Leopard Gecko Blog

I have been compiling a list of websites where breeders have Leopard Geckos for sale. If you are looking for a special Leo for your breeding projects or for a pet, you should be able to find what you are looking for in this list.

This list is by no way complete. If you know of a good breeder, add their website URL in the comments.

Note: I am not necessarily endorsing any of these breeders, please do your research before purchasing.

North American Breeders of Leopard Geckos

Albey’s “Too Cool” Reptiles
Avangel Leopard Geckos
BestRepz
Black Diamond Geckos
Bright Albino
Celebrity Geckos
Chaotic Nights Reptile
Concrete Jungle Geckos
Crazy Tail Reptiles
CSM Gecko
Excellent Geckos
Fallen Angel Geckos
Frankenstein Exotics
Garden State Geckos
Gecko Daddy
Gecko Geeks
Gecko Ring
Geckcessories
Ghoulish Geckos
Go Go Geckos
Golden Gate Geckos
Go Reptiles
H.I.S.S.
Hot Geckos
ID Geckos
JMG Reptile
Kamikaze Gecko
Ron Tremper – LeopardGecko.com
Leopard Geko Breeder
Lizard Lair
Louisiana Leos
Luxurious Leopards
Malt Geckos
Moyers Monsters
Nairowkii Reptiles
Ohio Gecko
Palmetto Gecko
Peppered Leopard Geckos
ProGeckos
Ramseys Reptiles
Reptiles By Rekowski
Shadraak Reptiles
SoCal Leopards
South Bay Geckos
Sunrise Reptiles
Supreme Gecko
The Gecko Prince
The Urban Gecko
West Coast Leopard Gecko
Western Gecko
White Orchid Herps

OTHER PLACES TO BUY QUALITY GECKOS ONLINE
The Gecko Forums Classifieds

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I added three new leopard geckos to my collection this weekend. I now have a pair of RAPTORs and a nice Jungle Tremper Albino male.

I saw a classified ad on the Gecko Forums that was from someone not too far from here. So drove over on Saturday and came home with the male & female RAPTORs and the Jungle albino. Since I am still not set up with a rack system. I made a make shift shelf for 3 bins. The pet store only had two under tank heaters in stock so I had to try to fit the 3 bins over the 2 UTHs. One UTH seems to keep a higer temp so placed it between 2 of the bins.

For bins I am using Sterilite 16 quart tubs with lids. I made holes in the bins with a cheap soldering iron. This really stinks and had to be done outside with a breeze.

The new geckos are settling in. The Jungle Albino is the most friendly. He will come out of his hide to see me if I disturb the bin. The RAPTORs are a little shy but don’t struggle when I pick them up.

Will get some photos up soon.

Next project is to build a rack/shelf system for even more Leos…

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Despite the warnings about not using sand as a substrate for Leopard Geckos, there are still people that house their Leos on sand. I have even seen pet stores with baby leopard geckos on a sand substrate.

Here is a link to a site with some graphic images of what can happen when a leopard gecko is allowed to ingest sand.

Warning: some of the images are unpleasant, however, I feel it is important that you see what can happen to a healthy gecko that is housed on sand.

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Feeder insects are what I call the insects that I feed to the geckos. I have been using crickets and mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) mostly, But recently I tried some waxworms (Galleria mellonella) and superworms (Zphobas morio).

Before feeding the feeder insects to the geckos, it is important to feed the feeders. This is called gut loading. The idea is to get the feeders full ofnutrietiosus food before giving them to the geckos. This way you improve the nutrition value of the feeders.

You can buy gut load for crickets but I have not seen a gut load marketed for mealworms specifically. Some people make their own gut load from grains and vegetables. I attempted to make some gut load for the meal worms the other day. Here is how I did it:

0.5 cups of raw unsalted almonds
0.5 cups of bread crumbs
0.5 cups of oatmeal (rolled quick oats)
0.5 cups of whole wheat flour
0.5 cups of wheat bran
0.25 cups millet flour
0.25 cups oat flour
0.25 cups bulgur whole wheat

First I added the almonds to a food processor and blended until finely chopped.
next, added the other ingredients and processed until it was a consistent powder.

To use I added about 1:1 with the wheat bran mix that the meal worms came in. Added a couple small slices of carrot for moister and added a couple days worth ofmealworms.

I have also read that you can add non-fat dried milk powder, baby cereal, dried alfalfa, brewers yeast. The idea is to have a variety grains, nuts veggies to increase the nutrition of the the gut load.

If you don’t have all these ingredients, you can mix some dried grains and cereals you have around your kitchen. Just avoid the high sugar cereals.

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Leopard Gecko Morphs, love these little guys.

Duration : 0:1:29

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Two weeks ago I added a new gecko to my collection. I drove up to Portland, Maine to the Reptile Expo to see what was available. This was my first reptile expo and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Very interesting, but seemed to be many boas and other snakes. Not as many leopard geckos. I met Aliza from the geckoforums.net and purchased a mack snow female she had. I thought it had an interesting pattern, although I’ll admit I wasn’t really sure what to really look for in a good mack snow morph.

My new gecko is doing great and I have named her Uncia. I have her in my office and she peeks her head out of the hide occasionally to look at me. She is still a little shy though, but comes out if I drop food in the tank.

I am thinking of getting a mack snow male and attempting to breed her next year. I really like the look of the mack snow bold stripe combination and may make that my project.

In the mean time I am learning all I can about caring for Leos.

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After trying to maintain the temperature of our new geckos for a few days I decided to try an under tank heater (UTH). I was reading in geckoforums.net that that is the way most keepers of geckos regulate the temperature of the habitats. Unfortunately the Premium Desert Gecko habitat kit from Zilla® did not contain an UTH, but instead 2 lights.

A quick trip to the pet supply store and I came home with an Exo-Terra® desert medium heater. It is 10×10 and sticks to the underside of the glass aquarium/terrarium. I mounted it at one end of the 20 gallon tank. We were using the terrarium carpet that came with out Zilla® set and I found that the temperature above the UTH was reading about 100 degrees F. The geckos moved to the other hide at the cool end of the tank.

So now we had another problem. How do we cool the heater down? It didn’t come with a thermostat or any way to adjust the temperature. I looked online to see what I could use. I read about adding a dimmer switch, the kind that you install on the cord of a table lamp. I found one at the hardware store for about $15. It was pretty easy to install. you just cut the cord with a pair of sicissors and insert the cord into each end, then press down on the tabs. After playing with it a bit I got the temperature to stay at about 90 F.

So what did I learn? Well I didn’t really need the lights as they don’t really work to get the proper temp and leopard geckos are nocturnal and don’t really need a bright light on the tank as long as there is light from a window they will know when it is night and time to get up.

The other thing I learned was that the UTH can keep the tank too warm if all you have for a substrate is a terrarium carpet. I hear that a piece of tile might be better. Alternatively I might have been better off with the smaller heater, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t have just made the ‘too hot’ area smaller.

Actually having the geckos and trying to maintain their environment is an interesting process. I see why it is recommended that you have the habitat ready and get the conditions right BEFORE you bring the gecko(s) home.

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We returned to the pet store a few days later and found 2 geckos. One was a normal gecko and the other an albino. The normal was a little bigger than the albino. The reptile ’specialist’ at the store warned us about not keeping two males together for too long but since these were both pretty small I figured that we had some time before we might have to separate them. Next we purchased 25 small crickets (not enough) and 100 small mealworms, and a plastic desert plant decoration.

The geckos were placed in their new home and they wasted no time getting in the one hide that came with the habitat. We didn’t bother them until the next morning when we offered then some crickets. They had been fed crickets at he pet store and knew what to do. At this point we didn’t really know how many crickets and mealworms they would eat. For some reason I thought they might eat 2-3 crickets a day. But they would eat more than that. We kept mealworms in a dish but it seemed they preferred the crickets.

In the mean time, I started searching the Internet for some good gecko care sites. At first it was hard to distinguish the good info from the bad, and it seemed some of the advice was contradictory. Eventually I did get some good advice and realized I needed some calcium for the Leo babies. So back to the pet store for calcium and some more crickets. Found some Leopard Gecko Calcium Plus from Repashy Superfoods at Petco and started applying it to the crickets. I found it worked best to put some calcium powder in a baggie and then add some crickets, close the bag and shake. The crickets turned white/gray and were then placed in the tank with the geckos.

One problem we noticed was that the baby leopard geckos would strike at the crickets and get their teeth caught on the carpet (Zilla® brand brown terrerium liner). We removed the carpet and realized that one side was rough and one fuzzy. We had placed it in with the fuzzy side up. So we turned it over so that the rough side was up and now the geckos do not have a problem with their teeth getting stuck. Another problem with the carpet is that it is just a bit too long for the 20 gallon tank. The end curls up a bit and this provides a place for crickets to get under and hide. Next time I clean the cage I will trim a quarter inch off the end of the carpet.

Technorati Tags: gecko habitat, gecko pet, Leopard Gecko

Our leopard gecko adventure: how it started

A few weeks ago I was in a pet store with my 10 year old daughter to get some supplies for our dog and cat. My daughter is an animal lover and wanted to look at the animals for sale. After looking at all kinds of rodents and fish and reptiles she said she would like a pet gecko. She thought the leopard gecko babies were so cute. I thought that a gecko might be better than a guinea pig and I suggested we get a book on leopard geckos to learn more. She reminded me that I had once bought her a book on goldfish, but never actually got the gold fish and she suspected that this was another trick.

We bought the leopard gecko book and read the brief information that it had. It really was not a great book, but it explained enough that we felt we could care for a gecko. I remembered my sister had a gecko at Thanksgiving last year and called to see if they still had it and did she think it was a good pet. She was very enthusiastic and said Striker was doing great. Her children enjoyed looking after it etc.

Well about a week later we went back to see what the pet store had for gecko habitats. Olivia saw a Zilla® Deluxe Desert Gecko set up with a 20 gallon critter terrarium. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but it did come with a screen cover, 2 lights + bulbs for day and night, a nice looking hide, 2 small dishes (for food and water), a desert brown terrarium liner (carpet), a thermometer/humidity gauge and a bottle of reptile mist. I decided that it might be the easiest way to go to get started.

We set up the habitat and checked that it maintained a good temperature. With the light on and the thermometer directly below it, it was about 85 degrees F. That seemed to be within the range that the book suggested. Although I did read about keeping one side of the enclosure at 90 degrees. All that was missing was a gecko…

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