I need help!

I got 2 crested geckos, one male one female and the person before me bred them and didn’t tell me! She’s starting to lay eggs and I don’t know how to care for them I got a incubator and I’ve been doing research but google doesn’t answer all of my questions…

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I’m sure people on here will help you out here soon, but you also aren’t obligated to incubate these eggs just because they were laid.
Now since crestie eggs can incubate at room temp, you may need an alternative route rather than just not putting them in a warmer, but if this is really stressfull for you, you don’t need to incubate.

But since you have the incubator, hopefully someone here can offer advice!

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Like Cmills said, you don’t need to incubate them, if you don’t want or feel ready to take care of potential babies, you can stick the eggs in the freezer.

But if you do want to try and incubate them, then what exactly are the questions google couldn’t answer for you? :blush:

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Its been a little while but I think I can offer some advice.

I believe Crestie eggs can incubate safely from 68-76°F so an incubator isn’t necessary unless you live in a really cold region.

The eggs can incubate 2-4 months depending on the incubation temps, honestly you’ll probably want to aim for around 68-72°F for a longer incubation. The reason for that is they’ll spend more time developing and come out stronger and larger than hatchlings that spend less time incubating.

Once they hatch they will need a pretty simple setup,
damp paper towel, a little bit of fake plants to climb on, a shallow water dish, a water bottle cap would work perfectly. Keep them in a small enclosure, like a 6qt tub until they are eating, and offering food isn’t really necessary for the 1st week as they are still absorbing and metabolizing their yolk during this time.

Lightly mist them 2x a day, you’ll want to aim for keeping them around 60-65% humidity ideally.

I didn’t start offering insects (nymph Dubia Roaches) until they were a month old, and if they are picky about bugs you can dip the bugs in their CGD to try and entice them to eat, it worked 80% of the time for me.

When they are ready for CGD they’ll need to be offered that every other day, month old hatchlings I believe need to be offered 2-4 insects 5 days out of the week. You can give them a little dollop of CGD in a bottle cap, they won’t need very much at all.

Again I didn’t spend very long breeding CGs, I kept them for 5 years and bred them for 2 years so there might be a lot I’m not covering. I’m just sharing my experience with them.

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This is mostly good advise, however i would not recommend feeding insects that often. CGD is the most important part of their diet as it has all the most important nutrients, insects are mainly used for enrichment and as a bit of a protein boost to help with growth. The more you feed insects, the bigger the risk of them avoiding their CGD, and so not getting the nutrients they need. Not all cresties will want to eat insects either, and the CGD is a complete meal, so they don’t technically need to. If you want to add insects to their diets, once or twice a week is advised, and be careful to monitor whether they keep eating their CGD, as some babies will go off the diet when fed insects. I personally feed my babies CGD every 3-4 days just like my adults, but some people recommend to feed them daily. Ive personally had much better results with consistent growth by not feeding live insects, and sticking to an insect-rich prepared diet instead, but like i said insects can be great as a type of enrichment if they are interested in them, and they still show interest in their CGD.

Also how often you need to mist depends on your set up and the average humidity where you live - for lots of people twice a day might be too much, especially if you live somewhere where it’s naturally a bit more humid, and/or you live in an older building. Personally, i only mist about every second day when kept on paper towels, and every 3-4 days once i move them to bioactive soil, which i usually do after a month or two

The rest is great advise though :blush:

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