Geckos (April 2004)

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Last month Holly started work at LiveOps, which recently moved into a new office on picturesque Foothill Expressway, right across the street from the historic Xerox PARC research facility where the mouse and the GUI, among other innovations, were invented.

The only downside to the new office is that Holly has a cube... so she decided to liven it up with some animals, specifically some day geckos. She set up a terrarium, and we fell in love with some really cute gold dust day geckos (Phelsuma laticauda) at Dolphin Pet Village.

The larger gecko, Oscar, was confident from the start—he came out of his travel container, started exploring, then snacked on a cricket. He also constantly harrasses Gilbert. The smaller gecko, Gilbert, was more tentative... but he is also much more peaceful. Oscar and Gilbert are named after two of Holly's ancestors.

A dark shot of the terrarium itself, initial setup
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The view from atop the terraced section
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The terrarium after we added a bunch of new plants
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The new view from atop the terraced section
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A dark shot of the terrarium itself, initial setup The view from atop the terraced section The terrarium after we added a bunch of new plants The new view from atop the terraced section

A shot of Oscar, the larger gecko, on a coconut
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Nice closeup shot of Oscar's tongue
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Shot through the terrace foilage
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Oscar curled up on the coconut
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A shot of Oscar, the larger gecko, on a coconut Nice closeup shot of Oscar's tongue Shot through the terrace foilage Oscar curled up on the coconut

Wider view of Oscar on coconut
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Holly checking out Oscar
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Oscar crawling around an upper corner
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Gilbert, the smaller gecko, basking on a branch
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Wider view of Oscar on coconut Holly checking out Oscar Oscar crawling around an upper corner Gilbert, the smaller gecko, basking on a branch

These geckos love making like Spiderman on the glass
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A hapless cricket scurrying around on the ground
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Oscar on the basking branch
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Closeup of Oscar basking
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These geckos love making like Spiderman on the glass A hapless cricket scurrying around on the ground Oscar on the basking branch Closeup of Oscar basking

Oscar looking down...
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...looking up...
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...quickly turning around...
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...and returning to the top
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Oscar looking down... ...looking up... ...quickly turning around... ...and returning to the top

Gilbert hanging out on the money tree we bought to help give him hiding spots
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Oscar climbing around the new arboreal canopy
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Gilbert likes to hang around on leaves
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Gilbert on money tree leaf, peeking at the camera
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Gilbert hanging out on the money tree we bought to help give him hiding spots Oscar climbing around the new arboreal canopy Gilbert likes to hang around on leaves Gilbert on money tree leaf, peeking at the camera

Here's Gilbert getting curious about a dish of baby food...
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...plop! Maybe a little too curious!
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Oscar crowding in on Gilbert's money tree spot
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Here's Gilbert getting curious about a dish of baby food... ...plop! Maybe a little too curious! Oscar crowding in on Gilbert's money tree spot  

I took all these pictures in a darkened room with my now-quite-outdated Olympus D-510 digital camera. We will probably pull out Holly's SLR at some point to get some better low-light pictures—some of the pictures are a bit fuzzy because it's hard for the digita camera to acquire the right subject for autofocus.

Some notes on geckos in general:

  • Geckos are amazingly fast and agile—side from walking all over the glass (with their amazing van der Waals force power), they can hop from one end of the terrarium to the other, scurry incredibly quickly, and climb onto leaves.
  • Oscar continually chases and annoys Gilbert, so we eventually bought and planted a number of new plants, so that there would be more visual separation between the two. This seems to be working.

Some notes on our gecko materials:

  • Our terrarium is a 29 gallon sized Snug-Fit Critter Cage made by All Glass Aquariums. It has a clever sliding screen top and seems pretty high quality in general.
  • In our terrarium hood we have an Arcadia D3 Reptile Lamp UV-enhanced flourescent tube, and Fluker Repta-Sun incandescent and red incandescent bulbs for light and heat.
  • We used ZooMed Eco Earth Expandable Substrate as the substrate, on top of a layer of coarse gravel and a bottom layer of activated carbon. Eco Earth is amazing stuff... it expands from tightly packed bricks into a really nice pliable soil-like consistency.
  • Holly bought a whole bunch of plants include some pothos, wandering jew, and various other small plants from a local nursury. We planted a tall money tree (Patchira aquatica) and a philodendron to add canopy and dense leafy cover for Gilbert.
  • We bought a ZooMed Habba Mist automatic misting machine, but haven't set it up yet. Regular misting is important because most day geckos are dew lickers (that is, they get most of their water by licking leaves).

We've been feeding the geckos small crickets, which we keep in a Lee's Kricket Keeper. This is an ingenious plastic terrarium with coverable holes near the top. Long opaque tubes, which have endcaps, slide into the holes. The crickets crawl into the tubes to hide, and when it's feeding time, you pull the tube out—crickets and all—and tap crickets out of it into the terrarium.

We gut load our crickets with dried apricots, carrots, and their favorite food, Cheerios (a swarm of crickets can skeletonize a fully grown Cheerio in under a minute). We also provide them with Fluker's Cricket Quencher, a gel form of water that cricket's can't drown in. Before feeding, we dust our crickets with Rep-Cal calcium and multivitamin supplements.

Here are some interesting links about crickets as pet food:

We also feed the geckos a standard gecko food mixture: tropical fruit baby food, mixed with honey and Rep-Cal calcium and multivitamin supplements, diluted with warm water to a lickable soupy consistency.

We have found gecko ownership fun and rewarding, although a little expensive to start up from scratch. I highly recommend it!


Andrew Ho (andrew@zeuscat.com)