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My baby gecko won't eat....

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My baby gecko won't eat....

This is what our member has to say: I really need some help. I found a baby gecko last night that looks to be just two or three days old. He is two ...


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  #1  
07-03-2005, 02:24 AM
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My baby gecko won't eat....

I really need some help. I found a baby gecko last night that looks to be just two or three days old. He is two inches long. I got online and learned as much as I could about geckos before deciding to keep it. Next day I went out to get it some crickets and it won't eat them. What should I do?

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 I helped move the meter!   07-03-2005, 02:28 AM
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You found it? You posted this in the leopard gecko section. Did yoiu find a leopard gecko, or is it a local gecko species? I need to know the species in order to tell you how to care for it
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 I helped move the meter!   07-03-2005, 02:44 AM
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Do yo have any pics Sonya?
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07-03-2005, 02:48 AM
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No, I'm sorry I don't have a picture of it but I'll try to get one soon.

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 I helped move the meter!   07-03-2005, 02:49 AM
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After getting your PM, what you have is no leopard gecko I'm afraid. For one, you'd never find one in the U.S. in the wild. Secondly, leopard geckos don't have the pads that allow other species to climb, so you finding it on your wall is proof its no leo. Third, baby leopard geckos have a completely different pattern than the adults. However, I've been told I'm rather skilled at IDing species, and chances are what you found was a mediterranean house gecko. I imagine your gecko looks much like this:





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07-03-2005, 02:54 AM
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YES!! That is my gecko! Thank you so much. We find these geckos out here often, my sister said she's got a bigger one that lives on her house at night but I haven't seen what that one looks like. Is there anything special I need to know about this gecko being as I studied the wrong kind?

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 I helped move the meter!   07-03-2005, 03:28 AM
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I figured that's what you had. lol, yeah, this might explain why its not eating. The differences in care between a leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius) and a mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus) are different enough to cause significant stress to any lizard mistaken for the other. Fortunately for you, MHGs are still pretty easy to care for, though not quite as easy as leopard geckos.

For starters, you'll need a 10 gallon aquarium , screen lid, water dish, spray bottle, water dechlorinator, live or fake plants, a heat lamp and bulb, a good vitamin supplement, a phosphorous-free calcium supplement, a thermometer, a hygrometer (humidity indicator), and either a natural or artificial substrate.

For the substrate you can use something simple, like paper towels, or you can go natural and use Bed-A-Beast, orchid bark, coconut husk, cypress mulch, or pure chemical-free potting soil. I personally prefer soil. You'll need to fill the cage with plants and branches, either real ones or fake will do. These geckos need plenty of places to hide and climb to feel secure.

It's a good idea to offer a water dish, even though your gecko may not use it often. However, there's no need to go buy some fancy one unless you want to. The lid to a juice jug, or a small plastic container will do the trick. The chlorine and chloramines in your tap water are harmful to him though, so you'll need to buy a water dechlorinator. Stress Coat and Reptisafe are the two most popular. I recommend the Reptisafe over the Stress Coat though. If you have a water filter, such as Brita, then a dechlorinator is unecessary. You'll also need to buy a clean, unused spray bottle. These geckos prefer moderately high humidity, so you should spray the enclosure at least once daily to keep the humidity around 70%. House geckos also drink the droplets like dew, so you'll need to dechlorinate the water in the bottle as well.

You can buy either a dome reflector lamp "clamp lamp", or a heat pad. Either should do the trick of keeping the tank warm enough for your gecko. If you buy the lamp, a normal house bulb will be completely fine to supply the heat. A 60 watt should do the trick, but you may need to experiment with different wattages until you get the temperature right. The temperature gradient should be about 85 degrees at one end of the tank, and about 70 degrees at the opposite end. At night the temp can drop to 75 at one end, and 65 at the other. Unless it gets chilly in your house at night, you shouldn't need to provide nocturnal heat. However, if you do, you can use a heat pad or an infrared light bulb to do that. Never use a normal bulb for heat at night. Also make sure your gecko has a steady photoperiod, with 12-14 hours of darkness each day at about the same time. You can purchase a timer at a hardware store for about $5 to make sure the lights come on and off at the same time daily.

Crickets should make up the bulk of his diet, but when he's of an appropriate size, add variety by mixing in a few mealworms now and then. You can also add cockroach nymphs, and as a rare treat, a waxworm. You need to be gutloading your feeder insects though. This means you have to keep the crickets in a seperate container for at lest a day, and feed them a variety of nutritious foods so that the nutrients are passed on to your gecko. You can make your own gutload by using greens, veggies, fruit, grains, and protein. For simplicity though, and since you only have a small numner of crickets to go through, you can just buy pre-made cricket food at your local pet store. I forget the name of it, but I'm sure someone else here knows what its called.

You need a vitamin and a calcium supplement too. However, you'll need to look around, cause not all the ones out there are good ones. The vitamin supp should have an A-D-E ratio of about 100-10-1. If it has Beta Cerotene instead of vitamin A, that's perfectly ok and actually better than having actual A. Dust the crickets with vitamins about 3 times a week as a juvenile, and once a week once he grows up. The calcium supplement you buy must be 100% pure calcium carbonate. NO phosphorous added, though added D3 should be ok. Dust the crickets with this every other day.

I'm sure I forgot some things, but this should get you on the right track. Keep in mind that house geckos are for looking at only, not handling, and that they are nocturnal. Unlike leopard geckos, they are smaller, fast, can climb glass, and will not allow you to handle them without a struggle.
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07-03-2005, 03:50 AM
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I heard that baby leopard geckos eat sand thats bad for their baby tummies and that instead of sand I should put news paper down for the first few weeks. Should I do this with my mediterranean house gecko?

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 I helped move the meter!   07-03-2005, 03:57 AM
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Since you won't be housing yours on sand anyway, its not necessary. Paper towels will prevent him from ingesting any soil though, but soil often passes through the system with far less difficulty than sand anyway. That's the advantage of paper towels. However, the downside is that it doesn't hold humidity as well as soil, and of course it just doesn't look as nice to some people. If you're worried about him ingesting too much soil, you can always pack it down hard before putting everything in the enclosure so its not so loose.
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