Crested Gecko Care Guide - Beginners Guide

Today I'm gonna teach you how to take care of a crested gecko. I'm Chief Sweet, I've been keeping and breeding reptiles for over 20 years, and I see tons of people make classic beginner mistakes, which I'm gonna help you avoid in this video. So, to get started, we need to know a little bit about the crested geckos themselves. Crested geckos come from New Caledonia. It's an island off the coast of Australia. It's so small, it's actually covered on a globe by a city name. Now the temperatures on the island they come from don't get very hot. In fact, you can see from these averages, it doesn't get above 85 Fahrenheit. So keep that in mind when we talk about temperature later. Now let's talk about how big crested geckos get. Now these aren't large geckos, but they aren't small ones either. Crested geckos won't get much larger than 10 inches, as you can see right here. This is my full-grown female Violetta, and she's only around five inches without her tail. It's also important to remember these guys will live 20 years or more, so be prepared to have a lifelong friend. Now that we know how big crested geckos get, let's talk about one of the most asked questions, and that is what is the best tank size for a crested gecko? So if you've got a baby crested gecko, a good tank size to start with is a 10-gallon tall tank. It's very important that you go with tall tanks, not long ones like this right here. Crested geckos are arboreal, and that means they climb and spend most of the time off the ground, like 99% of the time as well. So you want height for your gecko to climb. Now around a year, your gecko will outgrow a 10-gallon tank, so you will wanna upgrade to a 30-gallon tank, minimum for adults, like this 18-by-18-by-24-inch-tall Thrive tank. They sell this at PetSmart. It's one of the most common crested geckos tanks that everyone uses. Now you're probably asking yourself, do I have to upgrade? Can't I just get the 30-gallon tall right now and put the baby in that? The answer is yes, you can. But I know a lot of people get suckered into buying this starter kit, which is a 10-gallon kit at PetSmart or Petco, or even at a reptile expo, so that's why I say it's okay to start a baby in a 10-gallon, but you will have to upgrade in the future. However, if you wanna spoil your crested gecko, you could get a three-foot-tall tank like these right here. Now they don't sell these at a PetSmart. You have to go online to buy them. That's where I bought mine at. I'll link these down in the description, a few of them, so that way you can take a look at which ones you like if you wanna go that route as well. Now, one of the biggest questions I actually get asked is where can I buy a crested gecko besides like a big chain pet store? Well, let me introduce you to Palm Street, the best place to find healthy geckos from trusted breeders. Every seller on Palm Street is carefully vetted to ensure proper care, and you can even chat with them directly through live streams or DMs. Wanna see your gecko before you buy? You can watch live auctions and bid on that gecko in real time. You can also look at a seller's shop and see what they have and purchase from there as well. Some of the biggest names in the crested gecko world are already on Palm Street, and if you click the link in my description and go sign up for a Palm Street account, you will get exclusive shipping and discount coupons. And while you're there, make sure to follow me on Palm Street as well. I'm gonna have tons of my freshly hatched babies on there, and I'll be going live on it very soon. So don't forget to click the notification for my upcoming room tour and giveaway. Big shout out to Palm Street for sponsoring this week's video. Now let's talk about what everybody gets wrong, and that is the setup. But this isn't really most people's fault. I usually blame the reptile brands because they're the ones making these starter kits and selling them to people. I like to call them failure kits because it sets you up for failure right off the bat. But again, I understand they're not bad deals. A lot of times they're pretty cheap, and you're pretty much gonna have to throw away everything inside of the tank anyways. So getting the tank itself for the price and having some extra lamps, it's not that bad of a deal, but the implication of like, oh, this is all you need to start off your crescent gecko, that's not a good idea. These starter kits come with one stick, and having your gecko set up like a rotisserie chicken is gonna stress them out. It's gonna make them aggressive. They're not gonna like it. They're not gonna have a place to hide. It's just a big empty tank with one stick in there. It's literally like having a rotisserie chicken, and that's what they're gonna feel like. So painting the picture of like, oh, this is all your gecko needs to be happy and healthy, that's why I call them failure kits because it is nowhere near what you need for your gecko. For instance, this is what it looks like in the wild, in the native gecko's habitat. Do you see how much clutter is in there? If I put a crescent gecko in this, honestly, do you think there's a crescent gecko in this picture at all? There probably is, you just can't see it. Now that I showed you why the starter kits aren't bad, let me show you how to properly set up a crescent gecko tank and why do we need what we need inside of the tank. So crescent geckos prefer humidity levels around 60 to 80%, and this is something tons of new keepers struggle with. Most people end up misting their tank once or even twice a day just to keep it from drying out, but here's a trick I learned years ago and it changed everything. You need deep substrate and a thick layer of leaf litter. Here's why, exposed dirt dries out fast, like overnight fast, but once you add the leaves on top, it acts like a trap, keeping the moisture in the soil, slowly evaporating it and keeping humidity stable all day and night. Now for substrate, you do have a lot of options to choose. Reptisol and coco fiber are a favorite among many keepers, but I personally like the DIY substrate. Not only do you get way more substrate, it's way cheaper as well. I just go to Home Depot or Lowe's or any garden center, really, grab a bag of organic topsoil, doesn't matter which kind, I usually go with the Scots, Timberline or Earth Grow, then I mix in some play sand to give it a more dirt-like feel. You can get 50-pound bags of this stuff for $3 to $6 and it's gonna last you forever. That's exactly what I'm using in this setup and as you can see, it has a very nice muddy texture to it, which is perfect. All I did was add one gallon of the play sand to the 40-pound bag of topsoil to achieve this effect. Then I add about three to four inches of substrate. I cover that entirely with leaf litter. I usually want the dirt to be almost hidden from the leaves, right? I don't really wanna see the dirt, I wanna see the leaves. I actually didn't have enough leaves for this, but this is close enough. Now remember when I said Crested Geckos love to climb, that's why we're talking about tank size and it needs to be tall. Well, when you go to a pet store, you're gonna realize it's extremely hard to find stuff for them to climb on. Like for instance, most of the time you're gonna go, you're gonna find this Fluker's branch or you're gonna find an Exoterra branch. I think Thrive at PetSmart now sells them, but that's pretty much all you're gonna find is these little bendable branches that are pretty cheap feeling and they don't look as cool. Like if you want a stick, like a tree limb basically, you're just gonna have to go outside. And I know that sounds kind of crazy, but honestly, me and tons of breeders and keepers have been doing this for years. We just go outside and we get tree limbs right off the trees and then we just put them in the enclosure. Now you can sanitize them. A lot of people will bake them in the oven for 250 Fahrenheit for two hours. However, if you have too large of tree limbs, you could just wash them off in super hot water and then let them soak in super hot water as well, like in a bathtub for like four hours. But a lot of times if there's nothing on the tree limb, then it's pretty good to go. Just rinse it off, throw it in the tank. Now there are some trees to stay away from. A lot of people are like, which trees are toxic? The trees you wanna stay away from look like Christmas trees, like pine trees, cedar trees. Stay away from those trees because the sap in the trees is what's toxic. That's what you don't want in the tank. The tree itself is not toxic, it's the sap that's toxic. Now besides tree limbs, you could also add cork bark in the tank. My favorite is cork bark tubes. I get this on pangeareptile.com because that's the cheapest place to get it. If you know of a cheaper place to get it, drop that down in the comments so it can help everyone else out, including me, your boy. But crested geckos love this cork bark when you put it in the tank. They love to hide inside of the cork tubes. They love to climb on the cork bark, just like they love to climb on some natural wood. Then after you put all of the wood inside of the tank, you can start to put some fake plants in there as well. I'm gonna put this exoterra fake plant I got off of Amazon and some flukers bendivine in the tank as well. I also got this on Amazon because again, I don't know why, it's just so hard to find stuff inside of pet stores and it's super cheap, it was like five bucks on Amazon. It comes with a lot and I just added it in here to give the tank a little bit more leaves. You could also add live plants if you want as well. One of the cheap plants that does really well in this type of enclosure is apothos. It's like $15, you could separate it because they usually, if it comes in a bowl, you could just cut it up into three pieces because it's always like crammed inside of the pot. And then put it inside the tank and it will grow in very nice. That's what I actually put in my giant tanks like these right here, that's just apothos and maybe like a couple of other plants I wanna throw in there as well. Now we're gonna go ahead and install this food bowl right here. This is a water and food bowl. It came with the Thrive tank, so if you bought the Thrive starter kit, bam, you got lucky, you don't have to buy it. But if you don't have a glass tank, you could also buy some that have like a zip tie on it and you could like zip tie it to the wood inside of the tank, stuff like that. But this one comes with a suction cup and since it's a glass tank, we're just gonna put it on the side. And I like to put mine on the side, like the middle of the tank, right? Like just like this. Slap it on there, tighten the suction on the screen or on the glass. Once it's secure, you could add the food ledge like so. Bam. Next is one of the most common questions I get asked about Crested Geckos and that is do they need lighting? And that's a great question. In fact, it's such a good question. It's one of the most top searched things on Google about Crested Geckos and for a good reason. For many, many years, keepers and breeders have been keeping Crested Geckos without any lighting and we've been very successful at it. I mean, the reason being is they're nocturnal, they come out at nighttime, they're not active during the day, so it didn't seem like they needed lighting at all, right? But here's what we've learned over time. Even though they're nocturnal, they're still reptiles and reptiles rely on the sun for way more than just heat. In the wild, Crested Geckos are often seen sleeping on tree branches during the day, completely exposed to light. Now they are usually shaded a little bit under the tree leaves, right? So they are getting a very low intensity level of sunlight, but it's still sunlight. This low level light exposure helps support their circadian rhythm, telling them when it's time to sleep and when it's time to wake up and hunt. So simple answer, do you need lighting? The answer is no. But does it help? Yes, it does. And I usually just leave it up to the keeper if they wanna provide the lighting at all. So if you do get lighting for your Crested Gecko, let me show you how to properly set it up. So in captivity, we try to simulate the sun and we do that with three types of bulbs. A heat bulb, a UVB bulb, and an LED daylight bulb. So starting off with heat, we use heat to regulate the temperature inside of the Crested Gecko's tank. Crested Geckos want between 82 to 72 Fahrenheit inside of their tank. If it gets colder than that, they may not eat, they may become lethargic. So you do wanna keep temperatures in between 72 and 82 Fahrenheit. Now sometimes at nighttime, it may drop down between like 66 to 68 degrees, because some people like it cold. And that's okay, as long as they're eating, you're fine. But if they stop eating and it's like 66 Fahrenheit, you might wanna get a ceramic heat emitter at nighttime. The reason we want a ceramic heat emitter, because again, we're trying to simulate sun. And at nighttime, there is no sun. It's only moonlight, it's incredibly dark. So we wanna have a bulb that provides heat, but no light. And a ceramic heat emitter does just that. Now you may see these red infrared bulbs at Petsmart or Petco, they're labeled as nocturnal safe. They're meant for nocturnal animals. Leopard Geckos, Crested Geckos, do not get these for nighttime. Back in the day, we used to think that they couldn't see the color red or blue or any of that. Turns out they can. So what about daytime? Because I see some people, well, it's bad for night, let's just use it for day, because that way it's not too bright inside of the tank. No, we're trying to simulate sunlight. And last time I checked, the sun doesn't look like the inside of a nightclub. Your Crested Gecko doesn't wanna experience a nightclub inside of the tank, no matter how cool it looks, okay? We're trying to simulate the sun. The Crested Geckos respond so well to the sun, and that's what we're doing with this. So don't use these at all. This is just an outdated bulb that they had, and it sells, so why get rid of it? So back to the bulbs. What bulb is safe? Because trust me, there's bulbs you should stay away from, and there's bulbs that you should use. So the bulbs you wanna stay away from are ones like this right here. This is a halogen heat lamp. It's 50 watts. For heating a tank, you want a very low wattage heat bulb. Why? Because you don't want it to get above 85 Fahrenheit, and to boost temperatures up in a tank that's a little cold from like 66, 65 Fahrenheit to 72 to 74 Fahrenheit, you only need a low wattage heat bulb. Like even the one that comes with the Thrive Tank, the 60 watt one, works perfectly fine. A 25 watt, if it gets a little too warm, will work as well. However, you might see a low wattage halogen light, and you're like, well, this is a heat lamp. I could get this, right? What's the difference? Because there's so much to choose from. Stay away from halogens. Halogens are too good. They're actually meant for very tall cages. They're not meant for cages like this, where if you put the heat lamp right here, you know, if he comes up and he's only like eight inches away from the heat lamp, he's gonna just get a little warm. No, if he's eight inches away from this halogen heat bulb, he's gonna get fried. Why is that? Because this right here is what a regular heat lamp looks like, right? This one right here. If we put it inside of a heat bulb and we turned it on, this is what it would look like, coming out of the heat bulb. And for example, if we put it in a 30 gallon tank, you can see it takes a perfect amount of space up. In this tank, there's plenty of room for him to run away, get away from the heat in the tank, and that's what we want. And again, I will say, you don't wanna use heat lamps for a Crested Gecko in like 10 gallon tanks, right? This is what it looks like in a 10 gallon tank. You might think, oh, there's plenty of space, but there is not. I guarantee if you turn the heat lamp on inside of a 10 gallon tall tank like this, it's gonna be very hard for him to escape the heat. He can only go so far down before eventually he overheats and dies. I do not recommend heat lamps on 10 gallon tanks. But if you wanna know what a halogen looks like, this is what it looks like. And your Crested Gecko would have to sit down here. So as you can see, if you put a heat lamp on top of it, it's too tall, right? And how do I know that it looks like this? It's because I have a meter that checks it out. And you can literally test how much power is coming from the bulb, and that way you know how far to put your basking spot for your Crested Gecko. So on this little solar meter, you want it to be between 150 to 200, around that is perfectly good. So if we use the halogen and we put it on top of this tank, this is the reading you're gonna be getting just eight inches away. And that's why we don't want it. However, if we just use this 60 watt bulb right here and it's eight inches away, honestly, it's kind of a little low, but really it's the screen that's blocking that. And that's another thing we need to talk about is the screen. The Thrive Tank, we don't have a lot to choose from for reptiles, like I said. I don't know what it is. I feel like reptile brands just don't know anything about reptiles, but they make reptile products. I get it. It's a business, but this screen is horrible. This screen is so, it's basically a metal plate with holes punched into it. And because it's a metal plate, it just absorbs the heat. So you have, also you have to be very careful not to leave your heat lamp on this because if your Crested Gecko starts climbing up and he climbs across underneath the heat lamp, I actually clocked it. I did a little temperature reading with this daytime one that comes with the Thrive Tank. Low wattage is 60 watts, 150 degrees, and I got it to 170 on top of this screen. That is, that'll burn your Crested Gecko's feet. Okay, it's super, super hot. You don't want that. So what you can do is you can get a lamp stand and then you can have it like three inches above the screen. So the way the screen is, it's so close to the heat lamp that it just heats up. But that's the problem with the Thrive Tanks. The screen is just so thick. And again, if you want to use a better bulb, you could use a 50 watt Zumed bulb. It kind of pushes heat farther down. It will heat up the tank really, but at the same time, the Thrive Tank limits you with the screen it has. It sucks. But it will work. You can use this. Just be careful. Like I said, it'll heat up that screen hardcore. Now, if you are worried about using a heat lamp and it's still cold inside your house and you have to use it and you're worried it's gonna overheat your Gecko, let me show you how you can be safe, still use a heat lamp, and then if it gets too hot, it'll shut the heat lamp off without you having to do anything with a thermostat. So now let me show you how to properly set up a thermostat. So we have our heat lamp. It's gonna be sitting right here. It's gonna have a good distance away from us so that way our Crested Gecko doesn't get too close and get too hot. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna plug our heat lamp into our thermostat. I'm gonna be using this Zillow thermostat. It's one of my favorites. It comes with three plug-ins. Obviously, we don't need three plug-ins, but I like it a lot. And you're gonna get this plug-in right here, plug it into the wall, and then you're gonna plug your heat lamp into the thermostat. And then we're gonna set our thermostat to 82 Fahrenheit for our Crested Gecko. And then the third cable on our thermostat is a probe. And this is gonna tell us the temperature inside the tank. Everyone makes this mistake. They put their probe where their heat lamp is gonna be. Do not do that. What this is gonna do, it's gonna give you a false reading. It's gonna sit here and just absorb the heat from the heat lamp and raising the temperatures. You wanna put it as far away from the heat lamp as possible on the cool side of the enclosure. So I'm putting mine right over here on this corner because it's farthest away. And why we do that is because when it's hot over here, your Crested Gecko will go cool off over here. But over here, if it's too hot, he won't be able to cool off. That's why we put our probe right here because if it gets too hot, it'll turn our heat lamp off over here. This will keep it from overheating the tank. Next up, let's talk about UVB. Which UVB do you get for your Crested Gecko? Same with heat lamps. You want a very low output UVB. The UVB that comes with the Thrive Star Kit is a 13 watt 5.0 bulb. And honestly, this is perfect for this tank. Now you might hear a lot of bad things about coil UVB bulbs. People are like, oh, don't use coil UVB, it's bad. It's horrible. It's too powerful. No, it's actually the opposite. The thing with coil UVB bulbs is that they're actually pretty weak. And the fact that they're weak and low output is perfect for a Crested Gecko. Because in the wild, I also have a meter to check the UVB. And this right here on top of the tank gives us the perfect 1.0 around eight inches away. Now it does get a little high when you get underneath the screen. Again, you don't want it to be like a 5.0 or 7.0 for a Crested Gecko, that close. So again, you could put it like three inches, a little, have a little space of like three inches above the screen. You can get another lamp stand and use that. However, if you don't wanna use that, what you can do, cause they make it perfect to where if they do climb underneath the screen, it's extremely low output. And here it is to show you. It's only 4.0 underneath the screen on the Thrive Kit. A Shade Dweller Arcadia Pro T5, or you can get a Zoo Med T5 2.5, 12 inch, I think, yeah, 12 or 14 inch. It's at PetSmart. It's like the 14 or 12 inch one. Also, it's like this size. But it's a Zoo Med version of this. It's 2.5 on the package. But you can get one of these and they make it to where it's low enough to where if they do climb underneath the screen, it's not that high output as the coil one right here. As you can see, the coil one got to 9.0 underneath the screen. This one's only like a 4.0, so it's not that bad. They make it perfect. And that's why a lot of people recommend the T5 over the coil for that reason, because the coil, even though it's low output, like two to three inches away, it's insanely high output. And that's what you don't want your Crested Gecko to be exposed to that high output. However, again, you put it three inches away, you don't have to worry about it. And the final puzzle to complete the simulation of sunlight, an LED bulb. This right here is just a household one. It's great value. I got it at Walmart. And you could use one of these. If you get the Pro T5, you could just toss your coil UVB out and use one of the heat lamps that came with the starter kit. Plug it in, bam, you're good to go. And all this is used for is visible light. It's just to brighten up the tank. And the UVB is for vitamin D for your Crested Gecko. And the heat is to help the metabolism of your Crested Gecko to get them to eat. That's what all of these lights are for. But enough about lighting. Let's talk about a Crested Gecko diet and why I consider them one of the best beginner reptiles of all time, because their diet is just so simple. These are called a complete diet. It has everything you need inside of it. It has calcium. You don't have to put calcium in there at all. All you have to do is pour this in a little bowl. Usually they have them at the pet stores, little bowls that you can replace inside of the feeding dish. And then you just put a little bit of water with the powder, mix it up until it's a ketchup-like consistency. Bam, put it in overnight. Your Crested Gecko will go and find it and just drink it all up in the middle of the night while you sleep. Now there are a lot of companies that sell this. I myself use Zoo Med, Pangea, and Repassion. Now for hydration, a Crested Gecko, again, is very simple. A lot of people will just spray the tank at night so that way the Crested Gecko will come, drink up the droplets, bam, there you go. Now me, I only mist my tank like once every two weeks. You can do it like once a week, once every two days if you do it that way only. But what I do is I put a water bowl in the tank. And even at the bottom of the tank, a lot of people think that Crested Geckos don't drink out of a water bowl, but I know mine does. How do I know? It's because I set up a camera and I watched it at nighttime. I stalked it like a creeper and I watched her drink out of a water bowl so I know mine does it. So if you wanna do the same thing, I'll link down to the camera I used to do this, but they do drink out of a water bowl. They'll go down, or a lot of times like the feeding dish in the Thrive Tank, it has two, you can put a water dish in there, it'll come and drink out of the water and eat this food right here. And the food has a lot of water content because you mix it with the water so they will get a little bit of hydration as well. Now, Crested Geckos do eat insects. Because they eat insects, you're gonna have to offer some insects. Now if you're afraid of insects, they do have insect diets as well. So it's like the diet with the insect. But when you feed insects for babies under a year old, I feed insects twice a week. And I do like two to three insects. It doesn't require a lot, okay? Two to three insects per feeding, two to three times a week at most. For the Pangea diet under a year old, I offer it daily at nighttime obviously, because that's when I eat. Now for an adult insect wise, I only feed twice a month. So like one week I'll feed two to three insects once a day, and then I'll wait two weeks later, bam, do the same thing again. Super simple. And for adults, this Pangea mix, I only feed twice a week. It's very simple, but we need to talk about calcium. I know I said you don't need it for the Crested Gecko diet, but if you offer live insects, you do need to dust them with calcium. Now a lot of people get confused, so which calcium do I use? Without D3, with D3, and it's very simple. If you have UVB, get without D3. Because UV, that's the whole reason UVB exists, and so that way they make their own D3. So just get without D3. If you don't have UVB, you can obviously get the one with D3, since they can't make it themselves. Bam, right there. That's what you get to dust the crickets. And just like that, now you know everything there is about how to properly set up a Crested Gecko tank, care for your Crested Gecko, and put the lights on there if you're gonna use lights. I hope this was helpful in any way possible. If you enjoyed, like and subscribe. I'll see you next time.