Planning Day Gecko Enclosure

[HylaCinerea]

I've been plotting to get a breeding pair of day geckos (trying to decide between gold dust, lined, or pea****) and want to make sure I have a good home prepard for them before hand.


My planned enclosure is a 29-gallon aquarium. For the drainage area, I'd use aquarium gravel covered with screen. For the substrate, I'm leaning toward "eco earth" because of its moisture retention. For climbing, I'm planning to add pothos and posistioned wood pieces.


Since day geckos prefer a day temperature in the 80's, I'm still trying to decide the best way to do a heat lamp. It would be easy to overheat with a larger bulb, so I'm thinking about adding a 25-50 watt lamp and just letting the geckos crawl upward to find their own gradient. Would that work, or should I do otherwise? For UVB, I have a reptisun fluorescent bulb.


Any suggestions?

 

[HylaCinerea]

21 views and not a single reply? Why so stingy with the vivarium advice, folks?

 

[HylaCinerea]

Wow....this place sucks. :?

 

[Lordoftheswarms]

Yes, your plan is good. Go with that.

 

[Xorac]

Probably not getting any replies because you pretty well seem to know what you're doing Your lighting solution seems good, most day geckos prefer a 90 degree hot spot and 80 for most of the tank, the gradiant idea you've suggested sounds excellent. You might try puck lights for heat - get em at Home Depot. Humidity may be an issue - I've addressed it by covering about half of the top with glass, keeping some water in the gravel drainage, and misting three times a day. You might check out my post from around March, I posted a lot of pictures of tricks I'd learned and adapted from other keepers.
Don't limit yourself on the plants if you want to go "naturalistic" - I've been having great success with orchids,ferns, bromiliads, ficus benjamini, which are much nicer looking than the old pathos standby.
Hope that Helps,
Sean

 

[petpoor]

Day Gecko Enclosure

I have been the proud owner of a two PM Grandis and have learned a few things in the last few months. I purchased these as hatchling/sub-adults (young) in April. I live in Arizona and worried about the humidity levels and actually kept them to wet. I read they need 80% humidity and had to mist them several times a day. Now I know that these hatchlings were very susceptible to toxins. I had purchased a couple of bromeliads and a snake plant from home depot and rinsed the plants in a 1:10 bleach rinse and gave them a good rinse of RO water. I actually lost one of the babies and turned to the breeder for advise.

I would advise anyone looking to buy hatchlings to start them in a simple enclosure with artificial plants. It was heartbreaking to lose a baby I had planned for months in advance.

Both babies were healthy and eating, but they started to show signs of stress within a couple days. Personally, I believe it was the plants. I sent pictures of the enclosure to the breeder and he told me the enclosure was much to wet. He replaces the baby (which I thought was really kind, since I am sure my lack of experience was the cause). He suggested I move the baby to a simpler enclosure and cut back on the moisture.

I moved the survivor to an enclosure with cage carpet and artificial plants. The new gecko joined the other gecko and has thrived in this enviornment. I use two CF bulbs and went with the puck lights from Home Depot. The humidity level stays around 25% humidity. I give them a good spray each morning and they are two healthy geckos now! I am looking to buy a larger enclosure and am working with the breeder to add a male!

I feed them Rapashy MPR mixed with mango or apricot baby food and offer them crickets, meal worms and occasionally some wax worms.

I hope this is helpful and that I didn't just ramble on...

Best,
petpoor

 

[kylehca]

puck lights

Hi there, the puck lights sound interesting, can you give me any more info on them, what wattage etc., thanks

 

[Adrn]

Most are sold in 20w, but pick up a rheostat (like a dimmer switch) for them in order to set the right gradient temps in the enclosure.
As a side note, I may be offloading my laticauda laticauda breeder pair #1. Send me a message if you might be interested and I can share their specs with you.

-Adrian