Advice on Tokay not eating...please advise.

[ReptiLady]

Ok, I read some of the other posts on here about people's Tokay's and I still have a question or two about my male.
First of all, I did not buy him without prior knowledge of Tokay's. I am a state wildlife rehabber and get tons of calls about unwanted animals. My cousin runs a convenience store and there was a guy asking her if she knew of anyone that would take him, so she called me. I had him in a temporary 10g until I could go larger. He spent 2 weeks in there. He moved good, opened his mouth at me, even barked at me...but wouldn't eat. I tried crickets, mealworms, pinky, even a fuzzie...nothing. Then I tried a green anole (they are plentiful in my yard)Well, last night I upgraded him to a 20L (standing up)
I taped a piece of styrofoam on the bottom portion and covered the styrofoam on the inside (so he can't get to the styrofoam) to hold in the dirt. His substrate is playsand and topsoil mixed..misted twice daily.(Is this substrate ok) There is a heating pad attached to the back wall plus his 75w lamp on top. There is also Uvb on top. There are branches (bamboo sticks) with fake plants for him to climb or just for looks. There is a water dish at the bottom(Because I have actually seen him drink water from the dish) and 3 green anoles in there to entice his appetite (not working) I also have 4-5 crickets in there and they laid eggs(same dirt mixture from other setup) so now there are babies jumping around..the anole's eat them.

So....ideas????? Advice??? Opinions????
I just did this last night so I don't have a good temp reading yet. It's the same lights and heating pad that he had before only now standing up instead of laying down.The temps this morning on initial reading stayed between 85-95...85 was night temps last night. I am sure now that the temps at the top are much warmer than the bottom...that's one reason I put the heating pad on the back at the bottom.
Here is the setup..if you look closely, he is on the back wall upside down near the top where the reading is 95. What can I do to get him to eat? Is something still wrong with the setup? Or give him time now that things are better?

[SatanicIntention]

From what I remember, UV light cannot go through glass. The light can but the effectiveness of the UV cannot. Therefore we can't get a suntan indoors Darnit. It looks good to me, but I would probably put more coverage in there for him and maybe some thicker branches to be on. Try wooden dowels, that's what I had to do for my fatty of a frog because the bamboo bent under his weight :-O I think he feels alot more secure sitting on those, because he didn't sit on the bamboo much at all, I am thinking it scared him since it bent and shifted with his weight. Hobby Lobby usually has sales on fake leaves, as does Michael's. WalMart is cheap as all get out so maybe try there first.

One thing I might be worried about it how hot the glass is under the light. Can he burn his feet?
Hope you get everything situated for him, he looks to be a pretty good sized guy

[Kara]

That overhead light looks pretty intense. Tokay geckos are nocturnal & don't require such a strong overhead source of UVB. In my experience it's better to supplement the diet with appropriate vitamins & minerals than to blast a Tokay with strong lighting. We keep a group of 25 Tokay geckos - mostly leucistics & calicos - and set them all up in Freedom Breeder lizard racks with lots of places to hide (including a deep hide box), cypress mulch substrate, calcium supplementation, an insect-based diet & NO uvb light, and they're growing, thriving, breeding & laying eggs. Ambient temperature in that particular room runs 84-87 degrees with a minimum of 60% relative humidity.

Hope this helps!

K

[kavmon]

hey kara, can you post pics of those geckos? i'm curious to see what they look like. have you bred them for temperment? lol


vaughn

[Kara]

Here's a link to our Tokay page... http://www.newenglandreptile.com/tokay.html