[Supreme Gecko]

Congrats Turbo on your new pet.

[turbohb25]

Thanks Guys!! Here is a Pic of the 2 crested geckos i got this weekend at the repticon show. I purchased both of them from bigfatgeckos.com.

This is my male Bentley.

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And this is my Female Zoey.

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[thorrshamri]

Nice purchases, they both look good. Use live insects such as properly gut-loaded crickets as a staple diet. Do you keep them separated for now? How old are they?

[turbohb25]

Thanks! I going to be feeding them gut loaded crickets probably twice a week. Right now they are eating CGD. They are both in there own terrarium. Im not sure how old they are cause that is the one question I forgot to ask.

[lauraleellbp]

Please keep them primarily on CGD, not crickets. In the wild, Cresties are primarily fruit and nectar eaters. A diet too high in insects rather than CGD has been documented over and over again to lead to serious health issues, especially MBD. Crickets once a week is fine, but I would not go over that. And I would feed them crickets only in a separate enclosure if you have naturalistic substrate set up- after you watch them hunt, you'll see how uncoordinated they are and how often they'll end up biting and trying to swallow everything BUT a cricket (watching mine eat sometimes I'm amazed they ever made it in the wild at all LOL). If they happen to latch onto and swallow a piece of moss, stick, or a big mouthful of substrate it can impact them.

If I remember correctly which two you guys went home with, I'm pretty sure the girl you picked up is 4-6 months old, and the little one about 3 months old. Zoey is probably big enough to be fine in the 18x18x24, but I'd keep the male in a smaller enclosure for now, just to make sure he finds his CGD dish.

Are you keeping them separate right now? If not, you'll need to separate them soon, especially if the little one does turn out male (and I'm pretty sure I louped him as a male at ths show?), as even though he is younger, he will still hit sexual maturity before the female and likely try and mate with her prematurely, which can be very dangerous.

[thorrshamri]

lauraleebp, may I ask your sources when you say that other food than CGD will lead to MBD?

[thorrshamri]

I agree on being cautious to avoid too early breeding, especially for the female, but for males too: I have seen cases of hemipene prolapses on males put to breed at a too young age.

About the CGD: sorry, but that's totally wrong.

In the wild, all members of the Rhacodactylus genus are opportunistic predators. Examinations by several researchers on stomach contents have shown these geckos consume a whole variety of live prey: insects, arachnids, other smaller lizards including youngs of their own species, small skinks native to New Caledonia, nesting baby rodents, nesting birds...(see Seipp & Henkel, 2000, The Rhacodactylus genus, Chimaira Ed.)

By feeding a crested gecko only or mainly on CGD or similar ready-made diets, you run real risks on the long run that the animals will stop feeding.

Furthermore, tests made prior to putting such products on the market were made on a too short period of time for geckos which can live up to 20 yo or even more, so the scientific validity of such tests is questionable, and the reality is that we have no clue at all about effects on the longevity of cresteds and on their health on the long run.

Then, tests made on crested geckos fed only with CGD compared to those fed on live insects have shown a significant reduction of size and body mass in the first group of animals.

If you can't feed a lizard with insects for some reason, choose vegetarian species such as green iguanas instead!

Insects have to be fed properly and with a variety of nutrients sources- cat or dog pellets, carrots, various pesticide-free greens, peeled oranges, peeled figs...I would recommend to use several species of crickets whenever possible and occasionally other live prey such as red runner roaches or silkworms if you can get them.

No offense intended, just an opinion shared by many experienced keepers and by scientists alike. It is true many breeders sell CGD along with cresteds so we may question their objectivity when they make recommendations on feeding cresteds, gargoyles and other monivorous geckos.

You should dust the prey insects with a good supplement like Miner-All I (Sticky Tongue Farm) on every feeding; it is also fine to offer your animals some fruit-based baby food, mashed fruit mixes, honey and bee pollen from time to time. It will help providing them with sources of different vitamins. But these are far less nutritious than insects.

Some hints for noobs about feeding for more hints

[Riverside Reptiles]

Originally Posted by lauraleellbp

A diet too high in insects rather than CGD has been documented over and over again to lead to serious health issues, especially MBD.

Laura, please provide this documentation. I'd be VERY interested in reading it. Real, valid, documentation please. Not just a couple of posts on a forum and obviously not anything coming from a producer/seller of cgd who has it in their best (financial) interest to make insects seem like a poor choice.
Thanks,
Ethan

[lauraleellbp]

Originally Posted by thorrshamri

lauraleebp, may I ask your sources when you say that other food than CGD will lead to MBD?

MBD a quick reference.

Please understand I am not generalizing this to ALL lizards or even all Rhacs, but Rhacodactylus ciliatus. R. chahoua and leachianus breeders DO primarily feed insects rather than CGD, but over and over I see people posting pictures of their Crested geckos who were fed PRIMARILY crickets and these geckos are weak and display kinked tails and spines.

Most of my adult Cresties will not touch bugs even when I offer them.

I'm a big proponent of learning to mix your own food and feed fresh- IF people will learn proper supplementation. BUT since the average pet hobbyist most likely isn't going to go through that effort, then I encourage them to rely on either Repashy or Clark brands, since those are the best available ATM.

[thorrshamri]

Sixty-six stomach flushings were performed, three on recaptured specimens. Food items were found in 4 of the 66 (2.2%) stomachs flushed, yielding a total of 8 prey items (Tab. 2). Fifteen of the 8 items were animal prey, 3 of which were arthropods, comprising 86.7% by number and 93.9% by volume of the total animal prey items recovered. The majority of arthropods recovered showed little sign of digestion. Two vertebrate prey items, constituting 3.3% by number and 6.6% by volume of the total animal prey, were recovered. One was the forelimb of Caledoniscincus atropunctatus and the other the thoracic region and humerus of a small gecko (probably Bavayia septuiclavis; Figure 3C). These were recovered from different adult male R. auriculatus captured in open maquis. Remaining items included shed gecko skin, found in two stomachs, and an unidentifiable gelatinous mass recovered from one stomach. Outside of the context of the main study an adult female (36 g, 22.8 mm SVL) was observed and filmed drinking sap from a Cunonia macrophylla (Figure 3D) over a period of three nights (Snyder et al. 200.

Ecological observations on the Gargoyle Gecko, Rhacodactylus auriculatus (Bavay, 1869), in southern New Caledonia Joshua Snyder1+2, Leslie Snyder2 & Aaron M. Bauer1 1) Department of Biology, Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, Pennsylvania 19085, USA 2) 883 South 630 West, Payson, Utah 84651, USA Manuscript received: 1 September 2009