[Bob]

I got a female Rhoptropus afer in today. I plan on feeding her dusted crickets, because I have a lot around for other geckos already. Is that their prefered food? If not, I can get different food easily.

[Chris3004]

Bob,

I can't see the pictures due to firewall restrictions, but if the animal is an afer, then it'll accept the "usual suspects". I feed mine with crickets, firebrats, roaches, cowpea weevils, etc.

Cheers
Chris

[Bob]

I am 100% sure that it is an afer, I got it from Jon Boone. I will have to try the firebrats and weevils. I already feed the afer crickets. Have you had any luck breeding your pair of afer yet?

[Chris3004]

Checked from home and agree. Jon offered it for some time and I already considered asking him to bring it to Hamm. Seems that I'm too late

I keep a pair, but haven't had breeding success yet. I found them mating a couple of weeks ago and a first unfertilised egg was laid. I hope for some fertilised eggs to follow. However, according to my knowledge, no one had success so far.

How does your setup look like?

They seem to need a lot of space for such a small gecko and if you see them running, you can imagine why. In smaller terrariums they where observed to climb the glass sides of the tank, but they never did it in my big tank. I keep mine in a 80 x 40 x 40 (cm) tank, with temperatures of 65°C at one end and about 22°C at the other side of the tank. UV light is provided 12 hours a day. They seem to like the high temperatures. Black, flat rocks (shist plates) lie on the ground and are used as hiding places. Usually they use the ones directly under the hot spot.

They occur at the coast of Namibia ( but also further to the upcountry) where they are exposed to extremly high temperatures, but due to the strong winds, temperatures can drop very low during daytime and they even use a breeze to cool down (ODENDAAL 1979). Taking this into account and after consultation with a friend of mine who knows the habitat very well, I decided to use the above, rather unusual, setup, which seems to be appropriate for my animals.

Many people had problems with keeping this species and a number of animals died in captivity within a short period and availability is limited (or not given at all). The fact that you got an acclimatised specimen from Jon certainly helps.

I suggest we keep in touch to exchange thoughts. I'm also in contact with another keeper here in Germany.

Cheers,
Chris