Leopard Gecko Care Guide


Species Common Name: Leopard Gecko (Common Leopard Gecko)

 

Scientific Name: Eublepharis macularius

 

Adult Size: 9-12in (25-30cm) including tail.

 

Captive Life Span: 15-20+ years (30+ is possible but unlikely)

 

 

 

Data for this species in the wild

 

Natural Distribution: India, Pakistan, Nepal, Iran, Afghanistan

 

Habitat Type: Open Scrub, Rocky Foothills, Grassland, Arid Forest, and Desert Edges

 

Activity Pattern: Crepuscular, most active at Dawn and Dusk (or technically they are “Cathemeral” meaning they have no fixed activity pattern)

 

Activity Zone: Terrestrial, they live on the ground.

 

Summer Temperature Range: Over 30c, regularly over 40c+ during the day

 

Winter Temperature Range: 12-16c and occasionally down to 10c at night

 

Wild Diet: Insectivorous by nature, dietary studies have shown much of their wild diet contains spiders and scorpions along with Coleoptra (Beetles), they would also predate smaller vertebrates e.g. smaller lizards if the opportunity presented itself.

 

 

 

Keeping them as Pets – The Basics

 

Captive Housing Minimum Size: 24in x 18in x 18in (60cm x 45cm x 45cm) has been the common standard for years but as our knowledge and care standards have improved, we would suggest a minimum size of 36in x 18in x 18in (90cm x 45cm x 45cm) for an adult. Many people are now opting for larger enclosures at 48in x 18in x in(120cm x 45cm x 45cm) or more. Whilst you can also give them additional height, do consider that they lack the adhesive toe pads characteristic of many geckos so will need lots of sturdy logs, rocks and bark stacked up to be able to make use of any extra height that is provided.

 

Cage Material Construction: Wood, Melamine or PVC works best for maintaining the high temperatures required. Glass can be used but consider that you will almost certainly need to increase the strength of your heat source to counteract the reduced thermal insulation properties of glass when compared to wood or melamine.

 

Social Structure: Males are highly territorial and will potentially fight to the death, 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: 32c

 

Daytime Ambient Temperatures: 24c-28c

 

Nighttime Ambient Temperatures: 16-20c

 

Preferred Heat source: 80w Deep Heat projector controlled by a dimming thermostat. Heat mats can be used in smaller enclosures for rearing youngsters but they often lack sufficient power for adult sized enclosures. 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”, a 6% High Output Pro T5 can be used in taller enclosures. The UVB bulb should illuminate 50-75% of enclosure length

 

Humidity Requirement: Leopard geckos naturally live in a variety of habitats and while these are all mostly quite dry environments, the localised microhabitats where leopard geckos actually live tend to be quite humid (during the day they would shelter in rock crevices or under fallen logs etc). Therefore, its important that when you are keeping a leopard gecko in a predominantly dry environment you still provide an area of localised high humidity such as a cave filled with damp sphagnum moss. Your leopard gecko will need this area of high humidity to ensure that it sheds its skin properly. It may often also choose to stay in this hide at other times as well. The “moss hide” should be positioned at the cool end of the enclosure to mimic the high humidity and lower temperatures that would be found in deep rock crevices in the wild.

 

Preferred Humidity Source: Cave at the cool end filled with damp moss or coir.

 

Water Requirements: Provide a small bowl of fresh water, they don’t drink frequently though.

 

Substrate: Loose sandy soil, the most popular premix is Pro Rep Leo Life, but other popular substrates are Arcadia Earth Mix Arid and Desert Sand.

 

Recommended Décor: Branches, grapevine, bark, rocks, slate & bamboo roots etc for a naturalistic look. They will also make good use of resin hides and as a minimum they should have at least one hide at the hot end and one hide filled with damp moss at the cool end. From experience, the more hiding places you provide your gecko the more secure they feel within their environment. Leopard Geckos are more active and visible when living in a “cluttered” environment with lots of hiding places and not much open space. You can use artificial hanging plants or freestanding ones on a base to further decorate their enclosure and if you use resin ornaments like skulls, they will often use these as simply another hiding space. You can use live plants in with them, should you choose, but do consider that plants which are more tolerant to higher temperatures and have lower water requirements will do better. Plants such as Sansevieria, Aloes, Hawothia and other succulents will all survive in a leopard gecko enclosure.

 

Captive Diet: 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. Some old and outdated care guides will suggest that they can live on a diet of exclusively mealworms, this is not true if you want them to have a long and healthy life. A diet of only mealworms tends to promote obesity and can cause a range of health complications and will inevitably lead to a much shorter lifespan. Again, some old care guides suggest that leopard geckos may take a defrosted pinkie mouse as a treat, there is really no need for this, but if you want to, just make sure it is infrequent as again feeding them treats like this regularly will lead to obesity. We have also seen some very old care guides from the 1990’s which suggest leopard geckos will eat fruit, they won’t, we have tried many times to offer them different fruits and vegetables to see if they will take it, they don’t.

 

Feeding Frequency: For young Leopard Geckos up to 6 months old we would offer insects daily, for juvenile/subadult animals (6-12 months) we would feed insects 4-5 days a week. For animals over 12 months old they should have finished most of their growth, from this point we would only offer insects 3 times per week. They do not need to eat every day as an adult. During the winter their appetite may decrease and they may eat slightly more in the summer months

 

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, we tend to use Arcadia Ca or 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 and you can leave a small dish or bottle cap of calcium powder in their enclosure which they will sometimes go and lick or eat.

 

Cleaning: Leopard Geckos are clean animals, they will often choose one specific area of their enclosure to use as a toilet, this may be one corner of the tank or under a specific hide. They need their enclosure spot cleaning daily, so remove uneaten food such as any dead crickets along with any bodily waste from their toilet area. This can be easy to do using a sand sieve or can also be done by hand. They should have a full substrate change 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 Leopard Gecko specifically in terms of length or floor area. Ensuring regular variety to their diet is also a simple step that is easily achievable for most keepers. 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 leopard 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 leopard geckos by using the LumenIZE light fittings as it provides much more natural lighting conditions for them. 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.

 

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 Leopard 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:

 

Leopard geckos have been kept as pets since at least the 1960’s and they were one of the first pet species of lizard to be regularly kept indoors under artificial conditions (people have kept European species of lizard as pets in outdoor enclosures since the 1700’s). Their ongoing charm and relative ease of care combined with their comparatively small size means that to this day they remain one of the most popular pet reptiles globally.

Although we think of leopard geckos as all being the same there are 5 different subspecies which occur in different parts of their natural range. As far as “pet shop leopard geckos” go, they are not a specific subspecies but more of a crossbreed of multiple different subspecies that have all been interbred for the last few decades, possibly even with some mixed in genetics from other closely related Eubelpharis species which also look very similar. This mixture of genetics is one of the reasons for the slight variability in leopard geckos when it comes to adult size differences.

We can’t talk about leopard geckos without mentioning all the different colours and patterns that are available, these are called morphs. A “morph” simply means a visual colour or pattern that is different to the normal or wild type appearance. Leopard geckos have been bred to enhance a wide variety of colour morphs, probably more than any other lizard in captivity. Many leopard gecko morphs are caused by recessive genes meaning both parents must carry at least 1 copy of the gene for it to be passed on and expressed visually in the offspring. Examples of recessive genes would be the Albino gene (of which there are many different types of albinos) or the Blizzard gene (a patternless pale grey/white gecko). Other morphs are line bred; this means there is no single specific gene responsible for the outward appearance to the gecko’s morph but rather that people have bred successive generations of individuals together that look similar, to enhance the visual appearance they want. Examples of this would be the “Black Night” morph where through repeatedly breeding the darkest coloured individuals together to enhance the amount of melanin (dark pigment) has resulted in an almost entirely black leopard gecko. Another line bred morph and probably the most popular one we breed is the Tangerine morph where they have been line bred for many generations to change the background colour from yellow to orange, often with a reduction in the number of spots. People have now also taken many of these basic starting colour morphs and bred them together to produce what we would call combination or “combo” morphs, an example would be an “albino super snow leopard gecko” which is a combination of the albino and Mack snow traits.

It is worth noting that some leopard gecko morphs are associated with serious health complications as a by product of their morph. We strongly suggest against keeping or breeding any morph or combination morph with these known genetic issues, morphs with issues include the “enigma morph”, “white and yellow morph” and “lemon frost morph” to name just a few.

Leopard geckos have always been popular as they are a hardy species and well suited to beginner keepers. Some older care guides stated that the use of a UVB light was not essential with leopard geckos, modern care standards dictate that they are essential. Thankfully with the routine use of a UVB light we rarely see cases of “MBD” metabolic bone disease (similar to rickets in people) which was unfortunately all to common in leopard geckos in the past. The most common health complaints that we encounter now are obesity from people either overfeeding or feeding too many fatty treat items or shedding issues due to inadequate provision of a humid hide. Both are easily rectified by the keeper adjusting their care accordingly. With a suitable environment and appropriate feeding, they are a very rewarding pet to keep.

 

While leopard geckos are probably the best known and most popular pet species out of all the terrestrial geckos its worth a quick mention for other species that may also be equally suitable to first time keepers but perhaps less well known. These include, Australian barking geckos and knob tailed geckos, these are almost identical in care requirements but stay a little smaller. Fat tailed geckos and Central American banded geckos are similar in care but with higher humidity requirements. And cave geckos are similar in care but with both higher humidity and lower temperature requirements.