learn how we set up and maintain our Leaf-tailed Gecko enclosures
Choosing the right enclosure for your Leaf-Tailed Gecko and making sure that it is set up properly is critical to keeping any of the Uroplatus. The good news is that providing your Leaf-Tailed Geckos with the proper enclosure is not difficult.
We’ll review how we set up our enclosures here at Nealon Reptiles and provide links to products we use and love. Let’s get started!
What Enclosures Are Best for Uroplatus Geckos?
It seems as if every week, a new company offers a new kind of enclosure. It can be a little confusing to know what kind, what brand, and what size you’ll need to be successful with Leaf-Tailed Geckos.
First things first: You’ll want to make sure that the enclosure you’re going to use meets a few criteria:
- Vertical Enclosures: Leaf-tailed geckos are arboreal geckos. While they visit the floor of their enclosure occasionally, they spend most of their time up in the branches. Therefore, you’ll want to get an enclosure that is vertical in orientation. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that horizontal room doesn’t matter. These are active little critters and will utilize all the space you provide them.
- Waterproof: While this isn’t a requirement, having a watertight enclosure will make your life easier. Uroplatus require regular misting, which can create leakage if your enclosure isn’t watertight.
- Rot-Resitant Materials: You don’t want to keep Leaf-tailed Geckos in an enclosure made out of materials that will absorb water. This is only going to lead to your enclosure rotting. Enclosures should be made of a water-resistant material such as PVC or corrugated polyethylene.
- Easy to Move: While not a requirement, finding an enclosure that doesn’t weigh more than you do will be very helpful when it comes to maintaining your collection. Glass enclosures can be used (when set up properly), but the larger ones are often very heavy and difficult to move once set up.
- Ventilation: Regardless of the other factors of your enclosure, good ventilation is a requirement. The high-humidity environments required for Leaf-tailed geckos will lead to mold, fungus, and health problems for your animals if the enclosure is not adequately ventilated. Don’t fool yourself; a screen enclosure as the only ventilation isn’t the way to go. Ensure that your enclosure has some vents on the sides to help air move through the enclosure.
In our opinion, the enclosures built by Tamura Designs are the best ones on the market for Leaf-Tailed Geckos. With a variety of sizes and options, Tamura Designs has set the bar very high when it comes to high-end Reptile Enclosures.
Baby Condos
Arboreal Enclosures
100% Watertight
Leap Habitats were the enclosures that we grew our Uroplatus collection with. When it comes to smaller species of Leaf-Tailed Geckos, Leap Habitats are an excellent option. They are the more affordable option when it comes to enclosures for Uroplatus.
The Perfect Size for Shelving
Very Lightweight
Enclosures for Leaf-tailed Geckos must be decorated with limbs and plants, preferably live plants. Depending on the species of Uroplatus, you’ll need to adjust how you put those branches and plants inside. This can be broken down into a few groupings.
The “Leaf Mimic” Species
This includes Uroplatus ebenaui, phantasticus, fiera, and other less common, smaller species. These species prefer a more ‘bushy’ environment as opposed to the larger Geckos that prefer larger tree trunks.
These species will spend almost all their time on thinner branches hidden behind the plant leaves. Plants such as Ficus benjamina make great live plants for these smaller species to include in the enclosure. Here at our facility, we’ve also had a lot of luck with mini palms. Another favorite are Pothos. With their thick stems, there plants provide not only cover, but they create pathways on which your little Leaf-tail can move around on.
Once your plants are selected, you’ll want to include some branches to give your geckos highways to move about their enclosure. These smaller leaf-tailed geckos will appreciate thin branches – you’d be surprised by how thin the branches they prefer are. Make sure that you have a nice intertwined branch network throughout the enclosure. In addition, we also provide these species with a small horizontal branch about 3 inches from the bottom of their enclosure. Once the lights go out, you’ll often see them perching on the ‘launch pads,’ looking for bugs, which they then pounce on.
A Leap Habitat enclosure set up for a pair of Uroplatus phantasticus here at Nealon Reptiles.
This Leap Habitat enclosure here at Nealon Reptiles is set up for a trio of breeding Satanic Leaf-tailed Geckos.
The Bark Mimic Leaf-Tails
The larger species of Uroplatus will appreciate an enclosure set up slightly differently than the smaller ones. The larger species we’re talking about are:
- Uroplatus sikorae
- Uroplatus sameiti
- Uroplatus lineatus
- Uroplatus henkeli
- Uroplatus garamaso
- Uroplatus fimbriatus
- Uroplatus giganteus
You’ll want to add numerous vertical branches to the enclosures of these species. Think of them as small tree trunks running up and down in your enclosure. The larger species of Uroplatus will spend most of their days clinging to these trunks. They’ll leap from trunk to trunk at night, just as they would in the wild.
The plants you use in these enclosures are a little more wide-ranging than those in the smaller Leaf-tail enclosures. We like using different species of Schefflera umbrella plants in these enclosures.
What kind of Branches do we use?
In our facility, we use real branches from trees that are local to us in our enclosures. If you ask 10 people how they treat their branches before placing them into the enclosure, you’d probably get 5 different answers.
While treating the branches before planting isn’t an issue, we don’t. We also ensure that the branches we use don’t have rot, fungus, or anything else.
If you want to treat your branches, many people will put smaller branches in their oven at 200 degrees for about an hour. This will kill any bugs that may be in them. You can also spray them with chlorhexidine and then let them back in the sun.
With hundreds of enclosures and many years of using natural branches without treating them, we have never had a single problem pop up because of this.
What Kind of Plants do we use?
We use various plants, some better for certain species than others. Generally, most plants that are not toxic to Leaf-tailed Geckos will do well.
In our smaller enclosures, with smaller species, we are big fans of Ficus benjamina, a bushy plant with many smaller leaves and branches. Phantasticus, ebenaui, and fiera use this plant species well.
For our larger enclosures, we use a variety of Schefflera umbrella plants, palms, and Snake Plants.
We utilize Pothos in many of our enclosures. Whether a small or large enclosure, Pothos can be used in many ways to make great use of the space. They are fast-growing, which is nice in the larger enclosures. It will grow up the tree trunks used by species such as Uroplatus fimbriatus, henkeli, and the other large bark mimic species.
Substrate for Leaf-tailed Geckos
There are many substrates you can choose to use in your Uroplatus enclosures. It depends on your preference and how much work you want to spend maintaining your enclosures.
Our Favorite – Aquarium Filter Foam!
At Nealon Reptiles, we use Aquarium filter foam as the ‘substrate’ in most Uroplatus enclosures. We have found that the filter foam works great and makes it much easier to maintain our large collection of Leaf-tailed Geckos.
The kind of foam we use can be found on Amazon using this link. It provides great drainage and can be cut to fit your enclosure. Holes can also be cut in it for the planting pots that your live plants are in.
When using the Aquarium foam, it is important that you still give your Leaf-tails an area that allows them to lay their eggs. For this, we use small plant pot trays. The size of the gecko determines the size we use. We use a 4×4 tray filled with Peat Moss in our smaller enclosures. We then cover it with leaf litter. Almost 100% of the time, our Geckos will use this as their egg-laying area. It makes it very easy to find eggs, especially for the species like Uroplatus ebenaui, which love to bury and hide their eggs.
Bioactive Enclosures for Uroplatus
Many people choose to set up their Uroplatus in a bioactive enclosure. There are several pros and cons to this, and it is important that you understand them before you do so.
In our experience, bioactive enclosures for Uroplatus often cause more problems for our smaller species than they are worth. Our larger Uroplatus do much better in a bioactive enclosure. We’re not 100% sure why, but we work with hundreds of Leaf-tailed geckos, and our data on this is indisputable.
Paper Towels
Paper towels make an excellent ‘substrate’ for certain situations. For example, all of our baby Leaf-tailed Geckos are kept in enclosures with a paper towel lining the bottom. This allows us to monitor their bowel movements much easier than on a natural substrate. In addition, paper towels are very easy to swap out when they’re too wet or soiled.
We also highly recommend using paper towels for your hatchling and baby Uroplatus. If humidity is a concern, you can add some clumps of sphagnum moss to help keep humidity higher while using paper towels as the base layer.
