Hello from WI

Hello,

I work at the Boys & Girls Club and we recently inherited a leopard gecko. Being a reptile enthusiast, I volunteered to lead a herpetology club to learn how to properly take care of her. I feel pretty good about the things we have done so far, but I did have a few questions. First, the pet store owner put cypress mulch in her terrarium, but I haven't seen anything in my reading about it; is cypress mulch okay? Would anything else be better? Also, we know we should put a dish of calcium powder in her terrarium; is there a recommended brand that seems to work well? And what brand of vitamin powder should we dust her crickets and mealworms with? She has a ceramic heat emitter keeping one side of her terrarium around 90 degrees and a undertank heatpad under her hide, which is a large, heavy piece of steralized driftwood, on the other side. We are getting another hide to keep humid soon. Did I miss anything?

I look forward to becoming an avid participant in this community.

Best wishes,

Dan

Hi Dan,

Im Sam welcome to the forum.

Hope you enjoy your time here. Kermit is the best for set-up advice and Jordan for supplements, im sure you'll hear from them both soon.

Hi Dan, welcome to the forum i hope you get all you need out of it.

Personally i haven't heard of cypress mulch, but it doesn't sound like a leopard gecko substrate to be honest.
I find the best substrate is good old simple kitchen roll, or butchers paper.
Other think tile is a lot better because fof the aesthetic value.

There is a great caresheet on the forum: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Its written by someone from the US so all the brands reffered to in it are US brands so it should help you out.

In terms of supplementing, again, as im from the UK i can't help much with brands, i think the main one is T-Rexx but not sure. So one of the US members might be able to help out a little better.

The best help i can give you is; You should dust feeders with calcium containing d3, and leave calcium without d3 in the enclosure. But there is plenty of multi-vitamins which cintain everything and leave out the confusion.

Sorry i wasn't much help, but welcome to the forum and hopefully a US member will help you soon.

Thanks, Jordan. I actually found and read your care sheet before you replied so I passed all of your recommendations on to our program director who is going shopping this weekend. Hopefully we will have everything Erma needs by Monday and our Reptile Philes club can construct her the perfect habitat. The pet store owner where she came from, who I personally think is a moron, said that he gut loads his crickets so we don't need to duct them, but I have read elsewhere not to trust pet store owners about their crickets. Any comments?

Haha, that's great. Well i hope it helped you out.

Some large scale pet store employees can be a little short of knowledge, the large scale companies tend to hire just people rather than specialists or people who know what theyre talking about.

However in this case, dusting gutloaded crickets won't do any harm.
It sort of depends on the gutloading; if the feeders are gutloaded with specialised gutloading mixture, it willl usually contain calcium, d3, and all necessary vitamins, so dusting the feeders isn't necessary and could even mean too much d3 intake.

However, gutloading the feeders with something like lettuce or carrot then, adding a bit of specialised dust may be beneficial.

Another thing you may have read may be that sometimes crickets can carry parasites or diseases which can harm your gecko. And it is generally thought that these parasite carrying crickets are found more in crickets from large chain pet stores. BUT, i don't know, they can come from anywhere really.

welcome to the forum
I'm Sarah. Nice to meet you!

Thanks, I like your snail.

haha thankyou ^ ^ I have 3!

Welcome to the forum. It's nice to have another yank on the boards

As far as your suppliments go... gutload your crix 24 hours before you feed them to your leo with fresh veggies. Carrots potato and apples offer a lot of the vitimins you need. Problem with premanufacturered gutload is you have no idea how much of the nutrients the feeder is absorbing/using between the time they eat it versus when you feed them to your leo. I find fresh foods are always better gutloaad as they retain all their nutrients unlike manufacturered suppliments which lose some nutritional value thru the manufacturing process. Avoid spinach s a gutload. For some reason it can negatively impact your leo... can't recall exactly how off hand but I'm sure you'll find it quickly with a google search. You can leave veggies in your ricket bim 24/7 just be sure to replace every few days. You can use the zame gutload for mealworms and superworms as well.

As far as additional supplimenting with calcium and multi vitimins I always recommend an all in 1 suppliment such as repashy superfoods calcium plus icb
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

or T-rex brand leopard gecko dust icb by sandfire foods. (I'll include pix later I'm on my phone posting this now).

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
With the all in 1 suppliments you do not need to keep an extra dish of calcium in the viv for your leo. If your leo is 7 mos orolder simply dust your feeders every other feeding. Also if over 7 mos old you can likely get away wth feeding your leo 3x a week. I prefer superworms as they have less sell than mealies which means less chance for constipation, and your adult leo will ikely only need 2-4 per feeding where as an adult leo can easily eat 10-15 mealies a feedng. Also like better than crix as you av oid the wole parasite issue that can happen with crix from mass producing farms that sell to the chain petstores. Do not leave crix in your viv overnight as they wil nibble and harass your leo. Mealies ad supers can be left in if in an escape proof dish and have something like a baby carrot in with them to eat. Replace feeders lft in the v iv. With freshly gutloaded feeders every 3 days.

As for your set up... you should get all the heat you need for your leo with the under tank heater. You shouldn't need a ceramic heat emitter. Belly heat is what is most important to your leo for proper digestion. Air temperature realy doesn't matter. These animals come from packed earth deserts and live in the mid level rocky crevaces and craigs. You need a probe thermometer on your hot side right over the uth on the floor to monitor temps. 88-95*F is the optimum range you want to shoot for.

So hopefully this gets you off to a good start. Most other questions you have should be addressed in my housng caresheet that Jordan linked you too, but if you need anything else don't hesitate to ask.

So no ceramic heat emitter, but what about the 50 watt moonlight blue light from the caresheet? The ambient temp on the hot side won't be anywhere near 90 without some sort of overhead heat. Do you think the temperature is the number one issue to get settled as quickly as possible? I would love to have been able to have her vivarium completely set before we got her, but one of my coworkers insists on buying reptiles that she can't take care of. She has already killed one chameleon and is working on her second.

The ambient air temp doesn't need to be 90F, just the floor temp. So the ceramic heater plays no part really... as long as your UTH is getting enough heat through the floor.

The use of moonlight bulbs is to suppliment heat that you might not be making with a uth alone. Sometimes when a person gets an undersized or underpowered uth they need to suppliment heat. Say for example I put a 6x8 5 watt heat mat on a 20 long tank, I highly doubt it would make the 93*F that I shoot for as my average temperature so I would need to suppliment a heat element. Ceramic heat emitters generally only heat ambient air temps whereas moonlight bulbs will make a hot spot in the same essence that a basking light would, as well as elevate the ambient air temps.

In a desert type environment where leos come from the air temps are always 10-15 degrees cooler than the ground temps, esp. when you talk about the middesert level where there really isn't sand but rocky formations.