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.
Free to read, always. Every care guide stays open with no account. The printable PDF of this guide is included with Premium — see plans.