- And there you have it people,
I mean, it is that simple.
A leopard gecko setup that is fine
for under about $70.
Oh and I forgot to tell you, gotta put the lid on.
(electronic music)
- Hey, good morning everybody,
and welcome to the vlog,
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible,
today, I am gonna take you guys on a journey
of how you could set a leopard gecko cage up
for I think, under about 70 or $80.
I'm not exactly sure how much we're gonna spend
but I am gonna go ahead and try to do this
and why am I doing this?
Because leopard geckos are absolutely amazing
and people are always asking me,
Brian, how do I set up a leopard gecko?
Now let me just start by saying
that this setup isn't the only way,
I'm gonna try to do kinda the most inexpensive way,
maybe even a temporary thing
until you get a bigger terrarium,
I'm not 100% sure.
Regardless, this is a Bold Bell.
They are absolutely incredible
and one of my favorite mutations of all the leopard geckos,
and by the way, leopard geckos can have
hundreds and hundreds of different mutations
and paint jobs.
Now I'm not gonna go into a really big dissertation
on all of the color phases and how you make 'em,
the fact is that you can have recessive,
you can have polygenic, you can have co-dominant,
this happens to be a raptor white and yellow
and by the way, yes, my hands look really dirty,
it's because I did the tarantula rack,
if you remember,
so this is all the glue and nastiness
that I can't get off,
you remember when I was building the reptarium
the same thing happened,
so don't think that I haven't washed my hands,
the fact is, there is a lot of really beautiful
morph leopard gecko.
Just one more, just one more.
Because this thing is absolutely incredible.
This is actually a Mac Snow
Hypo Bold Stripe White and Yellow.
Ohh doggies, that thing is gorgeous.
But let's go ahead and get into what geckos need
and I'm gonna basically be doing a little bit
of a minimalistic type set up for you guys.
Someone that just wants a pet leopard gecko
and wants to get the entry level kind of cage set up.
I have been really interested lately with the reptarium
and doing these really elaborate type naturalistic setups.
But again I'm not gonna go there because they are
quite a bit more expensive and that's not
what this video's about.
Basically one of the things that makes leopard geckos
so amazing, not only are they so placid and amazing
and easy to care for but the fact is they don't
need a lot of the expensive stuff.
Like they don't need UV light,
which can be pretty expensive for a even starter type
of kit you're usually looking at between 50 and even $100
for a UV set up.
So the fact that we can check that off our list
and not have to worry about is a huge thing.
Let me show you one of our male breeder tanks.
Now these are extremely minimalistic
and I'm not saying you should keep them this way.
I am not gonna go down that path at all
but what I wanna show you,
we basically have a dish here that we would put
our mealworms in, and we wanna have a vitamin and calcium
supplement added to those mealworms.
We have fresh water at all times
and we actually just use these little trays here
as a hide box,
and you can see that beautiful little monkey
right down there is enjoying his hide box
and that is really the basic minimalistic set up.
So they need a hot spot of about 90 to 92 degrees.
They need a cool side to be about 80 degrees,
something in that line.
They need a hide, they need food, they need fresh water
and that is basically it.
That's what makes leopard geckos so absolutely amazing.
So let's go ahead, head to the store,
pick up some supplies and let's see how much
this is gonna cost us and what you can use
if you ever wanna set up your first leopard gecko.
So I'm off to go get a couple supplies.
I'm gonna hit the local pet shop.
I am not gonna get into the politics
of what shop you should go to.
You can go to a local mom and pop shop.
You can go to one of the big box stores.
Whatever happens to float your boat.
Again, I try to stay away from the politics
of what stores you guys should shop at.
For me, I'm gonna be totally honest with you
there's a PetSmart right down the road.
I'm gonna go there 'cause they have everything I need.
I'm also gonna probably stop at Target
because I wanna get the actual container
which I think we could just use kind of a
Rubbermaid slash Sterilite type thing,
depending on the size.
I'm gonna go take a look so let's go ahead
and hit the pet store.
Let's take a mental inventory.
We need some sort of a heat pad that can go
on the bottom of the container.
We need a water dish, we need a food bowl
and preferably a hide of some sort.
So let's see what they have.
As far as hides we could go with something like this.
Or something like this.
Um, I'm kind of liking this.
I think this is perfect.
And then this is actually perfect here.
This is actually a water bowl and a food dish combo,
that's perfect.
The hide is 15.99, this combo is 9.99,
so so far we've spent about $26.
You guys know that I'm a big Zoo Med fan
so I think I'm gonna go with this
under the tank heater from Zoo Med
because these things do scare me,
and Zoo Med's got a pretty good track record.
I'll talk more about this here,
but this is 25 bucks.
And I think the last thing I'm gonna get here,
you know it's gonna expand our budget a little bit
is this digital thermometer from Zoo Med.
It's 13 bucks, or 12.50 actually,
but I think it's gonna be worth it.
You definitely wanna always know the temperature
inside your cage, so I think we're pretty good.
Really the only other thing that we need
as far as buying is really a tub of some sort.
So we're gonna go with a plastic tub
that is probably somewhere about a 26 quart,
something like that.
I'm gonna head over to Target, and no brand deal,
no endorsement or anything like that.
It just happens to be a store that's close
that I know is gonna have what I need,
some kind of storage thing,
and then we're gonna go back and as far as
actually an outlay of money, outside of food and vitamins,
that is basically it.
I will cover the food and vitamins when we get back
and get this thing set up.
(upbeat music)
Okay again, mental inventory.
All I really need is a storage box.
Something that's gonna be big enough,
that I can put the heat pad on,
that the animal will be happy, have tall enough,
all those types of things, so I'm sure
it's around here somewhere.
Who buys that?
(mellow music)
Can I be honest with you, I think this is
gonna work perfect for a couple reasons.
I think it's big enough to do everything I wanna do
and I love the fact that it has actual locks on it
because we don't want the animal to get out.
So this one is perfect.
I have no idea what the price is
'cause there's no prices, but hey it can't be that much.
Let's take this one.
And leave it to Target, there are no lids
that fit that particular one.
But the good news is that there's this one right here
that's almost the same.
Doesn't have the side clamps but leopard geckos
aren't really big escape artists
so this one will have to do.
All right so that was better than we thought.
That cost me $8.47.
Yes it is freezing rain out here.
So we are back with our supplies
and our whopping like $70 that we spent
on all this stuff.
And I know this doesn't seem like a whole lot here
and you can add to this.
So again if you wanna do more decorations,
you wanna do something cooler, that's completely fine.
I'm just trying to give the basics of what
you absolutely need to make sure that your animal
does extremely well.
And the first thing is, this tub here,
although it's the perfect size for a leopard gecko,
it's gonna get along just completely fine,
animals do breathe, right?
And although this isn't air tight
we do wanna probably add some ventilation in here
because again these are desert dwellers.
So we don't want high humidity.
The guys wanna be below 40% humidity.
And the way to actually combat that
is to just poke a bunch of holes in it.
You could do this a handful of ways.
You could actually like melt little holes in there
or you can drill holes.
So we're gonna drill them
and I'm gonna put probably maybe eight or 10 holes per side.
(drill humming)
Okay so that is all the holes that we need
to get a lot of ventilation as well as the fact
that we'll keep the humidity down with this.
Just a little trick, if you happen to get a drill bit
that actually can go through plastic
you'll avoid a lot of the burrs on this,
kind of like this one did, but if you happen
to get little plastic burrs on it,
just take a razor blade and just scrape them right off
and it's completely fine.
There you go, that should work perfectly.
Again, for ventilation and to make sure it has
plenty of fresh air.
Okay, so now we have the under tank heater from Zoo Med
and like I mentioned in a perfect world
I would actually rather have some kind of a
heat element that is on a thermostat
where you can actually control it.
It would be a much safer route in all things.
But the truth is is that you know the Zoo Med
under the tank heater does actually get
some pretty good ratings.
Now this is the tricky part, guys.
You do not wanna stick this on plastic or wood or anything.
It is meant for terrariums with glass.
So I happen to have a piece of glass laying around
which is gonna really come in handy
for this particular thing.
You may have to go out and buy a piece of glass
and you can have it smaller than this.
Basically what you wanna do is just peel that off.
You're gonna stick this right to the bottom like this.
Right under here.
Now one of the things that's really important
is to make sure that this isn't sandwiched on the ground.
So you want some gap, whether you put some wood in here.
It actually comes with little plastic feet
that you can actually put on this piece of glass.
That way when you're setting down there needs to be
some air flow.
If you trap this in something you could potentially
have a fire hazard.
You don't want that to happen.
But this is gonna stay about 90 to 92 degrees,
and then ultimately what we're gonna do
is we're gonna set the box on top of that.
Now what's pretty important is to make sure
that the box, is actually that there's a hot side
and a cold side.
I prefer always to keep the food and water
on the cool side of the cage so when we set the tub
on top of this, we want the water and the food
to be on the opposite side of the cage.
And just for this demonstration again,
not saying that you should do this,
I'm gonna put those little rubber feet on this glass
right like this.
And again, what that basically does
is it just gets the heat off the ground a little bit.
Gives it just a little bit of air flow.
I mean to be totally honest with you,
I would probably put like a piece of wood under here
or something like that.
But I'll just raise it up even more
but this will absolutely work.
But for now let's just go ahead and say that
this is where we're gonna set up the tank.
We're gonna set it down like that.
You can see there's a little air flow in here.
And then ultimately when we're done with everything else
we're gonna set this on top of that.
That's gonna transfer the heat to here,
which is gonna give us the hot side of the cage
and so on like that.
Should give us a pretty nice thermal regulation.
Let's talk about bedding.
Hmm, bedding is a tough one, I'm not gonna lie to you.
Some people suggest sand, other people suggest
different types of bedding.
I'm gonna be honest with you,
I think sand is the devil when it comes to reptiles.
I mean some animals probably will do okay on sand.
I'm not even 100% sure, but I would suggest
you do not put sand in your leopard gecko cage.
And I know some people are probably not gonna agree
with me on this, but I'm just telling you
that there are more problems with impaction issues
and binding up because of sand.
Because they eat the sand, the sand gets in it,
they bind up and it becomes a major issue.
So I don't have a really great solution when it comes
to bedding that looks really good.
I wish someone would come up with something,
so I actually suggest just the good old paper towel
potentially or what we use here is actually
printless newspaper that we cut right to size
and it works out well.
Yeah, it's not the prettiest of things.
Hey, it's all about keeping your leopard gecko healthy.
So as you see this is a real cheap and effective
and super easy way to do things.
It doesn't take a brain surgeon
to set up a leopard gecko properly.
Really, you just really need again a heat source.
You need some sort of bedding.
I prefer this particular type of bedding.
You need air holes, you need a secure area.
And then you need of course water, food and a hide box.
Leopard geckos love to hide so I chose this hide box
right here.
I would suggest always washing all the stuff that you get.
You never know what's been going on with this thing
or if it just came out of a factory.
So wash up this, wash up your bowl and your food dish.
And then you're just gonna go ahead
and set them in the cage.
Okay, all washed up and ready to go.
Now I prefer to keep the hide box on the hot side
of the cage.
I don't know why but it seems like geckos
actually like that.
They usually hide on the kind of warm side,
which is good for them, I suppose.
So I would keep the hot spot on the warm side
and again the food and water dish on the cool side.
And as far as water goes, I mean we just use tap water
because the way I look at it is if I can drink the water
and it's okay for me, it should be fine for the gecko.
But if you wanna use spring water,
some kind of purified water, absolutely.
It's not gonna hurt the animal.
And again some frogs definitely need RO water
but when it comes to leopard geckos, again, I think
that if we can drink it, the gecko should be okay.
But that's my opinion, if you don't agree,
that's completely fine.
I have no problem with you spending a little
bit of extra money in getting purified or spring water
whatever the case may be.
Whatever makes you happy.
Let's talk about food.
Leopard geckos are actually insectivores
so they will eat all kinds of different insects
but really the thing I love about leopard geckos
is the fact that you can really sustain them
on a mealworm diet.
These guys are really easy to feed.
Yes, you can still feed them crickets.
We do feed the occasional roach or even crickets
just to kind of keep our animals happy
and give them variety.
But their staple diet is actually mealworms.
But I will say that it's really important
to give them vitamin and supplement.
So one gecko is gonna eat somewhere between
maybe 12 and on the high side 24 mealworms per week.
So what we're gonna do is just take a handful
of mealworms like this.
We're gonna put it in their food tray like that.
And you have to give them vitamins and calcium powder.
Basically what we mix up a multivitamin powder
that you can buy at any pet store
and we mix it in with a calcium supplement.
We do three parts of vitamin to one part calcium.
And then we mix it around right here.
Now ultimately we just take a little scoop like this.
We powder the mealworms like that and voila,
you have a great meal for your leopard gecko
that is packed full of all of the calcium
and vitamins that they need.
Because leopard geckos get something that's called
MBD, Metabolic Bone Disease.
So if you don't give enough vitamin and calcium
it can actually be extremely detrimental.
They'll get a rounded spine, their arms actually
become rubbery, so make sure that you're always
supplementing, whether you're doing crickets, roaches
or mealworms, you're always supplementing
vitamins and calcium.
So you have your fresh water,
now you have your food with vitamin and calcium supplement
have you hide spot, you have your heat over here.
Cool side over here, air ventilation.
I tell you what guys, that seems like that's
about all you need.
Oh yeah, let's go get our gecko.
And I think this beautiful Mac Snow Gecko
is gonna be super happy in this cage.
It's got everything it possibly needs.
It's got enough space, it's got its hide
that it's looking at right now.
Looks like it's gonna go in and explore a little bit.
It's got its food, its water.
Oh and one last thing, we've got our digital thermometer.
Definitely keep and eye on those temperatures.
Again, what you want is this side
to be about 90, 92 degrees.
This side to be about 80, 82 degrees.
And there you have it people.
I mean it is that simple.
A leopard gecko set up that is fine
for under about $70, or so.
So I think that works out really well.
If you wanna add some plants,
you wanna do some other things.
That works great.
And then eventually if you wanna go to a terrarium
where you can see it better,
that is completely fine, too.
Just remember, keep in mind,
you cannot put that heat pad on the plastic.
You need to put it on glass number one.
Number two you never wanna sandwich that heat
in between that and the ground.
You always want some air flow.
And with that said, I hope that you guys have enjoyed
this kind of inexpensive, easy, super simple set up
for this beautiful leopard gecko here.
I think it's gonna be absolutely happy in this thing.
And I think that if you wanted a leopard gecko,
but you weren't exactly sure how to set it up,
now you know and you know essentially how much
it's gonna cost you.
I hope that you enjoyed this and I am gonna end
the vlog here and wish you guys an amazing day,
evening, whenever you happen to be watching.
From me and the Mac Snow Leopard Gecko,
we can't thank you enough for all of your support.
You guys are truly wonderful
and we do love you so much.
Do me a couple of favors before we get out of here.
Can you smash that like button?
Turn on those post notifications so you know
when I upload another video.
Make a comment down below.
Let me know what you think about this setup.
Let me know if you want me to do other setups
like this in the future.
I am happy to do that.
Remember to be kind to someone
and I promise I will see you guys tomorrow.
Oh, and I forgot to tell you.
Gotta put the lid on too.
And it's nice that this one comes with a locking
mechanism here so that the animal can't get out.
Don't just think you can do that without a lid.
Because it will climb out.
Okay, now I'm ending the vlog.
(upbeat music)