New to the Gecko World

[Sarah_Scott]

Hello, this past Saturday I found a small leopard gecko in my trailer outside. I live in the mountains so it was very cold and I'm not sure how he was still alive. Anyways, I brought him in, bought a 10 gallon tank for him and everything he needs. I would estimate him to be between 3-4 inches long, although its hard to tell. I bought him meal worms and crickets, and so far he has expressed no interest in the meal worms however he has eaten the crickets. Is there anything I can do to get him to eat the meal worms? Also, I've read to use an UTH only and no light, but it can get very cold in my house, and I have a dome light with a 50 watt red heat bulb. I've been using the UTH and the dome light on low to keep the temperature in his tank warm, is this too much? My house has been getting as low as 63 overnight and can get colder as we get into the colder months. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[PanJaster]

Hello.

About feeding, some geckos are a bit picky, I think none of mine ever ate mealworms, they prefer roaches. It really depends on gecko, some may eat anything. Just feed your gecko with crickets and you can experiment with worms a bit when gecko gets bigger and stronger.

As heating, I would recommend you to use UTH + Bulb + tiles / rocks as substrate. I have this combination and it is really great if you want to simulate day / nicht temperature change and tiles also accumulate heat from bulb during the day and stay warm for few hours during night. Keep bulb on for 4 - 8 h a day, depending on temps, UTH needs to be on 24/7. If temperatures are geting low too fast, you can use thich polystyrene or under aquarium foam (I really do not know how this should be called) to prevent fast temperature drops. Temps should not get under 70 F / 21 C at cool side of viv.