Need help with live feeders!

[casspat1231]

I haven't tried giving live feeders to my new 6mo old crestie yet, but I plan to do so soon. I already got a few crickets and I'm gutloading them, but I have a few questions regarding how to go about offering them to my little buddy.

1) Do people usually take their geckos out of their enclosures and place them in separate containers to give them live feeders? If so, does it seem to make your geckos more tolerant to being taken out of their enclosures? I've only had my little guy for about 4 days, so I don't want to take him out yet, but I wanted to know what the general rule of thumb is.

2) Going off of that, is there a certain amount of time that I should wait for my gecko to settle in before I offer live food?

3) Are there certain benefits or drawbacks to feeding by hand/tweezers rather than letting the gecko hunt for the crickets? I'm assuming there's some type of enrichment that happens when they get to hunt down the food themselves, but I always fear of the food fighting back or getting lost somewhere.

4) If some of the crickets are too large for my juvie can I just... cut the crickets in half? I don't want any to go to waste, but some that they gave me are wider than the space between my gecko's eyes. I've also heard taking off the cricket's back legs may help too since they can cause a higher risk of impaction?

[Dlanor1982]

I place my juvie in a seperate empty tote with his crickets. I let him eat all he will. This ensures he eats. He loves crickets and usually eats 5 or 6 immediately. I then place him in his tank and release the other half in with him. It's heavily planted and they hide. But over the next 2 days he will hunt them all down. He suprises me at how prolific of a hunter he is. I can never see them but I'll watch him stare and pounce and there they are. Anyway it seems to be the best of both worlds and works well for me. Hope this helps!

[Cresteds_3]

I haven't tried giving live feeders to my new 6mo old crestie yet, but I plan to do so soon. I already got a few crickets and I'm gutloading them, but I have a few questions regarding how to go about offering them to my little buddy.

1) Do people usually take their geckos out of their enclosures and place them in separate containers to give them live feeders? If so, does it seem to make your geckos more tolerant to being taken out of their enclosures? I've only had my little guy for about 4 days, so I don't want to take him out yet, but I wanted to know what the general rule of thumb is.

2) Going off of that, is there a certain amount of time that I should wait for my gecko to settle in before I offer live food?

3) Are there certain benefits or drawbacks to feeding by hand/tweezers rather than letting the gecko hunt for the crickets? I'm assuming there's some type of enrichment that happens when they get to hunt down the food themselves, but I always fear of the food fighting back or getting lost somewhere.

4) If some of the crickets are too large for my juvie can I just... cut the crickets in half? I don't want any to go to waste, but some that they gave me are wider than the space between my gecko's eyes. I've also heard taking off the cricket's back legs may help too since they can cause a higher risk of impaction?

I typically take my crested geckos out of their enclosures and into a ventilated plastic bin, I do this because I don’t want them accidentally eating a bunch of eco earth with their insects.

I personally (usually) feed my geckos without tweezers, this way they can just hunt them down on their own. (Sometimes if they don’t seem interested, I will use the tweezers to see if that may intrigue them).

I haven’t cut crickets in half before , but I imagine that they might stop moving so then the geckos may not become as interested in them.

(A trick, is that if your gecko won’t eat the crickets, you can take the head off until goo comes out. Bring it to your gecko on tweezers, you may need to dab some on their nose but avoid the nostrils they should bite and eat the cricket. I had a gecko that wouldn’t really eat crickets but loves them now after I tried that! I originally heard of this from Tikis geckos on YouTube)!

Sorry I couldn’t answer all your questions!!

[Geckso]

1) It depends, some like to take them out, some just throw some insects in their enclosure, and some feed them with tweezers. I feed with tweezers or in a bowl in their enclosure, but that's only gonna work with non-jumpy insects such as roaches and worms. I personally find it completely unnecessary to take them out of their enclosure to eat, some might disagree, but it might cause them unnecessary stress, unless they're used to it.

2) Yes you should wait until it's eating it's CGD. Insects are an important part of their diet, especially in younger geckos, but cgd should be their main diet, and if you feed insects before they're regularly eating their CGD, they may not want their CGD at all.

3)If you feed by tweezers, or really any way that isn't just adding them to the enclosure, it's easier to monitor how much they're eating.

4)i guess you can try, but some geckos don't want to eat dead insects. Honestly i've never heard of them not being able to digest cricket legs, the only myths i've heard about risks of impaction was about loose substrate and meal worms. Both of these are nothing more than myths, a healthy gecko, kept at the right temperatures, should be able to digest a bit of dirt and meal worms just fine.

[Herpin Man]

I simply drop the insects into the enclosure, and let them hunt.