Things I Advise Against Feeding Your Crested Gecko

I've been raising Crested Geckos for more than 15 years and I've come to learn a thing or two based on experiences along the way. A handful of those years were spent working at an exotic veterinary clinic where I gained a lot of perspective in terms of what can go wrong in reptile care. Much like dogs and cats, you will get different perspective and opinions from each care giver or breeder and here are some of mine.

Let's start off with a controversial one; mealworms & superworms. I personally do not recommend mealworms or superworms being offered to Crested Geckos. Why? Simply from what I saw while working at the vets. Crested Geckos jaws are not very strong and they are not equipped with very sharp teeth either. These two attributes do not bode well for breaking or crushing such hard chitin that make up a mealworm or superworms exterior. What I saw at the vets was Geckos and several dragon species coming in with impaction in there gut from a build up of superworms or mealworms. The lizard or gecko was unsuccessful in breaking the exterior of the bug and it simply "built-up" in their gut and caused a blockage. Unfortunately for the dragons that had this, there are very few treatment options and each patient had drastically different outcomes, most did not survive the impaction. Another memorable story from my time there was when a superworm chewed through a geckos interior as the bug was not killed at the time of the gecko eating it since the geckos jaw strength did not have enough force to kill the superworm before swallowing it. Superworms also have a rather strong bite, especially for a bug, and can sometimes cause damage to the pet lizard or geckos face while being consumed. For these reasons, I personally feel the risk vs benefit is too great of a concern and the potential for fatality to be not worth the risk when there are other protein & enrichment options out there. A much safer and more nutritious alternative are Discoid Roaches (these roaches are legal in Canada, unlike Dubia Roaches). Other insect options are: black soldier flies & their larvae (excellent source of balanced calcium!), crickets, small hornworms, silkworms, and less frequently, waxworms. Be sure to check out my care sheet to see recommended insect feeding sizes and quantities!

The next thing I would advise against feeding you Crested Gecko is Zoo Meds Crested Gecko Meal Replacement Diet. This diet was recommended to me by a breeder who loved it because it was cheaper than Pangea and they wanted to save some money. Out of curiosity, I wanted to sample the diet for my crew of Cresteds to see the feeding response and to offer them variety. I see a lot of praise about this diet online and an equal amount of concerned Crested Gecko owners email me their similar experience so I feel it worthwhile sharing as I wish someone had warned me. Here is my experience.

I fed this diet to half my Cresteds at all ages and kept some of my other Cresteds on their regular diet as I wanted to keep a group on the regular diet to help notice changes if there were any. I made effort to not change anything else in terms of my care, environment, supplements, feeding routines, anything of the such as I wanted a stable environment while testing this new diet out. Around 4-5 months into feeding this diet to a handful of geckos, I started to notice symptoms in a few of the younger geckos (6months - 1 year). They were developing a weird "neurological" like symptom that I had never witnessed before. My first thought was early signs of MBD but immediately doubted that since I was keeping up with their regular calcium and calcium with D3 supplement rotation and they had mild UVB bulbs so it seemed unlikely. My next thought was dehydration, although they have water bowls and are misted in the morning and evening so that too seemed unlikely. I increased water bowls and misting just in case but the symptoms persisted. Their heads would "wobble" after each step or when they stopped moving fast. It was subtle but not subtle enough to not be noticed. There were no other symptoms like tail crimping, which can indicate dehydration or early signs of MBD so it seemed like an odd symptom to stand out on its own. Around this same time the symptoms showed up in a handful of babies on the new diet only, I also unfortunately experienced a few sudden deaths as well in the younger geckos. 4 younger Crested Geckos that were a healthy weight, hydrated, eating and active the night before suddenly passed away which was the first time I have ever had a sudden or unexplained death in a Crested Gecko. While I only saw these symptoms in younger animals as well as the sudden unexplained passing of a few, there were no symptoms in the adults. Or so it seemed until most of the eggs that were laid during the time of being on the diet were consistently failing to hatch. I immediately took all the geckos off the diet and switched them back to Pangea and Arcadia's gecko diet. After being back on the regular diet, all symptoms from the geckos completely reversed. Everyone was back to normal.

I don't know what it is in the diet that may be off and caused this tragic loss of a few baby geckos, but to me something is off and based on my experience it is clear to me it was the diet since all symptoms stopped after switching them off of the diet and back on to what we have always used. Based on my experience, I cannot recommend this diet to anyone that cares about their pets. I have nothing against this brand as I love several of their other products, like enclosures and lights, but I can't shake this experience as I strongly feel everything pointed to the diet.

I shared my experience briefly on social media and was astonished by the amount of people who messaged me saying they also experienced sudden death in geckos while on this diet and similar symptoms meanwhile other gecko keepers didn't experience this at all. When I was researching this diet online before purchasing it, I only saw positive things and a great ingredient list so had high hopes. Well, I wish someone had shared their experience for others to see and maybe I would have thought twice and my little baby geckos would still be here. I only write this so others can make a decision with more info in mind, as I wish I had seen others experiences before buying but they were drowned out by those loving the diet as a cheaper alternative to Pangea.