Tokay Geckos are great as pets if you want an animal with a character. These exotic lizards are often misunderstood and are deemed aggressive. However, if you know how to handle them, you can enjoy their company like any other pet from the lizard dynasty. You can also tame them over time, and they make for fascinating pets. You can get additional details on sites like https://www.topflightdubia.com/tokay-gecko-care.
- Preparing the Enclosure
Tokay Geckos are natives of Southeast Asia’s wild, and they can grow up to 15 inches long. So, it would help if you got a large enough enclosure to keep them. Their tank should be ideally 20 gallons. They can live up to 10 years in captivity if you give them a healthy and stress-free habitat.
Their enclosure should have lots of perches and branches to climb and should have plenty of hiding places, to mimic their natural environment. Do not overcrowd their enclosure with too many decorations.
- Substrate
You can use newspapers for the substrate if you want something very cheap and low-maintenance. Otherwise, you could use cypress mulch, coco peat, or orchid bark, retain humidity well and allow the gecko to regulate its body temperatures. The bedding should be at least three to four inches. You can add fake caves, tunnels, and bamboo tubes as their hiding places because they love to curl up inside them and sleep.
- Temperature and Humidity
Tokay geckos thrive best in temperatures of about 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit during the daytime. At night, it drops to around 75 degrees. The humidity should stay between 60 to 80%. Spray the enclosure with a spray mist at night, but do not spray directly on their bodies. Instead, the droplets should cover the surfaces of the leaves, and they will drink as required. Too little moisture will also leave them dehydrated so check if the surfaces look too dry.
Always use a secure mesh to cover the enclosure to allow ventilation. For basking, you could set up red light bulbs but never use mechanisms that pinpoint UVA rays. During the day, the enclosure should partially get sunlight to get its fill of Vitamin D3.
- Diet
Tokay geckos are natural predators, and they will eat almost all kinds of insects. You can give them mealworms, wax worms, silkworms, roaches, and crickets. You can also give the larger geckos small mice. It would help if you also gutted the feed insects before feeding them to the geckos, as the last meal is crucial to the gecko’s nutrition. You can also spray the feed insects with supplement powders to ensure optimum nutrition.
- Handling
Handling the tokay gecko can be tricky as they are known to bite. However, you should allow them to settle down in their enclosure for at least a couple of weeks before you handle them. Even when you do, hold them behind their head to avoid their bite and never handle them for too long. Tokay geckos do not like to be touched, and they are immensely territorial as well. Be very careful while introducing a new gecko to the enclosure.
With care and patience, you will be able to tame your tokay gecko and give them a good quality of life in your home.
