Feeding Tokay Geckos

Tokay geckos have voracious appetites and are aggressive eaters. Ideally, your tokay should be fed small quantities frequently as opposed to an infrequent mass feeding. All live food items should be "gut loaded" for 24 hours+ before feeding to your tokay gecko. Gut loading is just feeding your crickets or other prey item with vitamin enriched foods, so that when your tokay eats them, they gain the additional nutritional benefits from the contents of the insects stomachs.

Live Food

• Crickets - These should be the main diet of your tokay gecko. They are available in both small and large sizes. Adult Tokay geckos can easily eat large crickets, some very young adolescent or newly hatched tokays will probably require the smaller size or even pinhead crickets.
• Pinkie/Fuzzy Mice - An adult Tokay gecko can be fed "pinkie" mice occasionally to supplement their diet. Don't try to feed too large a prey item to your Tokay.
• Meal Worms and Wax Worms - These items are not very nutritious and should not be used as a mainstay to feed your Tokay gecko. They are fine to use as part of a varied diet, however.

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

Powdered supplements are the most commonly used and typically come in separate containers: vitamins and calcium supplement. They are then used to "dust" food items just prior to feeding for maximum nutritional value.

Water

There are a number of ways to provide drinking water for your Tokay gecko.

• Water Bowl - A large shallow bowl provides a constant supply of clean drinking water for your Tokay. This bowl should be cleaned and refilled daily.
• Misting - this can be done about 2x daily to maintain humidity, and the geckos may lick the water droplets off the glass and other surfaces (so keep your tank clean). Most Tokay geckos will learn to drink from a water dish, but newly acquired tokays may need multiple options to ensure they drink enough water until acclimated.
• Drips - Items can be placed on the screen top and allowed to drip into the terrarium. A cup with a small hole in the bottom will work.