Outdoor geckos

[Zeph]

I have these cute little pink geckos that live on my back patio (Austin, TX), of course they stay small since we're in the city. Down by the Colorado river in when I lived in the country, we'd find them several inches long. I'm still fascinated by these guys. I've briefly thought about catching one and keeping it for a couple days in a kritter keeper with substrate/fake plants and cork bark just to observe. Maybe I could feed him a dubia or mealworm. I'd like to get an actual pet gecko one day, and taking a wild animal indoors seems cruel, but I'd love to see these things up close.

I assume it's a bad idea, but assuming it was a brief stay in an hospitable habitat, it wouldn't kill the poor thing.

 

[Niffarious]

Hard to say without a photo, but likely Hemidactylus frenatus. They are generally very, very easy to care for - but quick, and escape artists.

There are species of geckos far more suited to being a 'pet' that you can get for a decent price, and CB on top of that. Catching a wild gecko just to observe and re-release would be needlessly stressful for the animal, IMO.

 

[Zeph]

It looks like you identified him correctly, I caught a baby in the wee hours of the morning and set him up in an enclosure. Doesn't seem like a bad starter gecko, I plan on keeping him after having read a few care sheets. I raise roaches and meal worms and hopefully gave him plenty of room and decor. I pretty much set him up like an arboreal tarantula. I felt less bad about getting a wild caught specimen after finding out they're an invasive species and seeing the pest van in our complex this morning. I'll take good care of this guy. Thanks!

 

[Aviara]

Can you upload a photo? Like Niffarious above me, I'm assuming it's a Mediterranean house gecko - they live in Texas, but are an invasive species. I have kept them before, and they do fine in captivity for something wild-caught. I do not like the idea of catching native reptiles and amphibians and keeping them at all - they tend to do badly in captivity compared to captive-bred specimens. However, because these guys are not an invasive exotic species, I don't see the harm in taking them from the wild. When I've kept mine, I set up the tank similar to that of one of my crested geckos, with lots of vertical space, climbing branches, and a few hides. I keep the humidity a little above average, similar to how I would keep an Avicularia tarantula (moist substrate, but not soaking wet). I feed them on small crickets, although mealworms and roach nymphs could work as well. A 10 gallon tank is considered the standard minimum size for a single adult house gecko, although for temporary observation you could go smaller, especially if it's a juvenile. I know of people who keep them communally, and some stores also sell captive-bred house geckos. They are too fast to be handled, but make a good, cheap display animal - and they don't require UVB lighting because they are nocturnal.

If and when you get a "pet" gecko in the future, I highly recommend for your first species you consider either leopard geckos or crested geckos. Both are cheap, widely available, and make great pets. Also their care is fairly simple and they have been kept in captivity enough that there are plenty of resources out there about both species. Personally, I love my crested geckos- they are friendly, calm and quite adorable. They are also much slower and less skittish than house geckos, and easy to handle.

 

[desertanimal]

If you're feeding roaches, that don't climb, you might consider feeding them in the bottom of a white plastic container. My own Coleonyx sp. learned very quickly that it was the food bowl, and the contrast helped them see and peg the roaches.

 

[ZergFront]

If you like little geckos, you can get gold dust day geckos for a good price, they're greedy feeders and they are very pretty. Just don't put a smaller gecko species with a bigger one or you'll end up with just one chubby lizard. Make sure they have plenty of stuff to climb and a hide off the ground.