What Not to Feed Crested Geckos

This applies to crested geckos and to any fruit-eating gecko: the other New Caledonian species such as gargoyle, leachianus and chahoua geckos, and day geckos too. The list mixes products marketed to reptile keepers, things suggested online and in poor care guides, and foods that were once considered fine before better diets came along.

Reptile products to avoid

1. Fruit bites for geckos. The pack I show, from Nature Zone, says it is formulated for fruit-eating geckos, but the first two ingredients are water and sugar. They lack the vitamins and nutrients a gecko needs, and when I have tested products like this my geckos did not even recognise the cubes as food. The same goes for other pre-cubed fruit bites.
2. Jelly pots. Komodo makes the common ones, and holders are sold to drop them into the enclosure. They are lightly flavoured sugar water with no nutritional value. Crested geckos are already simple to feed, twice a week, so there is no need for a shortcut like this.
3. Freeze-dried crickets. Your gecko will not eat them, because they are not moving, and they provide little calcium, nutrients or vitamins. Vibrating food dishes sold to make dead crickets look alive do not fix that.
4. Canned crickets. Zoo Med's canned crickets are moist rather than dry, but they are still long-dead crickets with little nutritional value, and geckos do not eat dead things. If you want to feed insects, feed live ones.

Human foods to avoid

Baby food

When I got my first crested geckos, in 2008, feeding baby food was still common advice, and I fed it for the first two and a half months. Baby food does not have the vitamins, calcium and nutrients a gecko needs. Geckos eat it readily because it tastes good, and baby-food-only diets used to be behind a lot of metabolic bone disease. A gecko without enough calcium and nutrients starts to lose bone strength, and you see it in the lower jaw, badly kinked spines, wavy kinked tails and damaged limbs.

Single-fruit baby food such as banana is no better: plain mashed fruit is not enough. You may also hear that turkey or chicken baby food boosts protein. If you want more protein for growing juveniles or breeding females, feed healthy, gut-loaded live insects such as crickets, dubia roaches and mealworms. No baby food, in any flavour.

Jelly

The same goes for jelly. It is high in sugar, low in vitamins, minerals and calcium, and has no protein. Organic jelly that is just mashed fruit is no exception: a gecko cannot live on mashed fruit its whole life.

A word on treats

Some people use baby food, jelly or mashed banana to make treats. I cover treat foods in a separate video. Fed too often, or made with the wrong fruits, treats cause problems, and geckos do not really need them. They are more for you than for the gecko.

What to feed instead

Feed a proper, fully balanced crested gecko diet. Pangea, Repashy and Black Panther Zoological all make good ones, and there are many other options now. There is no reason to use anything on this list.