Foods for more color

What foods or food substances will bring out my little gecko's color, MacSnow I want to turn from a medium Yellow to a vibrant Yellow? TIA

Foods won't affect color, but temperature will. Too cool and your leo can appear dark and dull, warmer temps will make them more vibrant. Feeding a well balanced rotation of feeders gutloaded with fresh veggies will optimize your leos health making him as colorful as his genetic programming will allow. He will also brighten as he ages.

Hi Kermit,
Can you tell me more about veggies you feed, which ones to do and the ones to avoid?

I gutload my feeders with romaine lettuce, carrots, potato, tomatoes, green beans, squash, pretty much any veggie scrap I'm using to cook that night. Avoid spinach and some other broad leaf greens as they cointain a chemical that binds to calcium making it impossible to absorb. Just so you know tho it it isn't the food your feeders eat that are going to affect color it is absolutely the temps they were incubated at and the temps you currently keep them at. I also have a bold mack snow, far from dull but no where near as bright as a sunglow. I keep him at 95-96*F and he keeps pretty good color, however when I have him out for like an hour I can see his colors get more dull. Here's a picture of him



He's a bold mack snow het bell het patternless. Macks aren't suppose to be super bright, that's part of their appeal is the lack of pigmenting, but more does develop as they age since macks are born black and white. Here's Eros' baby picture just so you can see how much they change



A lot of their color will depend also on what temps they were incubated at. Babies incubated at warmer temps not only produce more males, but also are said to produce bolder colors so... if you have a female, they are incubated at lower temps so that could be part of the cause for the duller colors, but I honestly believe a lot depends on what temps her viv are at. Maybe post a pic of her and we could see if it's genetics or her viv temps affecting her colors.

Wow, i can finally see the pics, darn firewall.
Just beautiful.
here is my girl from this Jan.


i am putting some spirulina in with the gutloading formula...i was told it will help bring out some color as well. have you ever heard of that?

No I've never heard of that. She doesn't look dull to me. I would try keeping her a little warmer if you really want to see a color change. Sometimes you just can't fight genetics tho. A lot will depend on what temps she was incubated at and since she's a female then she waslikely incubated at lower temps unless she's a "Hot female" which if that was the case I believe they say that hot females tend to be more "aggressive". You'll see many changes in her color thruought the first 2 years of her life before her true adult colors come in. How certain are you that she is indeed a mack snow? did you get her from a breeder that was able to show yuo baby pix or had you had him since she was a hatchling/juvie?

Like Kermit said, food of your leo and food for the food of your leo will not affect its coloring. Proper temps and the genetics behind the leo will brighten the colorings.

I was guessing she was a MacSnow because of the pattern similarity. But really have no idea. The pair was rescued and then given to me 2 in Dec 2011.

It is difficult to say an animal past the juvie stage is a mack unless you have seen them as a juvie/hatchling because macks can look so similar to a high yellow normal at the adult stage. I got my boy from a breeder so it is a certainty that is is definitely a mack snow, but I think what you might have is simply a normal/high yellow, with out proof to the contrary it is going to take test breeding and hatching out the eggs to determine for sure if it's a mack or a normal.

I wanted to show off my mack snow because of the topic
This is my chunky leo, Banana She's roughly 2 years and 4 months old.



eye shot