One of the best beginner reptiles in the world — hardy, long-lived, gentle to handle and happy at room temperature. An excellent first gecko and a superb animal for handling sessions.
🟢 Beginner-friendly🖐 Great for handling🌙 Nocturnal · Arboreal⏳ 15–20 years
Care difficulty
Easy
Animal cost
£30–£300+
Full setup
£250–£500
Adult size
7–9 in / 18–23 cm
Lifespan
15–20 years
Min. enclosure
45×45×60 cm
📋At a Glance
The crested gecko is arguably the most beginner-friendly gecko available. It thrives at normal UK room temperatures, needs no complicated heating, eats a ready-made complete diet, and is calm and slow enough to be handled by children with supervision. Once thought extinct, it is now one of the most widely captive-bred reptiles in the hobby.
Best for: first-time reptile keepers, families, and animal-handling / provision sessions where a gentle, hardy, low-maintenance climber is ideal.
💷Costs & Getting Hold of One
The animal
£30–£80 for a standard 'flame' or 'harlequin'. Sought-after morphs (Lilly White, extreme harlequin, pinstripe) run £100–£300+.
Low — roughly £10–£20/month (complete diet powder, occasional live insects).
Availability
Very easy. Widely captive-bred; in most reptile shops and at every expo. Always buy captive-bred.
These are minimums, not budgets. The low end still has to meet the animal's needs — proper UVB, a heat gradient, space and filtration are not optional extras. A vivarium alone can cost £250–£300+, and a tortoise's UVB lamp alone is often ~£100. Price the whole setup before you commit to the animal.
Buying tip: Choose an alert animal with clean nostrils and vent, no stuck shed on toes and a rounded pelvis. A dropped tail is cosmetic only — but it won't grow back.
🏠Enclosure & Where to Keep It
Crested geckos are arboreal (tree-dwelling), so height matters more than floor space. Use a vertical, front-opening glass terrarium.
Single adult
Minimum 45×45×60 cm (18×18×24"). Bigger is always better.
Hatchlings
Start in a small tub or faunarium — a big space makes babies struggle to find food.
Furnishing
Lots of branches, cork bark, vines and broad-leaved foliage (real or artificial) for cover.
Where to keep it
A quiet spot at stable room temperature, out of direct sunlight and away from radiators and draughts.
Critical: Never let the enclosure exceed ~28 °C. Crested geckos are a cool-climate species and heat stress above ~30 °C can be fatal.
🌡️Temperature, Lighting & Humidity
Temperature
18–25 °C — normal UK room temperature is usually fine. A gentle night drop is healthy. Only add heat if the room falls below ~16 °C.
Lighting / UVB
Low-level UVB (T5 5% / 'Shade Dweller') is now recommended for long-term bone health. 12-hour day/night cycle. No bright basking lamp needed.
Humidity
60–80%. Mist once or twice daily (heaviest in the evening) and let it dry out between mistings.
Bedding / substrate
Simple: kitchen paper/paper towel — cheap, hygienic, ideal for beginners. Bioactive: living soil (coco fibre, orchid bark, leaf litter) with springtails/isopods and live plants. Avoid reptile/cage carpet — it snags claws and teeth, traps bacteria and waste, and frayed fibres can be swallowed.
🍽️Diet, Supplements & Feeding
Wonderfully easy: they thrive on a complete powdered diet (CGD) — Repashy, Pangea or Arcadia — mixed with water to a ketchup consistency in a small dish.
Staple
Complete crested gecko diet (CGD), fresh 3 nights a week for adults; most nights for juveniles.
Live food
Optional but enriching — dusted crickets, dubia or locusts 1–2× a week, no bigger than the head.
Supplements
CGD is balanced, so none needed with it. Dust live insects with calcium + D3 and a multivitamin.
Water
Shallow dish plus droplets from misting.
Handy for provision: the staple is a powder you mix on demand, so there's no need to keep live insects if you'd rather not.
✨Grooming, Shedding & Additional Needs
No grooming or bathing needed. The one thing to watch is shedding — they shed regularly and often eat the skin. Correct humidity keeps sheds clean.
Watch the toes and tail tip: retained shed can tighten like a band and cost them a toe. Raise humidity and let them work it off — never pull dry skin.
🖐️Handling & Interaction
One of the most handleable geckos — calm, curious and rarely bites. But they're fast and jumpy, so technique matters, especially with children.
How to handle
Let a new gecko settle for 1–2 weeks first. Scoop from below, not above. Use 'hand-walking' — let them stroll hand to hand. Keep sessions to 5–15 minutes, low over a soft surface.
✅ Do
Wash hands before and after every handling.
Support the whole body; let them walk hand-to-hand.
Keep sessions short and calm, near ground level.
Supervise children closely, movements slow.
Handle in the evening when naturally awake.
⛔ Don't
Never hold or dangle by the tail — it drops and won't regrow.
Don't handle during a shed or in the first fortnight.
Don't handle over hard floors from height.
Don't house two males together — they fight.
Don't let the enclosure overheat, ever.
🦎Fun Facts
Believed extinct until rediscovered on New Caledonia in 1994.
They have no eyelids and clean their eyes by licking them.
Microscopic toe hairs let them climb glass.
A dropped tail never grows back — many happy adults are 'tailless'.
The 'crests' are the eyelash-like ridges above the eyes and down the back.
⭐Overall Verdict
A brilliant all-rounder: cheap, easy to find, forgiving, long-lived and gentle enough for supervised handling. The only real rules are don't overheat them and never handle by the tail.