Crested geckos tend to stay hidden among short trees and thick foliage during the daytime hours before venturing out at night to find food sources. Their enclosure must provide humidity-boosting features while also offering spaces to climb.
Crested geckos require insect protein for proper nutrition in captivity. Before feeding the insects to your crested gecko, make sure they have been gut-loaded with calcium and vitamin A-rich diet.
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Fruit
Crested geckos enjoy the variety that fruit offers them in their diet, making it an easy and tasty way to add variety. But when choosing healthy fruits for their consumption, be mindful that some may contain chemicals which could harm their reptile counterparts while other types (watermelons and mangoes, for instance) contain too much phosphorus or vitamin A; organic is preferable whenever possible as conventionally grown produce often contains pesticides that could make your pet sick.
Some keepers provide nutritionally complete crested gecko food (CGD) consisting of dried fruits and crushed-up insects for their crested gecko to eat. Before offering to your crested gecko, make sure you gut load these foods first, liberally dusting with calcium supplement dust so as to provide all of their essential vitamins and minerals.
Vegetables
Though crested geckos are classified as frugivores, they often supplement their diets with various vegetables as domestic fruits tend to contain lower levels of proteins, vitamins, and minerals than their wild counterparts and more sugar content than usual.
Greens are an abundant source of essential nutrients like calcium, and are relatively low in phosphorus and antinutrients such as oxalates. Furthermore, they’re an excellent source of beta-carotene; great options include escarole, endive, dandelion and alfalfa greens.
Crested geckos typically enjoy eating various leafy greens and commercial crested gecko food (CGD), including dried fruit and crushed feeder insects. Some keepers opt to feed only CGD to their crested geckos.
Greens
Crested geckos are omnivorous or frugivorous animals, meaning they feed on both fruit and insects in the wild. When kept as pets, however, they should be fed a commercially prepared fruit-based diet with live feeder insects as a snack. Crested geckos also enjoy greens such as prickly pear leaves or hibiscus flowers as well as veggies low in oxalates or phosphorus content as dietary staples.
Vegetables contain iron, calcium, fiber and vitamin A. When harvesting produce for consumption it should always be washed to eliminate bacteria and pesticides that may linger on it.
Provide your crested gecko with plenty of tree branches and foliage to recreate their natural forest environment, and complete their enclosure with driftwood, cork pieces, vines, live or artificial plants, etc. for the optimal experience.
Mealworms
Crested geckos enjoy feeding on live insects as part of their diet, offering some added vitamins and minerals not found in powdered food as well as creating different textures to enjoy. Live insect feeders can offer plenty of entertainment for their owners too!
Many crestie keepers choose mealworms as the primary feeder insects for their pet cresties, with these larvae (worm-like creatures) available at most fishing bait stores and pet shops. As a general guideline for newcomers to this hobby, feeding two mealworms for every inch in length should suffice as a meal.
Mealworms feature a hard exoskeleton that must be removed prior to feeding them to your crestie, and for optimal nutrition they must also be gut loaded by feeding dark leafy greens and whole grains several hours beforehand.
Apples
Apples make for an enjoyable treat for crested geckos and provide essential nutrition. However, like other fruits, too much apple intake may be harmful; too often eating can leach calcium from their system into deficiency states in crested geckos’ systems and contain chemicals used in food processing as well as having thick rinds that make removal more challenging than necessary.
These fruits should only be given as occasional treats and should never form part of their regular diet. When feeding Crestie Apples to your pet, make sure they are thinly sliced, mashed, pureed or otherwise prepared in advance to eliminate choking hazards caused by seeds and cores that remain.
