Newbie trying to get ready for our first gecko, and my head is spinning!

[Jwtruth50]

My daughter wanted to get a leopard gecko, after we researched a bit, and I'm trying to get everything ready. Every time I think we are about there I realize.....

Not so much

I bought some things online for the probably too large exo terra 40 gallon from the bio dude after watching him on you tube. I liked the idea of a more natural, enriching environment. After my bank account recovered from that I went to buy lights etc, and I think the guy steered me a bit wrong. I can return/exchange still, but I'm confused as to what to get. He tried to sell me the red heating bulb, then the blue because after I said I read the red mess with their sleep cycle he said the blue wouldn't as much. After that he sold me the infared which he said was better. He also said the gecko didn't need uvb, but I'm reading it is beneficial.

I see these t5's I believe they're called, and am getting more confused by the minute. I'm not bothered if I need to spend extra, but I will be bothered if I kill my daughter's new pet. I also want the critter to live as well as a captive animal can.

Rant over for now . Any help much appreciated

A few pictures attached

 

[acpart]

Here is my opinion based on 17 years of keeping leopard geckos including 13 years of breeding them:
--get rid of the lights. You can have them; they're not bad. However, keep this in mind: lights that generate a lot of heat, especially in a contained enclosure, also dry out the air and in some cases can dehydrate the gecko. Also, UVB (which needs to be replaced every 6-12 months because the UVB output declines and it costs upwards of $250 to buy a UVB meter) is only good if the gecko is out of its hides basking and benefitting from it. Some leopard geckos spend lots of time out in the open and some hardly ever do, so there's no way to know what you're going to end up with

--make sure you have an under tank heater (either a mat or ZooMed heat cable which you can tape down and then untape and move somewhere else if needed. With a 40 gallon you'll need a 38' or 50' cable (6' of that is not heated). You can get this for a good price on Ebay as opposed to a pet store. Use Nashua tape from Home Depot or equivalent to tape it down (Nashua tape looks like a roll of duct tape but it's actually adhesive backed aluminum foil tape with a peel-off backing).

--you will also need a thermostat to keep the heat mat/tape from getting too hot. The most reasonably priced is made by ESU or Zilla. I have some I've been using since 2005 and they're still working well for me. They should be under $40

I hope that was helpful. Feel free to ask more questions. If you get a healthy leopard gecko (sometimes getting one from a big box pet store is not the best idea) it is a very hardy pet and as long as it has proper heat and supplementation (calcium and vitamin D3) it can survive a lot of minor mistakes.

Aliza

 

[Jwtruth50]

Here is my opinion based on 17 years of keeping leopard geckos including 13 years of breeding them:
--get rid of the lights. You can have them; they're not bad. However, keep this in mind: lights that generate a lot of heat, especially in a contained enclosure, also dry out the air and in some cases can dehydrate the gecko. Also, UVB (which needs to be replaced every 6-12 months because the UVB output declines and it costs upwards of $250 to buy a UVB meter) is only good if the gecko is out of its hides basking and benefitting from it. Some leopard geckos spend lots of time out in the open and some hardly ever do, so there's no way to know what you're going to end up with

--make sure you have an under tank heater (either a mat or ZooMed heat cable which you can tape down and then untape and move somewhere else if needed. With a 40 gallon you'll need a 38' or 50' cable (6' of that is not heated). You can get this for a good price on Ebay as opposed to a pet store. Use Nashua tape from Home Depot or equivalent to tape it down (Nashua tape looks like a roll of duct tape but it's actually adhesive backed aluminum foil tape with a peel-off backing).

--you will also need a thermostat to keep the heat mat/tape from getting too hot. The most reasonably priced is made by ESU or Zilla. I have some I've been using since 2005 and they're still working well for me. They should be under $40

I hope that was helpful. Feel free to ask more questions. If you get a healthy leopard gecko (sometimes getting one from a big box pet store is not the best idea) it is a very hardy pet and as long as it has proper heat and supplementation (calcium and vitamin D3) it can survive a lot of minor mistakes.

Aliza

I appreciate the help. The guy at the store I went to told me that an under tank heater would not keep it warm enough, as I told him my substrate was about 3 in thick. The setup is also downstairs which is a little cooler most of the time.

I'm getting ready to head out there now to try to trade everything in for a matt, or heat cord with thermostat, but I want to make sure you think that would still work? The bio dude guy I bought a lot of the stuff from originally puts the mat on the side so the heat will penetrate better, but it seems like you'd lose a lot of Heat going up before it really benefited the gecko. Since he was using lights and a mat, maybe that's why.

I just wanted to try to get something started today, as I have isopods and springtails coming FedEx by 8 p.m.

 

[acpart]

What's your substrate? I once did a bioactive setup with coco fiber. I did use a heat mat/heat cable. If you can set things up so the hides on the hot are sunk a little deeper into the substrate it shouldn't be a problem. I make my own ceramics, so I was able to make hides with ceramic bottoms and sink them all the way into the substrate. You could probably get a floor tile, dig it down into the substrate and put a hide on top of that. I'll be there are other ways to make sure it's warm enough inside the hide. My feeling has always been that as long as the ambient temperature is comfortable for humans, when it's on the cooler end of the spectrum (say, low to mid 60's in the house during the winter), the gecko can be in its hide and the air trapped in the hide will be warmer.

Aliza

 

[Jwtruth50]

I'm not sure what exactly is in the substrate.

The guy selling it says it mimics the desert scrublands where they are naturally found. He's obviously out to make his money, but I saw a decent amount of hopefully real reviews of people saying it's been working great. I wish I knew exactly what's in it, but I don't. It was the first I heard of doing a bioactive environment for the critters, so I just bought it.

I had to mix a small amount of water in to it, so the succulents wouldn't die of shock, and it says to mist it, but the top layer stays pretty dry, with a few moisture pockets under the surface. You mix some moist sphagnum moss into all of it, and a bit extra on the cool humid hide side. Litter leaves, springtails, and powder blue isopods so far as well.

I've got the under tank mat heater going for about 40 minutes so far with the thermostat set to 90, and I will be checking the temp to see how high it can get. I think I heard they take a while to heat up. I wanted to get the cord you talked about, but the place I returned the lights was kind of rude about it, and said they didn't have them. I thought their website listed them in stock there, and mentioned that, but the lady just kind of stared at me after I asked about it. The lady seemed annoyed, and told me I needed to do it like their sample cage with sand, lights on top, and a couple plastic looking logs, because that's what they all use. I hate taking things back to the store, and I was just glad I got something out of the deal, since she didn't seem too happy about my choice of the under heater

Anyway, I'll see how this one goes, and do what I need to do. Maybe like you said, some type of tile or ceramic to get the heat to transfer better.

Thanks again for the help

 

[acpart]

The under tank heaters take about 6 hours theoretically to reach full strength. I have found that they keep adjusting for as much as 2-3 days, but most of it does happen in 6 hours. I'm including a link to 2 articles from Gecko Time about leopard gecko bioactive enclosures. The person who wrote them goes by the user name Indyana on this forum but I'm not sure how active she is anymore. Otherwise you can get her name from the article and message her on facebook.

Holistic Design in Bioactive Vivariums: Leopard Geckos, Part 1 - Gecko Time

All bioactive enclosures have the same basic requirements, but the needs of your main inhabitant dictate the ways in which you can support bioactivity. Many people have claimed it impossible to create a bioactive desert terrarium, but let’s not forget that life persists all over the earth, even...

geckotime.com

Holistic Design in Bioactive Vivariums: Leopard Geckos, Part 2 - Gecko Time

This is the fourth article in this series and part 2 of leopard geckos. Gecko Time readers might recognize this enclosure from a previous leopard gecko bioactive article. What happened? Superworms! Zophobas morio overpopulated and became a smelly nuisance, and the worms escaped through gaps...

geckotime.com

Aliza

 

[Jwtruth50]

The under tank heaters take about 6 hours theoretically to reach full strength. I have found that they keep adjusting for as much as 2-3 days, but most of it does happen in 6 hours. I'm including a link to 2 articles from Gecko Time about leopard gecko bioactive enclosures. The person who wrote them goes by the user name Indyana on this forum but I'm not sure how active she is anymore. Otherwise you can get her name from the article and message her on facebook.

Holistic Design in Bioactive Vivariums: Leopard Geckos, Part 1 - Gecko Time

All bioactive enclosures have the same basic requirements, but the needs of your main inhabitant dictate the ways in which you can support bioactivity. Many people have claimed it impossible to create a bioactive desert terrarium, but let’s not forget that life persists all over the earth, even...

geckotime.com

Holistic Design in Bioactive Vivariums: Leopard Geckos, Part 2 - Gecko Time

This is the fourth article in this series and part 2 of leopard geckos. Gecko Time readers might recognize this enclosure from a previous leopard gecko bioactive article. What happened? Superworms! Zophobas morio overpopulated and became a smelly nuisance, and the worms escaped through gaps...

geckotime.com

Aliza

Thanks again!