When we refer to young leopard gecko, LeopardGeckoCare.net means leopard gecko below twelve months old or less than 9 inches (including tail). During these six months, several precautions needed to be taken to make sure they are growing healthily. However adopting a young leopard gecko may enable you to build good friendship with your pet at very young age, and normally they will more friendly and approachable with you.
As mentioned, taking care of this young animal is a tedious task. First of all, you need to make sure that their tank is rather clean. You need to observe and pay attention on its environment from day to day basis. If you are housing several young leopard geckos together, be sure that bullying is not happened.
The leopard gecko is very weak at young stage. One of the major causes of young leopard gecko death is the dehydration. Many of the pet owner assume that dessert animal like leopard gecko do not need water, this is very wrong. You need to make sure that you prepare an eye dropper which is full of fluids and nutrients for them. Not only the intake of fluids, you need to be aware of the enclosure temperatures and humidity levels carefully to avoid dehydration problems.
If it is a hatchling or still very young, it can be kept in 5 gallon tank. Try to avoid extra large tank for this little leopard gecko. If you are setting up a large vivarium, you could make this little fellow run out of energy in catching its food. It is very important to set up a tank with an appropriate substrate. Improper substrate may cause death to your pet. Normally I could suggest providing newspaper or papering towel as substrate to the tank. Please be informed that newspaper should be the kind you get from an art stores, and not the commercial printed newspaper. Many people use the commercial newspaper as it is cheap but it can weaken your little pet as it lick the paper. Most of the beginners would probably house the young leopard gecko with sand as substrate to create more natural look but this is the most dangerous thing which is ever done, it might cause impaction to your leopard gecko.
As for hiding spots, you may need a moist and a dry hide boxes. Place the dry box at the cool area. The dry box could be a dry décor or furniture in the form of rock or piece driftwood. One the warm side, a moist hide is needed. This is to prevent dehydration and help the shedding process. See the shedding picture below. Remember to provide the young gecko a shallow water basin too.
Other their housing environment, you need to pay attention on the food you are feeding them especially when you feed them with crickets. In some cases, crickets will disturb and bite your pet while they are sleeping. Make sure that the amount of food provided is not over loaded and they are not harmful; end up becoming a treat to your little pet.
As you can see, housing such a small little pet may need extra attention but it is fun too. If you are new to leopard gecko, try to get an adult gecko first and familiar with this animal before you adopting a young one.
In addition to sufficient vivarium space and suitable substrate as basic vivarium setup, more reptile supplies needed to put in the place to make it look more natural. These are the several decors that you may need:
Water Dish
Stone-alike dish can be used to place the fresh water
Hide Box
Most important reptile vivarium supplies for leopard geckos, where they spend most of the time. Leopard gecko needs at least 2 hide boxes. The hide boxes should to be placed at the moist and hot side; with another one at the dry and cooler side. The hide boxes can be as simple as card box or as nice as handmade granite mountain hide box.
Moist and Humid Box
Basic moist box is need for leopard gecko near the moist side of the vivarium. Or you may place moist towel inside the hide box. A humidity of 80% or more is a must during shedding period for the leopard gecko to remove the skin properly. Humid area is a good place to lay eggs as well during breeding period.
Rough Decors
Leopard geckos need rough decors such as climbing rock, wood or bark to rub its body during shedding.
Basking and Climbing Accessories
Logs and handmade plants can be used to create basking spots and climbing places. If the decors are meant for climbing, make sure that it’s stable and would not tumble when the leopard gecko is climbing.
Life Plants
Life plants can make it nicer and provide higher humidity but make sure the plants are not toxic or sharp to leopard gecko.
You may place more choices of reptile supplies and decors for your leopard geckos by visiting the nearest pet shop. It is up to personal preferences for decorating your leopard gecko vivarium using different types of reptile supplies as long as it is not harmful to the leopard gecko.
To have a great temperature gradient, vivarium which is greater a gallon would be a perfect option. Day time temperature should be 85F to 90F while night temperature as 70F to 75F. UV lighting is not required as they are nocturnal.
Even leopard gecko is nocturnal lizard, a 12 hours day time and 12 hours night time environment should be created with accurate temperature setting. This can be achieved by electronic controlled temperature lighting kits, which is mainly controlled by the timer.
There are many types of light sources that can be used to create suitable tank temperature, such as ceramic bulbs, reptile heating pads, heat mat, incandescent lights or nocturnal bulbs. Please do not use hot rocks; it will seriously hurt and burn the geckos. Overhead lighting systems are overhead bulbs are suggested.
Reptile spot nightlight incandescent can be used to provide warm basking spot at night.
No matter which kind of light sources you are using, a electronic thermostat is a must to monitor the temperature of the tank.
In nature, leopard geckos eat insects, spiders, worms and grubs. However, in captivity, the primary foods for leopard gecko are crickets. If you would like to make your leopard geckos happy and healthy, then do not feed your leopard geckos with crickets all the time. Feeding geckos with waxworms and mealworms would be a good dietary plan. Size of crickets is the main problem to feeding gecko. Hatchling cannot take adult crickets, 2 week-old crickets are recommended. Adult geckos can handle all size of crickets.
If you are sourcing your crickets from pet shop, make sure the crickets are clean and healthy. If you are breeding your own crickets, make sure that you do not feed moldy food to your crickets; it will cause serious health problems.
Water Supplies
Even leopard geckos are dessert lizard, it doesn’t mean that they do not need drinking water. Ensure there is fresh and clean water supplied at all time. Shallow water dish is the best option. Change the water every day to prevent contaminated water with parasite and bacteria. Bottled water is better a better option than tap water as tap water might consists of chlorine and other chemicals which is not good for leopard geckos drinking.
Supplement and Vitamins
Supplement and vitamin are important factor for leopard gecko health. One of the good recommendations is supplement the diet with 1.3 ratio of herptivite to rep-cal calcium with D3. You can shake and coat the supplement and vitamins onto crickets or other prey to feed your leopard gecko. Do this every day for hatchling, and reduce the frequency the leopard geckos grow.
Leopard gecko health and illness may be a great challenge to the entire pet hobbyist community. Even with the greatest care taken, there are few major health issues may be seen.
Shedding
Leopard geckos do shed their skin. The most frequency period is during juvenile which is the time they grow rapidly. During adulthood, shedding may be once in a month.
The symptom that is may be worrying for a pet hobbyist is that leopard geckos tend to look like discoloration, pale, dull or white in its color. You should provide extra nutrients and calcium for them once you see this. Increase the misting and spray more often in the tank to assist the shedding process.
Tail Loss
Gecko tail loss is common as this is the nature process when geckos are frightened and threaten. In nature, they can distract enemy attention and try to escape from danger.
If you have a leopard gecko with loss tail, try to separate them with other geckos and put it back to the original tank when the tail is fully grown.
New tail will within few days. However, it takes about 3 to 4 months to recover the full tail. Take note that new tail might not be as nice as previous tail. Handle your leopard gecko with care.
Impaction
If you leopard gecko show the symptoms of vomiting, lacking appetite or lumpy stomach, this might me the sign of impactions which may cause serious health problem to the gecko.
The cause of impactions maybe the lack of calcium (leopard gecko will eat the substrate to supplement its diet), dehydration (lacking of fresh water), or overfeeding.
It is recommended that you seek your veterinarian for leopard gecko impactions problem. However, these may be the home treatment for impaction that you may try out.
May sure easy access to fresh water that changed daily
Replace your natural substrate with paper towel
Better feeding schedule
10 minutes warm water soak 2 times a day
Seeking your veterinarian for medical treatments like surgery to remove object Leopard geckos breeding can be easily be done if you know how to do it, but it will be a little bit tricky for those who don’t have experience.
To breed your leopard geckos, first you need to make sure that the following criteria are met:
Mating geckos (male and female) are healthy (nice fat tail).
Geckos having good diet.
Sexually matured ( female should be at least one year old)
Before breeding, you have to introduce your female gecko to the