How do I take care of a leopard gecko?

At a glance

What you're signing up for

Start with the number most buyers never hear at the store: 10-20 years. Vet sources put leopard geckos at 10-20 years in captivity, and Chicago Exotics Animal Hospital has records of animals living past 20 with proper care. That is longer than most dogs. A gecko bought for a ten-year-old is very likely to still be alive when that child leaves for college, which means the real owner is you.

The daily work is light — about 10-20 minutes most days for feeding, spot-cleaning, and checking temperatures, with a longer session each week for cleaning. Adults eat every other day. The part people underestimate is not the gecko; it is the insects. Leopard geckos eat live prey only, so you are signing up to keep, feed, and manage a rolling supply of crickets or roaches for the next decade or two. If the thought of a cricket bin in your home is a dealbreaker, this is not your pet.

The other surprise is temperament in the good direction. Leopard geckos are hardy, docile, tolerate gentle handling better than most small reptiles once acclimated, and have no complex humidity requirements. They are active at dawn and dusk and mostly hide during the day — so if you want a pet that performs on demand at 2 p.m., you will mostly be looking at a decorated tank.

Housing

Tank-size advice varies by source, so here is the honest range. PetMD says at least 10 gallons for juveniles and 20 gallons or larger for adults. Chicago Exotics works with 15-20 gallon aquariums. Modern hobbyist guidance such as ReptiFiles trends larger than these clinical minimums. Our advice: treat 20 gallons — about a 30-inch floor — as the floor, not the goal. These are ground-dwelling lizards, so floor space matters far more than height.

Every setup needs three hides: a warm hide, a cool hide, and a humid hide for shedding, kept at 70-80% humidity inside. The humid hide is not optional decor — it is what prevents the stuck sheds that cost geckos toes and eyes (more under Health). Ambient humidity stays low: PetMD says under 50%, ReptiFiles targets 30-40%.

Substrate is where beginners hurt geckos. Loose substrate is not digestible and can cause a fatal gut blockage — called impaction — if swallowed. Avoid gravel, wood chips, and walnut shell; Chicago Exotics says avoid sand entirely, which also causes eye problems, and recommends reptile carpet, felt, or newspaper instead. Juveniles are at the highest risk because they strike inaccurately at prey and swallow substrate with the miss. "Calcium sand" is marketed as digestible; in reality, calcium-deficient geckos deliberately eat it. The hobby argues about fine naturalistic soil mixes for adults, but no vet source endorses loose sand for juveniles. When in doubt, keep the floor solid.

Heat must be a gradient, not a single number, and sources give overlapping targets. ReptiFiles: basking surface 94-97°F, warm hide 90-92°F, cool end 70-77°F, with nights allowed to drop to 60°F. Chicago Exotics: daytime air 78-85°F with an 86-90°F basking spot, nights 70-75°F. PetMD: warm end 80-90°F, cool end 75-80°F. ReptiFiles prefers overhead halogen or incandescent lamps as more natural; heat mats remain common. Either way, put the heat source on a thermostat — unregulated mats burn geckos, a standard exotic-vet warning.

UVB lighting is a genuine disagreement worth knowing about. The old view: nocturnal lizard, gets vitamin D3 from supplements, skip the bulb. Chicago Exotics now calls UVB required — a ReptiSun 5.0 about 12 inches from the basking site, 2-4 hours daily, bulbs replaced every 6-9 months. PetMD advises 10-12 hours of UV light daily with bulbs replaced every 6 months. ReptiFiles calls it "recommended but optional" but notes mounting evidence of benefit, targeting a UV Index of 0.5-1.5 (0.5-0.7 max for albino morphs). The current consensus: low-level UVB is increasingly standard of care, and if you skip it, strict dietary D3 supplementation becomes mandatory, not optional.

Feeding

Leopard geckos are insectivores. They eat live, gut-loaded insects only: crickets, dubia roaches, mealworms, superworms, hornworms, and calciworms, with waxworms as rare treats. Gut-loading means feeding the insects nutritious food for 24-48 hours before offering them — the gecko gets the nutrition the insect just ate. An un-gut-loaded cricket is mostly empty packaging.

Portions: juveniles eat daily, 2-3 items each about half the size of the gecko's head. Adults get what they can eat in a 10-minute period, every other day.

Supplementation is what stands between your gecko and metabolic bone disease (MBD) — a calcium disorder that softens the skeleton. PetMD's schedule: dust insects every other feeding, alternating calcium with D3 and without D3, plus a multivitamin 1-2 times a week. Chicago Exotics: calcium with D3 three times a week plus a weekly multivitamin for juveniles, reduced if UVB is provided. MBD comes from calcium/phosphorus imbalance with no UVB or D3, and it produces rubbery jaws and limbs, tremors, and deformities. It is almost entirely preventable, which makes every case a husbandry failure.

Never feed: loose "calcium sand" as a supplement source; un-dusted, un-gut-loaded insects as the staple; a mealworms-only diet; waxworms as anything more than a rare treat.

Health

The conditions gecko owners actually meet:

Impaction. A swallowed-substrate or oversized-prey blockage. Watch for no feces for a week or more, lethargy, a swollen belly, and straining. PetMD lists gastrointestinal impaction among the most common presentations.

Stuck shed (dysecdysis). Retained shed on the toes constricts like a tourniquet and can cost digits. Leopard geckos have movable eyelids — unusual among geckos — and shed skin can lodge under them, causing squinting and eye infections. Fix the humid hide first; that is nearly always the cause.

Metabolic bone disease. Rubbery jaw, bowed limbs, inability to lift the body off the ground. See Feeding — this is the supplementation-and-UVB disease.

Stick tail. Rapid loss of tail fat, often with Cryptosporidium infection. The tail is the gecko's fat reserve, so a thin tail is a starving gecko regardless of how much it seems to eat.

Also on PetMD's list: vitamin A deficiency, parasites, egg binding, eye infections, and skin infections. The single best daily health check is the tail: a healthy tail should be nearly as wide as the neck. Judge health by tail thickness and weight, not activity — a hiding gecko is normal; a thin one is not.

Go to a vet today if: no feces for a week or more with a swollen belly; a rubbery jaw or limbs that cannot lift the body; rapidly thinning tail; shed constricting toes you cannot safely soak free; squinting or crusted-shut eyes; any burn from heating equipment.

What it really costs

The gecko is the cheapest part. The animal runs $30-$200 depending on morph (color variety), with designer morphs costing more. Initial setup averages $160-$670 including the gecko — routinely 2-5 times the price of the animal itself. Budget the tank before you budget the lizard.

Ongoing costs average $25-$60 a month: roughly $20-40 for food, $5-10 for supplements, $0-5 for replacement heat bulbs, $0-5 for decor. A routine exotic-vet checkup runs $40-$80, and emergencies run $100-$800 or more — and note that "exotic vet" means a specialist your regular dog-and-cat clinic may not have, so find one before you need one.

The lifetime math is the honest headline: roughly $300-$720 a year over a 15-20 year life adds up to several thousand dollars for a "$40 lizard."

Daily and weekly routine

Daily - Check warm-end and cool-end temperatures - Fresh water; spot-clean any feces - Feed (juveniles daily; adults every other day), dusting per your schedule - Glance at the tail and body condition

Weekly - Full look-over: toes, eyes, vent, weight or body condition - Maintain the insect colony: food, water, gut-load supplies - Refresh the humid hide's moss or paper towel - Clean the water dish

Monthly - Deep-clean the enclosure and decor - Check thermostat probe placement and bulb function - Log bulb age — UVB bulbs need replacing on schedule (every 6-9 months per Chicago Exotics; ReptiFiles allows 12 months for T5s) even though they still look lit

Common mistakes

1. Loose sand for a juvenile, especially calcium sand. It causes impaction, and calcium-hungry geckos eat it on purpose. Use reptile carpet, felt, newspaper, or another solid substrate.
2. A heat mat with no thermostat. Unregulated mats burn geckos through the glass. Every heat source goes on a thermostat, no exceptions.
3. Skipping supplements and UVB. This is how metabolic bone disease happens. Dust on a schedule; if you skip UVB, D3 supplementation is mandatory.
4. No humid hide. Stuck shed follows, then lost toes and eyelid infections. A moss-filled hide at 70-80% humidity prevents nearly all of it.
5. Feeding only mealworms, never gut-loading or dusting. Vary the insects, feed them well for 24-48 hours first, and dust.
6. Cohousing. Two males fight; a male with females means constant breeding stress. One gecko per tank is the safe default.
7. Judging health by activity. Hiding all day is normal for a dawn-and-dusk animal. Read the tail and the weight instead.
8. Buying the gecko the same day as the tank. Set up first and let temperatures stabilize before the animal comes home.

Is this pet right for you?

A good fit if... - You want a hardy, docile, handleable first reptile - You can commit to 10-20 years, including who takes over if you can't - You are fine keeping and handling live insects indefinitely - You enjoy a dawn-and-dusk animal and a well-run habitat more than constant interaction - You have access to an exotic vet and budget for one

Think twice if... - Live insects in the house is a hard no for anyone you live with - You want a pet that is active and visible in the middle of the day - This is meant to be a child's pet the child will fully manage — the timeline says otherwise - You are not willing to buy a thermostat, supplements, and proper lighting for a "cheap" lizard

Worth knowing

They blink, and they can't climb glass. Unlike most geckos, leopard geckos have movable eyelids and no toe pads. The upside of no toe pads: a secure but ordinary lid keeps them in.

The dropped tail comes back better-stocked. When grabbed or threatened, a leopard gecko can drop its tail, which regrows blunter and fatter. A peer-reviewed study found the regenerated tail preferentially stores more fat than the original. Never grab a gecko by the tail.

The tail is a pantry and a health chart. It is the fat reserve, and vets read body condition from it. Nearly as wide as the neck is the target.

Temperature decides their sex. Incubation temperature, not chromosomes, determines whether an egg becomes male or female — temperature-dependent sex determination.

They eat their own shed. They also use their tongue to keep their eyes clean. In the wild, eating the shed recycles nutrients and hides evidence from predators.

They can outlive most dogs. Chicago Exotics documents animals past 20 years.

"The first domesticated lizard." Captive-bred for roughly 50 years, with hundreds of morphs — that is what the hobby calls them.

The smile is anatomy, not mood. The head shape gives a permanent grin. A gecko sitting exposed in the open all day is often a sick gecko, not a happy one — read the tail, not the face.

What you'll need

• 20-gallon-or-larger terrarium (long footprint) — terrestrial species needs floor space, 20 gal is the welfare floor
• warm hide — secure retreat at the warm end of the gradient
• cool hide — retreat at the cool end so the gecko can thermoregulate
• humid hide with sphagnum moss — 70-80% humidity chamber that prevents stuck shed
• overhead heat lamp or heat mat — creates the required warm-to-cool gradient
• thermostat — prevents burns from unregulated heat sources
• digital thermometer (two-point) or infrared temp gun — daily verification of both ends of the gradient
• low-output UVB bulb and fixture — supports D3 synthesis and helps prevent metabolic bone disease
• calcium powder with D3 — insect dusting; core MBD prevention
• calcium powder without D3 — alternated with D3 version per dusting schedule
• reptile multivitamin powder — weekly dusting per vet schedules
• solid substrate (reptile carpet, felt, or newspaper) — avoids fatal loose-substrate impaction
• shallow water dish — constant fresh water without drowning risk
• insect keeper tub and gut-load food — live prey must be housed and fed 24-48 h before offering
• feeding tongs — keeps striking teeth away from fingers and prey off the substrate
• live feeder insects — staple diet of crickets, dubia roaches, and worms — sourced fresh locally (buy this where you already shop — we don't sell it, on purpose)

Browse the store for the gear above.

Sources