New Leo Owner

I posted recently on the Husbandry & Housing section as I wanted to make sure I was on the right track but now I've managed to take some photos of Olive we can say hi properly, so here she is.

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We rescued her last Sunday - her owners had 5 geckos, didn't know what they were doing and had lost interest. We know she's a she, but no age or morph - any ideas? She's around 7 inches nose to tip of tail, her head and tail are white-ish, tail more so, and while her body is yellow, with a white line down the middle, there are few spots and some faint (almost) rectangles.

She's currently her original small vivarium. which I really don't think is a proper vivarium, (not tall enough, way too much ventilation causing heat loss) and I need to get her into a bigger one with a better heat mat. My local reptile/fish shop doesn't have a good enough viv and Pets at Home have a poor selection too - it's either 30x30cm base or 34x42cm base (£45) or a huge one for £180, where's the middle ground! I'm in Surrey, England and there's a Pet Emporium fairly near me I can visit and see what they have but I'd welcome any advice on other shops I can try.

Chris

Hi Chris Surrey Pet Supplies you should be able to get everything you need from there and a lot cheaper than a lot of other places around.

Amazing timing, I've just been browsing their site with a view to going over there tomorrow!

I was originally thinking something like this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] with an 18 inch square base, definitely not anything smaller and looks like I'd be able to get a good heat mat underneath the glass base and fit a thermostat, which I'm not able to do with her current viv. But it's £56 and the Vivexotic [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is wider than the Exo and cheaper but still with a reasonable height to it.

Presumably she's still getting used to us and her new surroundings but she managed to climb up onto her moist hide this evening (2.5-3 inches high, straight up) - thought they weren't good climbers?!! As she was feeling more adventurous I decided to try and feed her some crickets, she took three live ones off the tweezers so she's got an appetite despite shedding on Tuesday, but I've yet to see her hunt down any that I've let round around her viv. I'm trying to work out how often to feed her live crickets (daily? every other?), and how many to put in her viv at one time. She's still not that active so it's not easy to see if she's hunting them. I also don't want her relying on me to hand feed her, as nice as it is to do that!

All 3 of my vivs and the tortoise table are vivexotic and you can't fault them easy to put together and very solid. They can and will climb just don't put anything in that is too high as you don't want your little one falling and hurting herself.

Excellent thank you. What combination of heat mats and thermostats do you use? I'd rather take recommendations on experience. My 14w Algarde heat mat doesn't have a thermostat and it struggles to keep the warm side above 85F during the day due to room temp changes. The evenings are fine, a comfy 91F but I get the feeling that's because our room is warmer, rather than the heat mat doing its job.

Also, what are the numbers in the signatures? 2.4.1 geckos, 0.1 gecko? I can't find an explanation for this!

I prefer Habistat for both, depending on what substrate you'll be using hot glue the stat and thermo probes next to each either on top the substrate if your using tiles/slate etc (permanent substrate) or if your using one that you will be changing say weeklye.g. paper towels then hot glue your probes directly onto the heat mat under the substrate.

Hope that helps.

Krayzee wrote:
Also, what are the numbers in the signatures? 2.4.1 geckos, 0.1 gecko? I can't find an explanation for this!

The first number represents males, second number represents females, third represents unsexed geckos.

hi i didnt thnk height really mattered as geckos dont realy climb, i have a teranium that is short and my leo loves it and it keeps temps wonderfully
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i especially like the heat mat under the glass plate with styrofoam under to bounce the heat up just my 20p worth

ozziesmum wrote:if your using one that you will be changing say weeklye.g. paper towels then hot glue your probes directly onto the heat mat under the substrate.

OK now I'm confused! I do use paper towels for her current plastic viv, and intend to continue using them for her new glass one. The UTH is on a desk with the viv on top of it (there are small feet providing a small gap for airflow), and then the paper towel on the base of the viv. I have been resting the probe on the paper towel, which has been giving low readings of around 82-85F during the day, then it rises in the evening due to the room temperature. This isn't an accurate reading as Olive would lie flat on the paper towel, thus pressing it down onto the warm base of the viv, and therefore getting more heat than the probe suggests. So although it's resting on the paper towel, it's more of a ground level air temp reading. If I put the probe under the paper towel i.e. resting on the plastic bottom, the temp shoots up to 98F and continues to climb - do I need this reading? I would never let her walk on the plastic, she would burn.

kathstew wrote:

Krayzee wrote:
Also, what are the numbers in the signatures? 2.4.1 geckos, 0.1 gecko? I can't find an explanation for this!

The first number represents males, second number represents females, third represents unsexed geckos.

Thank you! In that case I need to put "0.1.0 Leopard Gecko (morph unknown)" in my sig!

If you've got your probes laying on top of the paper substrate you won't be getting a true reading of the heat mat as there will be a gap between the mat and the paper and you will be heating the gap in between and paper isn't a good conductor of heat either but if you glue or weigh down the probes under the paper directly on top of the heat mat you will get a true reading. Don't place the probes on the edges of the mat or near to the connectors place them (in the case of Habistat) in the centre of one of the dark squares.

OK I can do that, though it sounds like the temperature is going to be too hot for her, and I thought she was curled up in her warm moist hide for so long because she was cold?

Just to clarify, the heat mat is outside of the viv, so either the probe sits on the plastic base, in which case I'm reading the temp of the plastic, or I take the probe out of the viv, and put it under the viv on top of, and directly touching, the heat mat?

I also want a thermostat to stop these heat fluctuations, and because it's potentially too hot now, when I thought it was too cold - how would a thermostat work with my heat mat to tell it when to turn on and off?

Welcome to the forum
You have a very cute little leo there

I think this is where my problem lies - that it's under the viv and affected by room temperature, doors/windows open etc rather than in the viv (it's too wide!) i.e. the mat itself being cooled and having to work harder. If it's in the viv, it wouldn't have to do this. It's an Algarde 14w 28x28cm heat mat, which would be very suitable to sit inside the new viv I hope to get tomorrow from Surrey Pet Supplies.

So, if I need the mat temp reading at 90-96F, the temp on top of the paper towel would be lower because it doesn't conduct heat well - is this acceptable or should I increase the mat temp to maybe 98-100F to make the paper towel temp better for her to lie on?

Once she's properly settled in I'll be able to put the temp up or down a degree and see which she prefers. I'll probably get this Habistat Mat Stat to go with my Algarde - [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

gothicgurrrl wrote:Welcome to the forum
You have a very cute little leo there

Thank you! Yeah she's awesome. We're impatiently waiting for her to settle in so we can have cuddles! For now I'm settling for hand feeding her live crickets, love it.

we're getting our wires crossed here, I'm talking about a wooden viv and the heat mat goes on the inside on the floor in one end.

How a thermostat works is that it is linked to the heatmat and there is a dial and 2 lights on the front of the thermostat so say you want the surface Olive will be laying on in the warm hide to reach 32 degrees you set the dial to say 34 degrees and both lights will come on, you then lay the probe for the thermostat and the probe for the thermometer next to each other on the heatmat/permanent substrate and when the temp reads 32 degrees turn the dial on the thermostat anti clockwise until the (green) light goes out, the temp should then drop slightly for example 0.5 degree you will then see the (green) light come back on and the heatmat will warm up again until the correct temps are reached, you will have to fiddle around with the thermostat until you get the correct temps, don't rely on the numbers on the dial to be bang on all vary to some degree and it will take a few hours of careful monitoring and adjusting before it settles.

A plastic or glass tank is entirely different, I'm not entirely sure how you would set that up apart from saying I wouldn't have thought you would of had the heatmat in direct contact with glass or plastic because of cracking or melting. I'm pretty sure with either plastic or glass the heatmat goes outside with a either a small gap or something in between like a polystyrene tile. The probes would then be placed inside the tank directly on the floor of the tank over the heatmat and the setup would be the same as for a viv, what you are aiming for is a surface temperature of say 32 degrees not an air temp of 32.

Just out of interest if you haven't got a thermostat at the moment how are you controlling the temps?

I'm not controlling the temps at the moment, we're getting a thermostat tomorrow with the new viv. As the probes were only showing temps of 85-92F and rarely getting up 95 there was no worry of overheating, but I did want to keep the temp at a constant. I've now put the probe onto the plastic base and will watch the temp of it - she's spent the day in her moist hide, so there's no risk of burning but if she was too hot she'd go in her cool hide like she did last night. If the reading gets too high, I'll move the mat so less of it is under the viv, therefore reducing the area that gets heated. It's stable around 98-99F minus however much heat the paper towel stops getting through.

We might've gotten our wires crossed, but I also thought I was getting a glass viv, when in actual fact it looks like a wooden viv with a glass front. I managed to find some thermostat manuals online to have a read through and my heat mat should plug into the Habistat Mat Stat.

Thank you for you help with this, you've been great

Brilliant, the vivexotic are wooden with sliding glass doors while you're there picking it all up pick up a tube of the reptile sealant and just run a thin bead along all the joins where the panels butt up against each other so the viv is sealed as it stops damp seeping in the joins when you clean it out.

Ah yes, excellent thank you for that, added to the list, the 25g Geocel should do the trick.

We have some great caresheets about how to set up a perfect leopard gecko tank, and a thread were members have posted photographs of their sets up with that will help you

I also labelled some photos of my set-ups when I was cleaning one day
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Hope these help