ok, we need to start from scratch.

Since he is so tiny, try a 5 or 10 gallon tank. Buy a brick of shredded coconut husk, its about $4. Soak it in warm water in a bucket and it will expand. Use that as a substrate.

If you are a good houseplant person, put a bunch of pothos plant clippings in the dirt and it will give him some nice hiding spots. If not, head to any craft store and get yourself a fake bunch of pothos or ivy or something similar for him to hide in.

You will need a shallow water dish for him. A little cat dish will do.

You will need a few branches. You can do this two ways. You can find fallen ones outside, cut them to size and bake them for 30 minutes at 350 degrees to kill off any yucky stuff. OR you can just go to a pet store and buy a few fake branches. Whichever you decide, stick the fake plant in the whole bunch of sticks.

Last, you need light and heat. A simple under the tank heater should work well, get the smallest one they have. Then at the top, place a shop light (or you can put it near a house lamp too) and give him 12 hours of light. You want to aim for a temp between 75 and 82. Get a thermometer at the pet store as well. If its gets too warm, dim down the light bulb to a lower wattage. If you are down to a 15 watt bulb and its still too hot... well we will cross that bridge when we get there.

I hope this is a good amount of basic stuff. you might also want to see if you can get tiny mealworms. He might eat those too.

Here is a very basic care sheet i found for them.
Cheyenne Herpers Club: House Gecko Care Sheet

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My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

you have gotten a lot of really good advice, just want to add that the best way to tell what size food to feed is that you want to give it as big of food as is safe and nothing bigger than the space that is between the eyes.

Good luck! and welcome to the site!

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Good luck with your little guy!
Welcome to the HCN, we are glad to have ya!

Thank you all SO MUCH! Great advice. Here is an update on the little critter...
On Sunday we took him to 2 pet stores and tried to get him to eat. Neither store had pinheads but we tried the smallest crickets they had (7 day old) and the smallest meal worms they had. He was not interested at all, but was pretty active and jumpy so we knew he was not on the verge of starvation. Since he would not eat the 4 crickets or the mealworm, I threw in a half dead fly my husband caught along with more lettuce and apple baby food (as someone at one petshop suggested) and hoped he would live through the night.

This AM, there was a dead fly, a dead cricket and a couple of crickets hopping around. One cricket seemed t be missing and so did the meal worm. Went to Petsmart and got some flightless fruit flies. Finally something smaller than his head! While I was there, the reptile lady told me that I should not have dirt in the cage until he got bigger b/c he could ingest it and it could hurt him. She said I should have a paper towel or something so that he could not eat it and also so he could see the fruit flies. She dumped the dirt for me and sifted it and said the other cricket and the meal worm had disappeared so he probably ate them. The meal worm was as long as his torso and head together so I can't imagine he could have, but you never know.

He does not seem to be eating the fruit flies, but he is jumping around more, climbing the walls of his glass home and is sticking his tongue out sometimes.

I hope he lives, but we don't want to buy him a real tank until we can at least get him eating. For now he is in a 2 gallon (approx), glass cylinder with a paper towel in the bottom and a juice bottle cap for a water dish. There are a few shells in there that he likes to hide in and a small fake plant. There are about a dozen fruit flies and a small cricket in there with him.

He has a heating lamp next to his container and I am keeping the temp between 80 an 90 and am misting it with water a couple of times a day.

He seems pretty active, so .... So far so good. If anyone has any more ideas, please let me know. I will keep you guys posted on his progress as well. The kids named him Alex since they do not know if he/she is a boy or girl.

Thanks again :-)
Patty

Wow! Thanks for all the info. Will come in handy once we are sure he is going to make it. Will really help us in picking and furnishing his permanent house!

yes, paper towel for substrate is perfectly fine. In fact I should have suggested that. DUH.

I would stop carting him around. He probably isn't eating in the store because he is stressed. I would avoid feeding him things caught in the house, since they could carry any number of diseases or have come into contact with chemicals.

The misting will help him a lot, he was probably really dehydrated. I don't know why people keep suggesting vegetable stuff, they don't eat that. They eat protein based things. Maybe they are suggesting that for the crickets, so the crickets have something to eat? Crickets will munch on your critter if they don't have something in the tank to eat. I usually stick a bit of carrot in with mine.

__________________
My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

S/he is very cute!! Hopefully Alex will settle down after all the craziness he/she has been through and eat something soon...it has probably been a very stressful few days!! haha Good luck!! Post more pics if you can

Oh, and welcome. Duh. haha

If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that's a juvenile tropical house gecko, Hemidactylus mabouia, not a Mediterranean house gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus. Tropical house geckos have many other common names, such as the Amerafrican house gecko, Afro-American house gecko, cosmopolitan house gecko, etc. If you ever manage to get a photo of the underside of the feet, that would confirm its placement in the Hemidactylus genus.

Care for house geckos is pretty much the same for the most commonly seen species. In the US they share habitat with green anoles and Mediterranean house geckos.

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"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

I would also say ditch the veggies, if you want to continue using baby food as a supplement then go with a chicken or other meat version. Leaving him in one place and giving him time to get comfortable with his surroundings is also a good idea. Try to make sure he has plenty of hiding spots.

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excellent suggestion!

__________________
My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.