Crested Gecko Care Guide

Species Common Name: Crested Gecko

Scientific Name: Correlophus ciliatus (formerly Rhacodactylus ciliatus)

Adult Size: 8-10in (20-26cm) including tail.

Captive Life Span: 15-20+ years

Data for this species in the wild

Natural Distribution: Southern New Caledonia (Island group in the South Pacific)

Habitat Type: Sclerophyll forest (dense evergreen semi dry woodland at low elevation)

Activity Pattern: Crepuscular (most active at Dawn and Dusk) or Nocturnal ( active at night)

Activity Zone: Arboreal, low level shrubs up to 5m off the ground

Summer Temperature Range: 26-29C, rarely above 30C

Winter Temperature Range: 20-22C, rarely lower, temperatures remain quite consistent year round.

Wild Diet: Insectivorous (Insects) and frugivorous (Fruits). A regularly mis-quoted, and incorrectly attributed dietary study found across the internet that was (actually) originally published in the book “Rhacodactylus: Biology, Natural history and Husbandry –by Siepp & Henkel (2000), gives a very accurate view of the wild diet of crested geckos by means of analysing the faecal matter of wild individuals. According to their study the wild diet is composed of: Pollen aggregates 10.3%, Soft seeds 1.8%, Berries 11.7%, Fruit juices 7.52%, Insects 49.6% (of which are Coleoptera 9.45%, Caterpillars and butterflies 7.52%, Diptera 3.12%, Roaches 6.2%, Orthoptera (crickets and locusts) 21.6%). Along with the remains of smaller lizards including their own young 11.4%, the remains of other vertebrate prey 8.68% of which young rodents 6.42%.

As you can see from this early study, their wild diet is approximately 50% insects, 20% smaller vertebrates and 30% fruits, berries, pollen, and seeds. While they would eat a wide variety of fruits these are likely to include figs (of which there are 24 species native to New Caledonia) and there are records of many of the geckos native to New Caledonia eating the fruit of Cassine curtipendula a species of saffron tree that produces small berry like fruit with a large seed.

Keeping them as Pets – The Basics

Captive Housing Minimum Size: 18in x 18in x 24in (45cm x 45cm x 60cm) is the widely recognised minimum for a single adult. Many people are now opting for larger enclosures at 18in x 18in x 36in(45cm x 45cm x 90cm) or more. Crested geckos rarely spend much time on the base of their enclosure so additional height will always be more beneficial than additional floor space.

Cage Material Construction: Glass with a mesh top. Because they don’t require particularly high temperatures you don’t need to be too concerned about the insulation properties of glass but as they require regular misting a wood or melamine enclosure will rot rapidly in wet conditions.

Social Structure: Males are highly territorial and will fight, there should never be more than 1 male in an enclosure. Often multiple females can be kept together if the enclosure size is large enough. If housing multiple females make sure to monitor feeding to make sure they all get adequate food and provide plenty of extra hiding places so that they are not forced to spend time together, should they prefer not to. It is therefore often simpler and easier to house them individually.

Daytime Hotspot / Basking Temperature: 28c

Daytime Ambient Temperatures: 24c-26c

Night-time Ambient Temperatures: 20-22c

Preferred Heat source: A high power heat mat covering approximately 30-50% of one side of the enclosure is often sufficient. In larger enclosures or cooler houses, a heat mat may not have the required power so a 50w/80w Deep Heat Projector controlled by a dimming thermostat is more appropriate in this scenario. Whichever heat source you use they must always be used in conjunction with an appropriate thermostat to regulate the temperature.

UVB Requirement Ferguson Zone: Zone 1 – Crepuscular or Shade Dweller

Preferred UVB Source: Arcadia 8w 7% “shade dweller Pro T5” or Arcadia 14w 2.5% “Shade dweller Max Pro T5” in enclosures of 24in (60cm wide or more), a 6% Hight Output Pro T5 can also be used in taller enclosures (36in or 90cm high). The UVB bulb should illuminate 50-75% of enclosure length. Although there is an Arcadia Shade Dweller Arboreal 8w 2.4% tube we suggest that this is insufficient in a 60cm tall enclosure when mounted above mesh so would stick to the 7% shade dweller tube.

Humidity Requirement: Crested geckos live in Sclerophyll Forest which although classed as “semi dry forest” still receives regular rain and has a fluctuating high level of humidity. The enclosure for a crested gecko should not be permanently wet (like it needs to be for a rainforest style environment), but they should still be misted regularly once or twice a day as a minimum. As a rule, the surfaces of leaves, branches décor etc should have a chance to dry out before the next time the enclosure is misted.

Preferred Humidity Source: Regular misting, once in the morning and once in the evening is normally a good frequency, in the middle of summer if it gets hot, extra misting will also be appreciated.

Water Requirements: Provide a small bowl of fresh water, this can be on the floor or on an elevated ledge.

Substrate: The substrate should hold humidity, coir/ coco fibre or orchid bark will work as a basic option, there are also some good premixed blends that you can use like the Pro Rep Crestie Life, or Pro Rep Bio Life Forest. If you are using live plants, then Arcadia Earth mix will be the best option as it will provide additional nutrients for the plants.

Recommended Décor: Branches, cork tubes (vertically), bark, liana, jungle vines, hanging plants etc for a naturalistic look. They won’t use hides at floor level so you don’t need to use any caves with them, but you can hang hollow coconut hides high up in their enclosure for them to shelter in. From experience, the more hiding places you provide your Crested Gecko the more secure they feel within their environment. Using live plants with them is a great idea as they will help boost the humidity and create more natural hiding spaces. Plants that will work well in Crested Gecko enclosures should have sturdy leaves to support the weight of adult geckos, species such as Epipremnum, Aglaeonema, Dracaena, Sanseveria, Calathea etc will all work well.

Captive Diet: They should have a varied diet composed of both live insects and fruit; the fruit part of their diet is best provided by means of “meal replacement powders” / “Crested Gecko diet” / “artificial diet” of which there are lots of good ones on the market. They should be fed assorted insects including crickets, locusts, cockroaches, and occasional worms such as mealworms, calci worms, silk worms and wax worms. You can read our guide to feeding insectivorous lizards for more information. The artificial diets / Crested Gecko Diets (CGD) are generally powders that you add a small amount of water to in order to make them to the consistency of a yoghurt, this can then be fed to them in a bowl or dish. The most popular gecko diets are those by Repashy, Pangea, Blue River diets and Arcadia. In store we mostly feed Repashy and Blue River Diets.

Feeding Frequency: When young, they will need a lot of insects in their diet to fuel their growth rate, we feed about 12-15 dusted insects every third day. We also provide continuous access to a small dish of artificial gecko diet, often from an elevated feeding ledge.

Supplementation: Assuming you are using a good quality UVB source such as the Arcadia Shadedweller Pro T5 you will not need to use a supplement with added Dietary Vitamin D3 on every feed. Periodically (approximately once per fortnight for youngsters and once per month for adults), we will dust their food with Arcadia Revitalise D3 which contains low levels of preformed D3. As a daily calcium supplement, our favourite one to use is Arcadia EarthPro A as this is a calcium balancer with added trace minerals and carotenoids but without any synthetic preformed vitamins. This should be dusted onto their insects every feed. You do not need to add calcium to the artificial diet / CGD as they already contain added calcium.

Cleaning: Crested Geckos will often defecate on the sides of the enclose, you will find that you may need to wipe the glass clean on a regular basis as part of the spot cleaning. They need their enclosure spot cleaning daily, so remove uneaten food such as any leftover artificial diet or dead crickets along with any bodily waste. All of the artificial diets state that leftovers should be removed after 24hrs, we have often found that every 48hrs is better, as unless the food looks to have visibly spoiled or has started to mould then the geckos tend to eat more of it after it has had some time to “ripen” within the enclosure. A full substrate change is required every 6-8 weeks or sooner if you feel they are a particularly messy individual. When you perform a substrate change you should also disinfect the entire enclosure and all furnishings using a reptile safe disinfectant, our preferred ones to use are either the vet ark Ark-Klens or F10 reptile disinfectant.

Handling Suitability: Good, with regular short handling sessions they will soon become tame and will happily sit in your hand or crawl over you without getting stressed.

Recommended Starter Kit: Click here for a link to our recommended starter kit.

Advancing your care:

Simple ways to advance your care can include opting for a larger environment for your Crested Gecko specifically in terms of height. Ensuring regular variety to their diet is also a simple step that is easily achievable for most keepers, there are many different flavours of artificial diets and meal replacement powders as well as the various types of insects. You can also use some of the most cutting-edge heating and lighting equipment. The Microclimate Evo 2, Evo 3 and Evo Connected range of thermostats all have the capability to program varying temperatures throughout the day to mimic early morning temperatures, heat of the day and late evening temperatures with fully customisable options. This can be especially good for species like Crested Geckos which are most active at dawn and dusk, you can provide these varying temperatures by using these cutting-edge thermostats. By using the Arcadia LumenIZE range of UVB fixtures you can also program your lighting to simulate dawn and dusk to provide a much more natural range of UVB exposure throughout the day. We have seen increased activity from our Crested Geckos by using the LumenIZE light fittings as it provides much more natural lighting conditions for them. One of the most popular ways to advance the care of Crested Geckos is to make their enclosure “bioactive” and to give them a live planted environment and living ecosystem style enclosure. Crested Geckos are one of the easiest species to create a bioactive enclosure for as the temperature, lighting and humidity requirements for Crested Geckos tend to be a suitable environment for a wide variety of plants to also thrive. Another often overlooked factor is the general brightness inside the enclosure and although we may think of the UVB bulbs as being quite bright, they are nothing when compared to natural sunlight, so it is now a well-recognised method to improve the environment for lots of species of reptile to add LED fittings as well as the UVB just to increase the general luminosity (brightness) within the environment. Again, these are available in the Arcadia LumenIZE range so that they can have variable levels of brightness to simulate dawn and dusk. Adding LED light fittings will also dramatically benefit live plants in their enclosure.

Environmental enrichment is another area that you can always improve, this means adding different furnishings regularly and using objects of different textures and materials to encourage your Crested Gecko to investigate their environment. This can be as simple as rotating through different cage furnishings or adding things like piles of dried leaves for them to investigate, the options for this are only as limited as your imagination.

Additional Information:

Crested Geckos are now one of the top 5 most regularly kept pet reptiles in the UK, but it wasn’t always that way. They have a very interesting history as pets. Did you know that until 1994 the Crested Gecko had been presumed extinct for nearly 100 years and were only known from a few preserved specimens in museums. Throughout the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the interest in prehensile tailed geckos (Rhacodactylus species) from New Caledonia was growing and several amateur enthusiasts made expeditions to New Caledonia to attempt to find out if there were any Crested Geckos left in the wild. Every expedition failed to find them. That all changed following a tropical storm in 1994 when there were sightings of a Crested Gecko on Pine Island, one of the smaller satellite islands just to the south of Grande Terre (the main island of New Caledonia). Expeditions to Pine Island were hastily put together by both European enthusiasts and American enthusiasts, both of whom successfully found and legally collected Crested Geckos which they took back with them to study in captivity. There would inevitably have been a small number of illegal exports at this time as well but in essence the worlds entire captive population of Crested Geckos’ dates back to these early collected individuals from 1994. There are thought to have been less than 400 wild collected individuals initially, while its thought that more than 100,000 Crested Geckos are now bred in captivity globally each year. One of the American enthusiasts that collected the original founder population of captive Crested Geckos was Allen Repashy, the creator of Repashy superfoods, the best selling artificial diet / meal replacement powder for Crested Geckos.

Sometimes you may see Crested Geckos without a tail, this is because like other geckos, a Crested Gecko has the ability to drop its tail as a defence method if startled. Unlike most geckos, when a Crested Gecko attempts to regrow its tail, it only ever forms a tiny nub rather than a full tail. A Crested Gecko’s original tail is prehensile (movable and able to grip and support its weight, like a monkey’s tail) it even had a small sticky pad of lamellae on the end of its tail to help with gripping (the same as found on its toes), it will use this prehensile tail like an extra limb when climbing. When they were originally rediscovered in 1994, none of the Crested Geckos had tail’s, they are not particularly prone to dropping their tails as they lose this “extra limb” if they do. Often if a Crested Gecko has lost its tail, this can be indicative of rough handling or overcrowding when it was young. If a Crested Gecko does get scared by something and does drop its tail, don’t be alarmed, you don’t need to take any action like putting antiseptic on the wound, the gecko will be fine, it’s just a bit unfortunate as it won’t regrow.

Through selective breeding, Crested Geckos are now available in a wide variety of morphs. A “morph” simply means a visual colour or pattern that is different to the normal or wild type appearance. Many pattern and colour morphs such as “flame”, “harlequin” etc are variable and subjective to individual opinion. Some morphs like Dalmatian (with spots) and “super Dalmatian” (lots of spots) are also rather subjective in their definition. There are also lots of names for morphs that denote a specific colour combination such as “Halloween harlequin” which denotes a greenish background colour with orange harlequin markings or “creamsicle” which would mean a red background colouration with white or cream markings. Don’t get too invested in these terms though as all Crested Geckos show a remarkable ability for colour change, referred to as being “fired up” when showing their best colours, so while an individual may show these colours when “fired up” it may spend 90% of the time looking completely different. There are a few distinct morphs that are controlled by a single gene, these are the “Lilly white” morph, where individuals have a bright white belly and lots of white markings, this is a co dominant morph (can be passed on to offspring when only 1 parent has the required gene), although there were rumours of neurological issues in them originally they appear to be in good health these days. It is worth noting though that 2 “Lilly white” individuals should never be bred together, as this can produce a “super Lilly white” which is a leucistic (all white) animal, but this is always fatal. There is another recessive morph “axanthic” which is a dark grey animal that lacks any red or yellow pigmentation. Initially very expensive, the cost of these axanthic crested geckos has been reducing dramatically in recent years. There is no currently known albino form of a Crested Gecko but in years to come it will probably manifest and become available.

Due to the ease of care and breeding of Crested Geckos they are one of the most commonly bred pet reptiles by pet keepers at home, there are large numbers already available. While you may wish to breed them for fun, we would immediately warn against anyone attempting to breed them for financial gain as this simply wont be possible due to the number already available.

A little fun fact, our logo is a Crested Gecko as over 20 years ago, Crested Geckos were far rarer in the hobby and Global Geckos were one of the first large scale breeders of Crested Geckos in the UK. We were keeping and breeding them long before most people in the UK had even heard of a Crested Gecko. Our logo, which we have had since 2007, is a silhouette of a Crested Gecko, originally transposed from a photo of a gecko that we still have to this day, her name is “Tigger” and she was hatched in June 2004. She lives in a retirement enclosure behind the scenes at Global Geckos reptile shop but if you would like to meet her simply pop by the store and ask a staff member and they will be happy to bring her out and show you. Over the years she has served as an ambassador for the species when we used to do lots of educational talks and displays all over the UK, so to date, she has probably been held by more than 5000 people, and she still has her original tail, highlighting just how tame this species gets with regular handling.

Crested Geckos are simple to keep, live in an aesthetically pleasing environment and suffer very few health complaints so are a perfect first time pet reptile for many different demographics of keeper. With a suitable environment and appropriate feeding, they are a very rewarding pet to keep.

While Crested Geckos are by far the most famous and well known of the New Caledonian geckos, the care for other New Caledonian species is virtually identical, so if you want something as easy to keep as a Crested Gecko but perhaps a bit more unusual why not consider a Gargoyle Gecko (Rhacodactylus auriculatus), Mossy Gecko (Mniarogekko chahoua) or Sarasin’s Gecko (Correlophus sarasinorum). If you fancy something like a Crested Gecko but bigger then perhaps a New Caledonian Giant Gecko / “Leachie” (Rhacodactylus leachianus), or if you want something a bit smaller but with the same care requirements then the New Caledonian Chameleon Gecko’s might fit the bill. We breed Bauers Chameleon Gecko (Eurydactylodes agricolae), Vieillards Chameleon Gecko (Eurydactylodes vieillardi) and the Ocellated Chameleon Gecko (Eurydactylodes ocellatus) all of which have the same care requirements as a miniature Crested Gecko.