What are the Considerations to House Multiple Geckos?If you own multiple geckos and would like to house them together in a shared vivarium or cage, there several factors that you should take into considerations.
Amount of leopard gecko that will stay in the same cage
- What’s the sex of the leopard gecko that’s sharing the cage
- What’s the size or age of the leopard gecko
- Health of the geckos
Once you figure out the information about the quantity, sex and maturity of the pet, the cage planning might be more easily planned.
The Amount of Leopard Geckos:
Let’s assume that we’re using tank to house the geckos. Here’s the simple formula for calculation:
- Minimum Size of Enclosure = ( No. geckos + 1 ) x 10 gallon
- For example: You have 2 gecko, enclosure size is (2 + 1) x 10 gallon = 30 gallon
Please notice that the calculation is for the minimum size of the enclosure. However if you’re housing an adult leopard gecko, 10 gallon tank is sufficient, the bigger the better. As leopard gecko is terrestrial gecko, which the length and width of the enclosure is more far important compared to height, the more spacious the better.
The Leopard Gecko Sex Does Matter:
The sex of the gecko plays an important part in leopard gecko cage sharing. Once your male geckos are sexually mature, do not ever house them together as they become territorial and tends to dominate the tank. Usually they get serious injuries with the fighting for the place domination, food or female gecko, occasionally until death. More importantly if there are other female geckos in-housed together, this will create stress to them with the fight.
Female leopard gecko can be house in group as long as the tank is spacious enough for them. If the tank is small, I strongly recommend you separate them since fight for place domination will likely to occur.
Male and female leopard that are housed together will mate. However, in my experience I would say that separate these animals into different cage should be done to avoid excessive breeding during the mating season if you have less than 3 female leopard geckos paired with the male. The continuous sex drive will eventually stress up the exhausted female leopard.
Size or Age of the Geckos:
Take the size or age of the geckos into consideration if you would like to house them together. Perhaps an older or larger gecko will bully the young one. In case that you’re going to get a new gecko, and place it with an existing one, try to monitor them for certain period of time and make sure they get along well.
Health of the Geckos:
This is important as your healthy gecko may be affected by the virus that the other gecko carries, even both of them are newly bought from the same shop. Most of the time, the shop tends to keep each leopard in different tank to avoid fighting. Who knows if one of the geckos carries parasites. Please refer to “Procedures of Housing Several Geckos” to ensure that all of the geckos are healthy before mixing them together.
I personally feel that the 4 factors mentioned above are the major considerations before placing multiple geckos together to secure their peaceful and healthy live.
