I have a few questions for anybody who can answer them.

I have read about tile, and I keep my leos and african fat tailed gecko on tile, but I am worrying about something. Somebody on another forum said this: Keeping leos on tile is a relatively new concept. So, the long term affects of using tile have not been seen. There are some problems with maybe keeping them on tile, and one of them is pressure on there joints, so that when they are older, they may have severe pain when walking and may have arthritis.
So, I don't know if that is true, but does it sound reasonable? I am not so sure. And with reptile carpet, can't they get their toes stuck in it? Somebody said that they had problems with there leo getting a toe pulled of when it got suck on carpet. Also(I read this in a bearded dragon book), I read that in some reptiles small threads of the carpet can get stuck around their claws, and constrict them to a point where they are necrotic and fall off. Has this happened to anyone?
Are pinky mice really that bad? I have read "Oh, leos can't have pinkies because they can't digest them". Everybody knows ron tremper right? Well, supposedly he uses them and he has no problems.
How smart are leos? My Girl Gina learned that if she sits on top of her favorite rock and jumps, she can get onto the screen. I think she is trying to learn how to escape, has this happened to anyone?
Does anyone have pictures of wild leopard geckos and the habitats they came from?

Thanks in advance.

1. I'm not sure that I would consider using tile with reptiles to be a "new" concept. As far as I know it has been around for quite some time. While it's possible that the tiles could cause joint pain I don't believe that this is a serious concern. In the wild leopard geckos live on hard packed rock and clay. They live in the crevices in rocks and under shrubs. The point I'm trying to make is that their native habitat is covered in hard surfaces. I don't see how tiles could cause them undue joint stress when their joints are built to be on hard surfaces.

2. I've never had my gecko lose toes or claws using reptile carpet, but she did have a hard time with it. She would get her claws tangled in it and sometimes her jaw would get stuck on it when she lunged for food. That is actually one of the reasons that I switched to tile.

3. Yes, pinky mice are really that bad. I know Ron Tremper and I respect the research he has done with the leopard gecko. Appreciating his work, however, does not mean that I agree with his methods. He does a number of things that I would not recommend to the average or even experienced keepers. One of those things is feeding pinky mice. Reading a number of sources on leopard geckos you learn that leopard geckos as far as we understand them are insectivores and are not adapted to digest mammalian fats. I'm glad he uses them with success, but I will not use them and will not recommend their use to others. It is unnecessary and potentially harmful to the gecko.

4. Leopard geckos are curious creatures and still wild enough that they survive on their instincts. Leopard geckos know what they need to do to get their needs met and sometimes this includes escaping. I've caught Spikey on her screen before and I strongly recommend screen lids for these guys because they are great at escaping.

5. I don't have any pictures of wild leopard geckos in their native habitats. I suggest doing a thorough internet search and hitting up your local library. I'm certain that with some research you can find all the pictures that you need.

Thank you so much! My local library isn't good with anything, so there isn't even a point in trying. Thanks for the info on the pinkies. Is there any bug that is like pinkies?

leos love waxworms, byt they are almost like pure fat, not too healthy. its like candy to them i guess. i give mine a waxworm as a treat very rarely

Fiche covered everything well, so I won't repeat it

Just wanted to comment that my leo, Boo, went through a time (when her tank was smaller, and she had a second level with a little hide on it) that she would climb up onto the top of the hide on the second level, and stare up for several minutes. Then, she would 'climb' on the glass for a few minutes, and jump high enough to get her front feet and head on the top edge of her tank, hang on and wiggle and squirm until she managed to get herself on the top edge of the tank . . . and then I would pick her up because I didn't want her falling down and getting hurt or lost. I would usually take the lid off, and talk to her and handle her for a couple hours each evening, so I was always watching when she did this. She did it more than once, and the way she went about doing it, I know that there was at least a little gecko planning involved! Sometimes, she would climb on top, and I would hold her for a while and put her back, and she would climb out again.

This same gecko has also learned how to get inside her favorite hide which has a unique and challenging for a gecko to find entrance.

http://www.geckoforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=8

David Attenborough has some video clips on them in the wild I have seen, and in them they were on hard packed dirt and rocks. (If you don't know who that is he's kinda like Steve Irwin or Jeff Corwin but less entertainment - more information - he's really respected and never places animals anywhere - just sits in the wild for years to get a good natural shot). I think that people think of the middle eastern desert as being all sand but thats not the areas of the desert where leos live.

Try MulberryFarms.com for snacks - they have every food you could want and a chart with nutritional information. The best thing you can do for your gecko is give it a variety.

heres some weather info from one of their native lands http://www.southtravels.com/asia/afghanistan/weather.html

Aha! Sorry so many - but i'm interested to know this too hehe

heres one of them breeding in the wild -

WARNING! EXPLICIT GECKO SEX! NOT FOR HATCHLINGS.

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while searching on youtube I found this

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just might turn you off to feeding pinkies - i know things getting eaten - but i cant help having less sympathy for worms - even though I just got silkworms for the first time - and they have WAY more personality than mealies and crickets - anyway! Hope all that crap helps

Couple of things to add - whilst I love Attenborough the leos featured in Life In Cold Blood were captive bred and filmed at a house in England. They were not wild. Several other animals in the series were captive bred or from animal sanctuaries. It is just the nature of filming now.

Everything else was pretty much covered by the others but I wanted to add that all the stories of toes coming off when using reptile carpet relate back to the old style of RC which had a looser pile and loops. After the problems manufacturers changed to the current style. Claws and jaws do still get caught in carpet but there is no lasting damage to the leo from it. I used carpet for three years with no problems. Tile however is, in my opinion, an equal if not better substrate.

No! Thats what I thought about them being captive bred cuz they were so fat and my teacher VISCIOUSLY conviced me that he would never do that! Bummer.

Nope they were CB. The cobra that spat at him was from a collection as well. The majority of the show was filmed in thewild but some of it wasn't. There was big thing in the press about it at the time. Attenborough defended it in interviews... if you go to the UK forum there is a thread about the show and I'm pretty sure there is a link to an article on it where he talks about the fact they used them in filming.

Now, I have another question regarding supplementation.

Many people say to dust with pure calcium 5 days a week, then on weekends, use vitamin d3 and calcium and reptile vitamins. I think when they don't need any calcium but they still eat it, it doesn't just pass through them, they still absorb it. Can't all of that calcium lead to kidney stones?

Nope. Calcium is a water-soluble mineral, so what they don't digest just gets excreted in their feces and urates. I even asked my vet about this... unless you're basically packing their gut full of it, there's really no way just a dusting will hurt them.

To add about the pinkies... again, asked the vet and she said that when insectivores are fed too much animal protein, it will cause fatty liver disease. Insectivores are not meant to be digesting mammal protein pretty much at all, so if you're using too much mammal protein, fat deposits will start building up on the liver... and then damage occurs. And I also respect Ron Tremper, and Allen Repashy and the lot of the gecko gods, but I definitely don't take everything they say at face value. I would never feed my lizards pinkies, I'd never use sand nor would I house different species together, which are all things they find ok.

Just gotta take everything with a grain of salt!

Ron doesn't mix species, and he doesn't use sand...

But anyway, is there a bug out there that has all the nutrition of a pinkie? I know to add variety, but I don't have locusts, tomato hornworms, silkworms, etc...

So what about feeder anoles? They don't have any mammal protein, right? I don't think I would give an anole to my geckos to eat, but I am just wondering.

A varied diet of well gutloaded feeder insects (which can be as simple as mealworms and crickets) which are properly dusted is perfectly nutritional for leos. If you doubt this you just need to look around this forum where we have normal leos growing to extremely healthy sizes and weights. There is no need for pinkies, or 'all the nutrition of a pinkie' as you keep saying. As for anoles... I would be surprised if a leo would take an anole, but even then I don't see that there would be any nutritional benefit to the leo for it. In the hobby as it stands at the moment, with the access to great feeders and good gutloads (even better if you can make your own) there is no longer any need to vary a leos diet from insects.

I'd be careful how high a pedestal you put Mr Tremper on... remember that he is in this for the money, none of what he does is to give the best life to a 'pet'. It is to give a life to a 'breeder' to produce ludicrously expensive offspring. I'm not saying he hasn't added a lot to the hobby over the years - I'm just saying that I see the leos that keepers here raise and that is proof enough for me that the members here know just as much about great husbandry. If he raised leos as big as they get here he'd come up with some fancy name like 'Dwarf Giants' and sell them for a $squillion.

Thanks. Just I don't have any real variety available to me. Is Mealworms, circkets, superworms and calciworms varied? Or do I need more?

Thanks for the info - I'm gunna go gloat "I told ya so" to my teacher lol. Could you link me to that UK forum please?

If you want variety you can order them online, like I said, MulberryFarms.com is great and has a nutritional chart (which I got giddy over finding)
but like unrealjill said, as long as they are properly gut loaded (and you can find great gut loaders on that and other sites) and supplemented, what you have should be just fine

That is fine. You can choose one e.g. supers and feed it the majority of the time. Then every couple of months buy something different and give him that instead. Alternating between the insects on that list will be fine.



It is the UK forum listed on the main index for RR. I'd be wary of the nutrition chart on Mulberry... it is a little misleading. I prefer to use the one that we have on RR:

http://www.reptilerooms.com/Sections+index...106-page-1.html