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Crested Gecko (Correlophus Ciliatus) Complete Care Guide
Crested geckos are a nocturnal frugivorous species that are native to Southern New Caledonia. This species generally are very soft to the touch and not "scaly" despite their spiky appearance. After caring for several different species of reptiles over the years, in my opinion, Crested Geckos are by far my favorite to care for and if you're new to having reptiles as pets, they are a fantastic first reptile to have.
Crested geckos reach an adult size of 6″-7″ from snout to tail weighing the average weight of 45-55 grams (some geckos can even weigh up to 75 grams). Crested Geckos are endangered in the wild and were thought to be extinct (originally discovered in 1866), only to be re-discovered again in 1994. Because of their relatively ‘recent discovery’ there is still lots for us to learn about this amazing species. You can expect an average lifespan of 15-20 years with your Crested Gecko, if cared for properly.
Enclosure:
Crested geckos are an arboreal species and require tall enclosures as opposed to long enclosures. Their enclosures should be designed to mimic their natural habitat. A single full grown adult crested gecko can be housed in a 18”Wx18”Dx24”T Exo Terra habitat. Baby Cresteds are best kept in smaller enclosures until they outgrow it to ensure they are able to find their food easily. Baby geckos do best in medium Kritter Keepers (commonly found at pet stores like Petsmart) or similarly sized containers. Ensure proper ventilation if going a custom route. For juvenile/teenager Cresteds, a 16”Wx16”Dx18”T Exo Terra will suffice. These geckos are not known to be "social" with each other and do best housed alone. A habitat like Exo Terra’s have glass opening doors and adequate ventilation to reduce mold & bacteria growth making them an ideal choice. It's ideal to pick an enclosure with front opening doors as apposed to top opening enclosures as geckos are preyed on by predators from above in the wild.
I decorate my cresteds enclosure with bendy vines, sterilized reptile-safe branches from outside & pet stores, a hiding spot, cork rounds or flats and fake leaves or live plats if the lighting is available. I also include live plants such as: pothos, boston ferns, tropical palm plants, baby tears, bromeliads, earth stars, spider plants and orchids. I arrange the vines and branches to go upwards like trees with some vertical branches. I also make custom backgrounds for each gecko as well as specific structures for enrichment purposes.
Temperature:
The general range for crested geckos is 21°C-23°C ( 70°F-75°F). Temperatures can drop to 18°C-21°C (66°F-70°F) at night. During the summer temperatures are generally between 22°C-26°C ( 72°F-80°F) during the day and 21°C-23°C ( 70°F-75°F) at night. Never let enclosures exceed 27°C ( 82°F) for long as the heat begins to make the geckos become sluggish and almost lethargic and can be fatal over extended periods of it raises to 29°C (85°F).
Diet:
Crested Geckos are frugivorous meaning the most biologically appropriate diet should consist of appropriate fruits and some bugs (careful not to go too protein heavy as it can lead to fatty liver disease or gout which is often irreversible and then becomes a fatal disease). The most accurate and easiest way to achieve the ideal balance is mostly through MRP diets. MRP stands for Meal Replacement Powder. This is an easy choice for most crested gecko owners as all you have to do is add water to the meal replacement powder and mix until you have the same consistency as of ketchup and offer it to your geckos every other night. This also makes it easier to ensure your gecko is getting essential nutrients it needs, along with some supplementation that we will get into later.
There’s a lot of Meal Replacement Powder meals on the market, and some of them have frankly next to no nutritional contents and mainly just “fillers”. I look carefully at the ingredients of every commercial MRP product as I’ve seen lots with fish meal, chicken meal, and corn as the main ingredients. I trust Arcadia and Pangea’s fruit gecko diet for a few reasons, mainly being that their MRP diets are made with over 50% real fruit. And based on my experience over the years I’ve always had great success raising geckos on Pangea’s diets. Plus the geckos love the taste! They lick their bowls clean almost every feeding. Please note that even when feeding complete balanced MRP diets, you will still need to supplement your geckos diet with calcium, Calcium with D3 (if no UVB light source is provided) and vitamins twice a month.
Supplementation is very important in reptiles, especially those who are not offered UVB lighting (which I still recommend using a low wattage reptile UVB light for Cresteds, such as Arcadia’s 7% UVB Shade Dweller bulbs). I dust reptile calcium powder twice a month and herp vitamins twice a month. I rotate calcium powder with D3 and without D3. Too little calcium and or excessive amounts of vitamin D3 will cause MBD (metabolic bone disease). If you are using a UVB bulb, do not use calcium with D3 as you can cause what is called "D3 toxicity", just use calcium without D3 added to it.
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Supplements:
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I mix calcium into my geckos MRP diet at least once a week. I alternate between calcium with D3 and calcium without D3. One week I will use Arcadia's calcium+ D3 IF the gecko does not have a UVB light source. I will then use Arcadia's calcium and magnesium without D3 the following week. If there is UVB lighting used then do not offer calcium with D3, simply use calcium supplement without D3 added to it. It is important to offer your gecko D3 as it is essential for the body to be able to metabolize and utilize calcium properly. D3 is a fat soluble vitamin so the body encounters troubles trying to remove excessive amounts that've been ingested. For this reason it is important to ensure balance with supplementation and not to over, or under-do it. Calcium is essential in combating against Metabolic Bone Disease, a irreversible and painful disease that deforms the gecko skeletal structure and impacts it's organs and health. It can be avoided with proper calcium supplementation. I also like to offer a small calcium dish (without D3) to my females enclosures so they can freely lick the calcium powder.
The other supplement I mix into my geckos diets is reptile herp vitamins, bee pollen and small amounts of cricket or black soldier fly protein powder. I mix in the protein powders every other feeding, if I have not fed them bugs already, as well as the herp vitamins. I add the bee pollen to every other feeding as it is one of natures best superfood. Bee pollen contains all the essential amino acids and other nutrients making it a great supplement to your geckos diet.
Water & Humidity:
Crested geckos are native to a tropical rainforest and therefore require humid enclosures. The ambient humidity should fluctuate between 50%-80%. This is essential for geckos to complete a proper shed and also helps hydrate them. There’s several ways to keep their humidity up. This includes live plants, sphagnum moss substrate, bio-active setups and regular misting. It also helps living on Vancouver Island where our ambient humidity is already in this range. To maintain this humidity you mist their enclosures every night for adults and every morning and night for hatchlings, since they are shedding more frequently and are more susceptible to dehydration.
Crested geckos are arboreal so they do not swim in the wild and should not have a large body of water in their enclosure that they could potentially drown in. A shallow water bowl ("water bottle cap" deep) of fresh clean water should always be available. In effort to rid of chlorine from the tap water, allow the water to be exposed to open air for 48 hours or use a reptile water dechlorinate conditioner. Even with a water dish, I would still mist the enclosures every night, making sure there’s enough water droplets covering a large surface area for the geckos to drink but not too much that will not turn your geckos tank into a swamp and there should also be areas of the enclosure that are left not sprayed. Excess water may cause mold and build up of dangerous and stinky bacteria so be sure to let the substrate to dry out about before misting enough to damped it again. Geckos will drink the water off leaves and the sides of their enclosures as well as from water bowls.
Substrate:
I recommend keeping hatchlings all the way up until 20 grams on paper towel. Once big enough, I use Sphagnum moss, bio-active substrates for my sub-adult and adult crested geckos enclosures. If you are using any dirt or moss, I like to add a bit of hardwood charcoal into the substrate to help prevent bacteria & mold growth along with large coconut chunks to aeration (but not small enough to be ingested). It also reduces any bad odors, if there are any, significantly. Bio-active and sphagnum moss substrates are a big contributor to the enclosures ambient humidity and lowers your maintenance of having to change paper towel every couple nights to prevent mold. In "bio-active" substrates, you can house a clean up crew to eat decomposing matter. It is still recommended to spot clean any poops but the clean up crew is usually pretty "on it".
Bugs:
Bugs are an enriching part of the crested geckos diet during all ages (except for hatchlings, I like to wait a couple months before offering small bugs). Offering gutloaded bugs provides an excellent source of protein and enrichment for your gecko! I offer my young cresteds bugs once a week or every other week. To determine the amount of bugs your gecko can eat, you simply offer them one bug at a time. If you offer too many or too many at once, your gecko may eat too much too fast and will regurgitate afterwards. My hatchlings typically eat 2-4 appropriately sized bugs each bug feeding. I space bug feedings out from regular MRP diet feedings as to encourage a better feeding response.
Adults typically eat 3-5 medium sized bugs (depending on what you’re feeding). To measure the appropriate size of bug for your gecko, look at your gecko from a birds eye view and judge the distance in between their eyes. This is the max size the bug should be.
You can offer: crickets, black soldier fly larvae (high in calcium), wax worms (very high in fat), silkworms, roaches, isopods and hornworms. Be sure to offer appropriate sized food items!
I personally can't recommend Superworms and mealworms to Crested Geckos based on what I saw from my time working at the vets. Mealworms & Superworms have hard shells that Cresteds often cannot crush or break when chewing the bug and sometimes cannot be fully digested by the geckos gut and can potentially cause impaction. We saw this a few times at the vets in even larger species that could crush their shells. Furthermore, we unfortunately saw some geckos that succumbed to injuries caused by the superworm the gecko ate because the geckos' jaws couldn't squish/ kill the superworm and it caused damage to the geckos' insides after it was swallowed.
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Feeder bugs should be gutloaded 48 hours prior to feeding them to your pets. Gutloading is filling the feeder bug with nutrition to be delivered to your pet. Pet shop bugs are often fed cornmeal diets with practically no nutrition so not much there to deliver to your pet. Might as well make their bug dinner a healthy one by gutloading it with appropriate veggies or appropriate high standard gut loading diets. Be cautious of some cricket diets sold in pet stores that are purely fillers for the crickets and offer no nutritional value to be “transported” to your pet from eating the cricket. These diets aren’t suitable for crickets let alone the gecko that the cricket is being fed to, in my opinion.
Hatchling Care:
Hatchlings should be kept very similarly to adults, with the exception of enclosure size, substrate and food amount. Babies should be kept on paper towels or Repti carpet. I don’t recommend sphagnum moss for hatchlings & juveniles due to the impaction risk being much higher due to their smaller intestinal tracts and the moss becoming stuck & impacted. Hatchlings should be misted twice daily for the first several months. If their enclosure becomes too dry it will result with shedding issues like stuck shed on their toes or limbs (which needs to be removed as soon as possible before circulation is cut off). The toughest part about raising a baby gecko is dealing with stuck shed. Toes and extremities are incredibly important to pay attention to since stuck shed can cause circulation loss and eventual loss of toes or even limbs. Regular monitoring will prevent this. Baby geckos also sometimes "bathe" in their food and it becomes stuck to them as it dries, making it hard for them to move the affected limb and often makes their toes stick together. A "sauna" is a good way to resolve this.
Gecko Sauna:
A gecko sauna can be as simple as a plastic container with air holes with damp/wet sphagnum moss or damp paper towel with warm-ish (not warm or hot!) water. Be sure to not have too much water where the gecko could aspirate it, just enough to get the stuck shed areas damp / wet which will help soften the stuck food or shed for the next part. Misting the affected area and gently and slowly "rolling" a damp Q-tip away can be used to get rid of stuck shed/food. Remember to go slowly and be patient with babies so as to not stress them out too much. If the gecko is acting very stressed to the point where it will not tolerate it, it’s best to put them back in their home to calm down so they don’t drop their tails from being too stressed. Try again in a few hours or the next day if needed.