Ultimate Crested Gecko Food Review

I sorted every diet into three groups: foods you should never feed, good foods that are not a complete diet, and complete diets your gecko can live on alone. One rule runs through all of it: if a gecko won't eat a food, it doesn't matter how healthy it is.

Foods I would not feed

• Zoo Med crested gecko food: coarse and grainy when mixed, and the top two ingredients are rice bran and potato protein. The analysis looks fine, but my geckos would not eat it.
• Nature Zone bites: gelatin cubes my geckos never touched. Crude protein is 1.9 percent and moisture 86 percent, against 21 percent protein in a good diet like Pangea.
• National Geographic gecko entree: pellets at 4 percent protein with no smell, and geckos find food by scent. Mine didn't look at them.
• Fluker's crested gecko food: hard granules that smell like dog food. The first ingredient is corn. If you have some, use it as cricket gut load.

Good, but not a complete diet

Use these as treats or in a rotation with complete diets and live crickets.

• Repashy banana treat diet: palatable.
• Pangea Fruit Mix: if a Pangea bag doesn't say "complete", it isn't.
• Gecko Pro: lots of flavors and a good feeding response. Peachy lychee and sweet fig did best. Figs are a big part of the wild diet on New Caledonia.

All the powdered diets mix at roughly 1 part powder to 2 parts water, to the consistency of ketchup or a smoothie.

Crickets

I think crickets are essential, especially for breeders and young geckos, which grow faster on them. Dusting helps, but gut loading matters more. Mass-produced crickets are fed cheaply, so gut load them for at least three days.

Complete diets

Repashy. I fed the standard Crested Gecko Diet exclusively for five years. Mango is sweeter and gets a good response. Classic mimics the flavor of the older formula and gets a great response. Grubs and Fruit uses black soldier fly larvae for more protein, but the response is weaker.

Black Panther Zoological. All insect protein, ground fine, and it mixes smooth. Original and Melanistic (melon) get about the same response. Color Bomb's pigment enhancers don't spoil the flavor. Repashy's Super Pig did when mixed into diet, so I dust crickets with it and add it to their gut load instead.

Pangea. The finest grind of any diet, so it mixes very smooth.

• Watermelon mango: great response. I feed it to everything.
• Banana papaya: a weaker response, still a solid diet.
• Banana apricot: a little higher in fat and protein.
• With insects: now made with black soldier fly larvae.
• Breeding formula: extra fat and calcium for egg-laying females. Slightly grainier, still a good response.

How I feed my own collection

Anything younger than an adult breeder rotates between Pangea with insects for the extra protein, Repashy and Pangea watermelon mango. Adults rotate between Repashy standard or classic, Pangea watermelon mango and, as it replaces banana apricot, the breeding formula. Rotating flavors keeps them interested.

I go through 2.5–3 kg (5–6 lb) of food a week and order 36–45 kg (80–100 lb) at a time, so I stick to three or four flavors. Small bags of treat foods add variety. Even insect formulas don't replace live crickets.