Leopard gecko is easy to keep as you can have lots of cage vivarium or terrarium options for them. Depending on your budget, design creativity, personal favorite on the cage design, the housing choice may goes long in a list. The normal cage options are aquarium, vivarium, Rubbermaid tubs or large sweater box.All of these cage choices are good as long as you can fulfill the basic housing requirement for your leopard gecko. Based on my personal judgment and favorite, I would say vivarium or glass tank might be a good choice for you as it provide the clear viewing, provided that the air ventilation is adequate, the climbing accessories or furniture are well and firmly placed, and temperature control is adjusted accordingly.
One thing that you might take into consideration of the housing cage is the dimension. We’ll take about size of the enclosures for certain amount of geckos in later chapter.
Let’s talk about the height of the cage here. As leopard gecko doesn’t have sticky toe pads as other gecko, it doesn’t means that a low cage is suitable. They like to climb as high as possible, and trying to search for the highest point within the cage. To be sure that they won’t climb out, an enclosure lid recommended. A lid might prevent other unnecessary particles fall into the enclosure and crickets from escaping. The counterpart of this is that if your tank or enclosure is high, you have to ensure that the air ventilation is good.
Considerations before Choosing / Making your cage:
Cleaning: Even though the leopard gecko is clean naturally as they usually defecate at one spot in the enclosure, cleaning process might be tedious work if you cannot access the cage easily. You might create stress to your leopard gecko while trying to reach a spot to clean up or changing the substrate. The more noise you make and more disturbances created, your gecko will be really stressed up. Make sure that you cage is easy accessible.
Handling: Make sure that you can easily reach every single location if you would like to have much interaction with your gecko. If your cage is top opening, try to approach your gecko slowly from side and let the gecko notice you. However, if your cage has side or front opening as horizontal to the flooring of the cage, it can be well served the purposes.
Amount of Gecko: Basically the size of your enclosure is proportion to the amount as the gecko that you adopt, with a minimum 10 gallon tank for adult gecko, the bigger the better. We’ll have another chapter discussing about this.
Lighting: If you plan to install lighting for your cage, at least 18 inches in height should be considered to prevent over heating to your leopard gecko.
Therefore, plan carefully and have a proper design for your cage. It can save you lots of trouble if you have a proper design enclosure or cage that is suitable for you and your gecko.
