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Lizards
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   I
keep my leopard geckos (above left)
in a 20-gallon long aquarium (above right). The female,
Bathsheba, is pictured below.
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A good case could be made
that the
leopard gecko is the best starter lizard for a person who has
never
owned a lizard before. Like veiled chameleons, leopard geckos
are
easily bred in captivity and are readily available at reasonable
prices. Unlike veiled chameleons and most other lizards,
however,
they need no special (UVB) lighting; they
are nocturnal lizards and don't normally encounter sunlight in the
wild. They are very attractive and personable lizards, don't
require much space, don't make much of a mess, and are a good size for
handling. All in all they make excellent pets. I have two leopard geckos, one male and one female. I bought the female as an adult from a breeder in the spring of 1998 and I adopted the male as an adult in the summer of 1999. They get along fine, but don't seem to be mating - all the pairs eggs the female has produced have been infertile (or, at least, have not developed properly). Their tank is set up fairly simply. I use corncob bedding for their substrate, except where they have their latrine; there I use aspen pellets, which are great at absorbing moisture. The latrine is just what it sounds like - one place in the aquarium where the geckos always defecate. It is a common trait among geckos. You can see the latrine area in the back left-hand side of the tank in the photo above. For hiding/sleeping areas, I have a couple hollow rocks stacked on top of each other and a hollow log. The geckos definitely prefer hiding in the hollow rocks, probably because the hiding spaces are larger. I use a few plastic plants for decoration, mainly because I keep fairly low light levels in the tank which would make growing real plants difficult. Finally, I have a water bowl in the tank that I keep constantly filled. Since the tank has a solid plastic top on it, the water in the tank helps keep the humidity level slightly higher than that of the room. When the female gecko is ready to lay eggs, she starts scratching around the bottom of the tank, looking for an appropriate spot. At that point, I take out the hollow log and replace it with a plastic container filled with moist sand. I made the container by taking a cylindrical plastic container with the lid on, and then cutting a leopard gecko-sized hole in the lid (see photo below). During the night she'll crawl into the container, deposit her pair of eggs, and then bury the entire thing with bedding from throughout the tank. It really makes a mess. |
  The egg-laying chamber for the leopard geckos (left) and a pair of leopard gecko eggs that have been dried for preservation (right). The egg-laying chamber has been coated with sand to make it blend in a little better with the naturalistic enclosure. |
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Leopard geckos are
insectivorous and should be fed a varied selection
of insects. Mine mainly get crickets
but also
periodically receive
small
roaches,
mealworms,
and
waxworms. My female gecko is a voracious eater but
the male
is quite finicky. He absolutely refuses to eat crickets, will
periodically eat mealworms, and will almost always eat waxworms.
Because of
this, he eats much less than the female, but doesn't seem to
be the worse off for it. I have to hand feed him though,
because
he otherwise would never get to the food before
the female. At herp shows I have participated in, I have
frequently been asked about otherwise normal leopard geckos that
suddenly stop eating. I have no idea why this occurs, but
based
on the eating habits of my male leopard gecko, I usually suggest
offering a different type of food to see if that does the trick. There is a lot of information on leopard geckos on the internet. I'd suggest reading the article on Melissa Kaplan's site and this one from Rocky Mountain Herpetological. |
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This
page was last updated on December 12, 2006.
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