Nephrurus asper care

[geek]

Hi there,

Can anyone provide me with any information regarding the captive care and husbandry of Nephrurus asper?

My partner and I hope to acquire a pair of these for our first -- more or less -- geckos and there seems to be little information around regarding the successful care of these spectacular animals. I understand them to be very similar to amyae with regard to care, but being smaller in size I would expect slightly smaller housing requirements..... are there any other major differences?

Specific questions I have are:

1. What is the minimum enclosure dimensions for individually housed adult animals?
2. Feeding -- how much and how often?
3. What is a healthy weight for a female prior to breeding?
4. Is cooling necessary? Both sexes, or just males? What temps?

Thanks in advance.

Lee

 

[clarksgeckos]

Lee,

We keep all of our rough knobtails in 1754 shoeboxes until they hit 25 grams and then they are placed in 1756 sweaterboxes. They are housed like that the rest of their lives.

We have very good success with this method and I would suggest 4 crickets every other day until they are subadults and then a bit more for females and cut back a little for males.

As far as body mass for adults at least 15 grams for males to breed and 25 grams or more for females per Michael Plank at Big Game Reptile... index which would be the person in the US with good information on asper.

In my opinion all geckos need to be cycled in order to get ready for reproduction in the following spring season. I would imagine with asper you would have a very hard time reproducing them without brumating them in their second season of life. Both males and females! It is not like if you have good healty animals, 2 months without having to feed them or clean up their pooh would be such a bad thing :biggrin:
If kept in controlled conditions without fluctuations of more than a few degrees the animals are not going to die or anything in fact, they will come out the same way they went in if done properly. Just make sure to not feed them for 10-14 days before brumation and gradually drop the temperatures until all that is left is the ambient 60 degree air in the room and drop the light cycles from 12 hours per day to 8 hours per day. Just keep them at 60 degrees and occassionally give them a bit to drink without wetting their enclosure.

hope that this helps.

 

[geek]

Thank you kindly for your detailed response, Clark and/or Nicole, I very much appreciate it

Cheers,
Lee