I took a few more pictures this morning. Here is a carrot tail stripe, a Mack Snow and a hypo tangerine. Also added a picture of the Bell albino male with the snake eyes.
Stripe Carrot Tail Male - he wasn't too happy about being woke up.
Mack Snow female - Uncia
Hypo Tangerine male - Halloween
Snake Eyes on Bell Albino Male
Had my daughter help me get some pictures of the geckos. A couple are shedding today so I’ll get their pictures up in a day or two.
Mack Snow Male
Bell Albino Male
Bell Albino Female
SHTCTB Female with intense carrot tail from Wally and Nanette at Supreme Gecko
SHTCT Female from Aliza at Geckcessories
Dark Female
Female with intersting pattern on head.
Female with some interesting patterns
Raptor Male - two snake eyes
Raptor Female - one snake eye and one eclipse eye
George - Tremper Albino Jungle Male
Peaches - Tremper Albino Female
Halloween - Tangerine Male from Petco
I’m beginning to think I have a gecko hoarding problem…
After getting buying 5 geckos on Saturday, I visited a local breeder and came home with three more on Sunday. Aliza lives a couple towns over and I had wanted to see how she is set up for breeding geckos. She had some nice tangerines and a nice normal leopard gecko with some interesting coloration and head patterns. She wasn’t asking much for them so I decided to add them to my collection.
I have a few months to decide which of the geckos I will breed, and which ones to possibly sell/trade. I am really enjoying this hobby. Now I just need to stop expanding the collection and focus on enjoying the ones I have. Although there are still two unused shelves in my gecko rack…
Last weekend I built a new shelf (rack) system for my geckos. I made it from sheets of 3/4 inch melamine. I had to buy 2 sheets at Home Depot and have them cut them into 16 x 48 inch pieces. It would have been great except that they didn’t cut them all the same width and didn’t even cut them square! Anyway, I used my router to make some grooves (dados) in the upright pieces and then cut the shelves to 36 inches. So the rack will hold 18 of the 16 quart Sterilite brand boxes, 3 bins on each shelf.
To make the plastic bins I used sixteen quart Sterilite plastic boxes and melted air holes in the sides with an inexpensive soldering iron. (if you do this make sure you do it in a well ventilate area – like outdoors!).
I bought the 4 inch wide FlexWatt heat tape from Reptile Basics and a Johnson Controls thermostat. I soldered the cord to the Flexwatt, but it might have been worth it to order it with the cord already attached. Seems to work great at keeping the bins at 90-92 degrees F.
I started out the week with only 3 geckos in the rack. But on Wednesday the SHTCT female I ordered from Supreme Gecko arrived. I turned on the heat tape on the second shelf and now had 2 empty spots on that shelf.
Off to the Manchester Reptile Expo
The New England Reptile Expo was in Manchester NH on Saturday so I took my daughter and told her to help me find 2 new gecko. Drove up in the pouring rain and arrived at about 9:45. Overall I wasn’t too impressed with the Leopard Geckos that were there. Didn’t find any amazing ones. Olivia found a male tangerine with a great carrot tail and a very dark “normal” female. Then I saw a large Mack Snow male that was a ‘proven breeder’ and a pair of Bell Albinos. The male Bell had snake eyes and looks cool. So ended up getting 5 new geckos.
The rack is only half full so I might add a few more…
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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…
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.
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.
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.
Leopard Gecko Morphs, love these little guys.