan M. Schowe, Abigail S. Kucher. Does enrichment improve reptile welfare? Leopard geckos (Eublepharis macularius) respond to five types of environmental enrichment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science: In press, available online 25 August 2016.
The Article: link here! It’s a docdroid link, which is the site I like to use for uploading PDFs. Clicking that link will not start an automatic download, but will open the PDF in your browser instead. It may load funny at first. If it does, give it a moment and then refresh if it doesn’t fix itself!
The Take-Away:
Enrichment is really important for your reptile’s overall wellness!
You can provide enrichment in even a simple tub and plastic hide basic enclosure and your gecko will benefit.
Much of the value of enrichment is based on novelty and variety. Enrichment doesn’t mean just cluttering up the cage or adding more hides! It means adding stuff to do and adding new stuff to do!
Enrichment introduces small changes, not major environmental shake-ups.
Enrichment doesn’t have to be complicated! You can make or buy many simple items that will improve your gecko’s quality of life!
Want to know why? There’s loads of science after the jump!
This is awesome! It’s a great study and I love seeing detailed behavioural analysis like this being applied to reptile welfare.
However, I think its important to highlight more of the conclusions of the study;
They concluded novel objects were effective enrichment but the priority should be to increasing environmental complexity in a way that caters for natural behaviors… Various good quotes directly from the article below:
“Feeding and thermal enrichment may have altered behavior by providing a greater number and variety of opportunities to perform target behaviors.”
“Thermal enrichment provided a greater number of warm shaded spots in the geckos home cages. Alternatively, the enrichment items may have allowed the animals to perform target behaviors more effectively or enjoyably, for example by allowing geckos to work for food when free food was available. (ie. contrafreeload: Inglis et al.,1997). Feeding devices were transparent or translucent, allowing the geckos to see the crickets inside. Geckos often sat outside the device and watched or stalked crickets inside. Thermal items were wood, differing from the other exhibit furniture in thermal properties, coefficients of friction, opacity , odor and being natural (non-plastic) material. These properties may be attractive to geckos.
Behaviors critical for survival, like foraging, are intrinsically reinforcing, in that performing such a behaviour increases the probability that the same behaviour will recur regardless of the external consequences (Mench, 1998; Tarou and Bashaw, 2007). Animals seek out opportunities to perform intrinsically reinforcing behaviors and several authors have suggested their welfare may be compromised if provided insufficient opportunities for these behaviors (Duncan 1998; Tarou and Bashaw, 2007).
For carnivorous reptiles like leopard geckos, both hunting and thermoregulatory behaviors are likely intrinsically reinforcing (Warwick et al.,2013) .”
“We conclude that providing novel objects improves welfare in the leopard gecko by increasing their propensity for exploration; these items should be provided, but preference given to enrichment like puzzle feeders, climbing and shade structures and warm or cool substrates that address strongly motivated behaviors like feeding and thermoregulation”
“Leopard geckos benefited from three types of environmental enrichment: thermal, feeding and novel objects (with and without scent). Geckos attended to each of these, but engaged more with enrichment that added complexity to meeting their basic physiological or behavioural needs than with novel objects.”
This also means enrichment CAN include adding more hides and “clutter” as long as these offer a greater choice to the animal in some meaningful way by providing various resting places along climate gradients (heat, humidity, light, UV ect).
Good enclosure design is the foundation of good enrichment.
Its also interesting that these set ups were heated using a lamp, not an under tank heater (which most pet keepers typically use and recommend for leo’s).
If a heat mat was used instead of a radiant heat source this could have really changed how the geckos in the experiment interacted with the thermal enrichment. As under tank heaters don’t produce such a broad thermal gradient ( @skies-of-saltpost here shows this really well! ).
Even different heating methods and day/night cycles are part of enrichment. I hope this is the start of a lot more studies to come!
If you want to keep reptiles or really any animal please read this.
This leopard gecko was kept by someone I know who, despite loving him very much, did not spend time researching his care. Therefore they did not know that he needed calcium and d3, they also did not know how much heat he needed.
Because his owner didn’t know to provide these things for him he developed MBD (metabolic bone disease) and a respiratory infection along with a huge amount of shed collecting on his feet.
He has seen a vet and is on antibiotics and vitamin supplements, while he will probably survive he will never walk well again and has already suffered far more than any creature should.
This could all have been avoided if his owner had done research and provided for him everything he would need to stay healthy and happy. There is no excuse for not researching the care of a pet you are going to be responsible for. Just a simple google search would have prevented this little guys suffering.
Please take the time to learn about any animal you are going to be responsible for, they cannot get themselves what they need to stay healthy that is up to YOU. Love is not a substitute for proper care.
Edit: this was posted with the owners consent
Louder, for the folks in the back: Love is not a substitute for proper care.
Reptiblr, I have a conundrum I’m hoping someone will have advice for.
I’ve got two leopard geckos in their own separate glass tank enclosures with reptile carpet substrate. Two years ago, I tried to introduce a small succulent plant into each of their enclosures for enrichment, but they both attacked their respective plant and tore the leaves off it. I took the plants out and haven’t tried to put anymore in their enclosures since. I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas for enhancing the enrichment in their environments and I’ve been considering adding plants again, among other things.
Does anybody have some tricks or advice for adding plants to enclosures with carpet, or suggestions for other things they might enjoy? They have all the basics for heating, hides, and water, but not much else.
Was asked whether I can help with this. Don’t have any specific advice, but have some links saved on reptile enrichment that I can share –
That’s the accepted minimum standard, so I highly encourage you to get bigger if you can. Your gecko is going to spend pretty much its entire life in this enclosure; make it the best you can. c:
One of the things I hear a lot is, “oh, that’s too big/a big tank will stress a gecko out”. This is NOT accurate. Geckos get stressed out by a lot of blank space in their enclosures because they feel insecure and open to attack. This is easily mitigated by putting in more hides, plants, corkbark, decor… just anything to fill the space.
If you can’t get a bigger tank, don’t worry; you can still give your gecko a good home by making use of vertical space. Using turtle ramps can give your gecko more room to roam.
Oh thank you for the answer! I just got pretty worried because I had heard you’re supposed to use a bigger tank, and I really can’t afford one at the moment (once I get a decent job I’m going to try to get a bigger one!)
I’m going to do my best to make the enclosure the most natural looking I can with my current budget, and I might have to add stuff after a while since I don’t have a job at the moment, but hearing that the tank is big enough really made my anxiety about this better, so again thank you!
You’re welcome! Here are some extra ways to save on tank decor that your gecko will love:
Shop for fake plants at dollar stores. So long as the plants aren’t covered in glitter or perfume, they’re safe. Plastic ones are really easy to disinfect using a 10% bleach solution. Just let them soak overnight and wash them off in the morning really well. Fabric ones should be washed in hot water and soap. Watch out for dye running! If the dye runs, it’s not safe for geckos.
Toilet paper or paper towel tubes are excellent hides. honestly one of my gecko loves these more than any proper hide I get for her.
Kleenex boxes and even small cereal boxes are great.
find a cool rock outside? n i c e. Put it in the freezer for 24-36 hours to disinfect and it can be used as decor (once it’s no longer freezing, i mean). i’ve even used bricks in the past and it was fine.
Grapewood and corkbark are both cheap as HECK and very nice in gecko homes. You can freeze them for 24-36 hours to disinfect, if you want.
Oh thank you for the tips! Those will come in very handy! If you don’t mind me asking, do you know if having a lightbulb hanging inside the tank is safe? I have a hole in the top of the tank (the top is made out of a metal net) that is there so a bulb can hang inside it, and I just want to make sure it won’t hurt the gecko!
That carries a heavy risk of hurting the geck, unfortunately. It’d be really hard for the gecko to get away from the light, so there’s a risk of overheating and getting burned, as well as possible eye injuries.
I really recommend checking out this care sheet. It’s very informative.
Fabric in the enclosure: textures to explore! I have a fabric bag, a beanie, and fabric scraps in different tanks to provide enrichment.
Climbing structures: I used safe materials to stick together flat rocks, and provide platforms to climb up onto. There’s also sticks and wood with fake plants wrapped around, and Peep can climb on those even without claws.
New, temporary hides: switch it up! Change their coconut out with a plastic flowerpot. Line the existing hide with a new texture.
Items to explore in the tank: this would include anything that isn’t specifically something you’d put in usually, but that can safely go in anyways. I’ve got pingpong balls bigger than their mouths for this purpose.
New cover: put up a little fabric tent. Or get a big (sanitary) leaf from outside and put that over.
Rearrange what’s already in the tank: be warned, they may not like it. Peep was not a fan of her first rearrangement, but she’s exploring the second one eagerly. If your gecko doesn’t care for it, return to the original or reconfigure to something else!
Recycle: toilet paper rolls, little boxes, crinkly paper. Anything with a new texture is good.
Make getting their food a game: use tongs, have them chase the food. Drop it in from the ceiling. Poke holes in a pingpong ball, shove mealworms in there, and let the gecko figure it out. Make a maze of food (outside of the tank). Something as simple as a glass jar on its side with mealworms inside can be challenging.
Since it’s the time of year when female leopard geckos ovulate, I thought this might be helpful to share. A lot of people ask me when they can tell if an ovulating leopard gecko is going to lay infertile eggs. Let me start out by saying that it’s uncommon for this to happen! I’ve only had two females lay infertile eggs without ever being paired with a male. It definitely can happen, but it’s less likely than you would think.
What does ovulation look like?
The ovules themselves look like small, pencil eraser sized pink / white circles on the underside of the leopard gecko. Sometimes they are visible without physically manipulating the gecko, but usually you will have to lift the gecko gently by the hips or base of the tail so the abdominal organs press up closer against the skin, allowing you to see them. Behaviorally, ovulating geckos can be more defensive than usual and can slow or stop eating. If your gecko is ovulating and not eating, there is usually little cause for concern. Losing a few grams during this time is not a big deal, and typically once they stop ovulating they will eat. Some even eat all the way through ovulation to egg laying. It really depends on the individual animal.
When will the gecko lay eggs, and how can I tell if she is going to?
If the gecko has been bred, they lay anywhere between 2-4 weeks after a successful mating. Mine usually lay in the 18-25 day window. Today is day 11 for Serena, and you can clearly see the developing eggs through her belly. I won’t know if they’re fertile or not until they’re laid, fertile and infertile eggs look pretty much identical through the skin.
If your gecko has not been bred, it can be difficult to say if or when she will lay eggs. I physically check my ovulating girls once a week, and there are some signs that they’re going to actually lay infertile eggs.
The ovules have grown in size and have moved into a position similar to that in the pic above. One is usually higher than the other.
She’s spending a lot of time in her humid hide, or digging a lot if provided a dig box
She’s started eating again
Once the ovules are about ½ inch in size, it’s pretty safe to say that they’ve transitioned into eggs and will need to be passed. If you suspect your gecko is going to lay infertiles, provide them with an adequate nesting site or she may hold onto the eggs for too long and become egg bound. I use ziploc food storage containers with a hole melted in the top big enough for the gecko to climb through easily, filled halfway with damp sphagnum and coco fiber. A few days before she lays you will notice her digging and spending most of her time in the lay box, she will also likely stop eating during this time as well. It’s really important to provide them with a good calcium / vitamin mix during this time as well, since infertiles are often improperly shelled and can be harder for them to pass.
Let me know if you have any questions, I hope this helps answer some of your questions and eases some of the springtime anxiety a lot of leopard gecko owners deal with!
ifesbob 