How much of a time commitment are leopard geckos?
I recently had a question about how much time a leopard gecko will consume of your day - the message reads, ‘I'm trying to convince my parents to let me get a leopard gecko., and every time I ask my mom if she has any questions, she says "How much of a time commitment is it?"‘
Over the years I have owned a range of pets - rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, a cat, and by far, the least demanding pets - other than my inverts, are reptiles. Now, that’s not to say they don’t come with a high level of commitment, after all, leopard geckos can live for a long time, 15-20 years, sometimes over 20 years. However, as long as you have your lights on a timer, and your heating on a timer and thermostat, a leopard gecko can be left during the day. Whereas something like a dog would need to be let out to the toilet, given food, taken for a walk, and kept entertained.
Leopard geckos are crepuscular, so they’re generally most active at dusk and dawn.
A typical day for me includes -
• Morning - waking up, opening the blind in the reptile room, having a glance in each tank to check everyone is okay and the water bowls are full.
• Throughout the day - leopard geckos are asleep, so I leave them to it.
• 6:30pm - Lighting goes off.
• 7pm - 11:30pm - I may pop in to see the leopard geckos, this may include handling, cleaning water bowls, removing poop, and feeding them.
Realistically, the bare minimum requires 5-10 minutes of your day. I would encourage you to spend more time looking after your pet and bonding with them. But in comparison to many other types of pets, reptiles don’t necessarily need you to handle or ‘play’ with them - they just need an interesting, decent size home, with places to hide, explore and dig, a variety of food (which you’ll also have to look after), fresh water, accurate temperatures, good lighting and a clean environment.
Speaking of clean environments, if you choose to use something like paper towel - which I wouldn’t recommend unless you’re quarantining a new or unwell reptile, that’ll need to be replaced every- or every other day. Reptile carpet would need to be thoroughly cleaned and dried once a week - I also wouldn’t recommend this either. Loose substrate such as an organic top soil and play sand mix, Earthmix Arid, or dry coir - as long as you’re spot cleaning aka removing any leftover food and poop - needs to be replaced every 3-6 months. All decorations must also be cleaned with a reptile-safe disinfectant.
The cleaning-out process is likely the biggest job you’ll have to do, the second being feeding your reptile.
Though this is an old video now, and my enclosures have changed quite a bit, here is a video I did back in 2020 about how I would clean my tanks. And in 2023, I made a video showing what a ‘Day-In-The Life’ of owning my reptiles is like.
