Crimson giant day geckos can be sensitive creatures that quickly drop their tail or shed soft skin when disturbed, yet these reptiles can still be handled safely by an experienced reptile keeper.
Giant Day Geckos are omnivorous creatures that feed on various insects, vegetables, and fruits. You should provide your Giant Day Gecko with fresh greens or fruits 2-3 times every week as an offering.
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Fruits
Giant day geckos are omnivorous creatures that enjoy feeding on fruits, vegetables and insects alike. Bananas are particularly loved and can either be fed whole or ground into a paste for consumption. Strawberries can also be fed thinly sliced or blended into smoothies alongside other veggies to round off their diets.
Fruits should make up about two thirds of a gecko diet daily. Fruits provide essential nutrition such as dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants – it is therefore crucial to offer your gecko a variety of fruits to prevent vitamin deficiencies.
Insects should be fed sparingly – no more than three to five crickets or dubia roaches should be given each week, ideally gut loaded with commercial products for optimal nutrition.
Day geckos require a diet rich in calcium, so it’s advisable to dust feeder insects with multivitamin powder containing calcium, D3 and Vitamin A before giving them to your pet. Vitamin A is a fat-soluble nutrient which converts into retinoids in the body which support immunity, night vision and other essential functions in their bodies.
Vegetables
Giant day geckos are adept opportunistic feeders in nature, feeding on both fruit and insects for sustenance. By maintaining such an array of diet options in captivity, nutritional imbalances that could otherwise lead to disease and obesity are avoided.
Hatchlings and juveniles should be fed a gecko diet mix along with appropriately-sized feeder insects such as crickets, hydei fruit flies and waxworms as feeders; black soldier fly larvae and grasshoppers may be given as occasional treats as well. All insect prey should be gut-loaded 24 hours before each feeding and dusted with multivitamin powder every other feeding time to ensure they receive all of the nutrition they require.
Foliage vegetables and fresh fruit should also be included in their diet, with popular options including chopped kale, spinach and romaine lettuce being especially favored by keepers. Some have even experimented with steaming vegetables and offering different fruits like cherries – although care must be taken when offering whole or pitted fruits that could pose potential choking hazards.
Insects
Your gecko’s main source of nutrition should be live feeder insects such as brown crickets. Because they’re readily available and easily digested, brown crickets tend to be their go-to option; but you could also feed dubia roaches, grasshoppers or black soldier fly larvae, which contain more nutrition. Each item should first be gut-loaded with a commercial powder before feeding it to your gecko pet.
Provide these insects several times each week or more frequently as your baby gecko grows larger. Make sure the size and type are suitable for their enclosure, with any uneaten food removed immediately from its housing unit.
Giant day geckos are highly adaptable creatures in the wild, eating virtually whatever comes their way at any given time. When purchased as pets from breeders they’re more likely to come with healthy, happy pets used to handling that will form close bonds with you over time.
Black Soldier Fly Larvae
Giant day geckos in the wild are omnivorous animals, capable of eating both plants and insects for sustenance. Additionally, they will consume pupa stage of Black Soldier Fly Hermetia Illucens which contains many beneficial bacteria as well as fat-soluble vitamins that provide health benefits to them.
BSF larvae can be fed whole and needle pierced for easy gut loading or ground up and dusted in vitamin powder before offering. Their soft bodies make digesting easy while eliminating impaction issues associated with whole crickets that might otherwise present themselves to some reptiles.
Giant Day Geckos should initially be fed 1/8-inch crickets mixed in gecko diet mix as hatchlings; then gradually increase their feeder insect sizes each week until reaching those that fill up their eye spacing. A general guideline states that feeder insects must never exceed that distance between eyes.
Do not forget that Giant Day Geckos are highly active lizards, so providing them with an enclosure with plenty of hiding places and a deep substrate like Bed-A-Beast or non-fertilized potting soil that holds moisture is key for their well-being. In addition, always have fresh water available in a shallow bowl; some may prefer misting leaves for misting purposes over drinking directly out of a bowl itself!
