Feeding your leopard gecko with a balanced diet is essential to its overall growth and well-being. Vitamins are integral dietary components for leopard geckos and must always be incorporated into the food. Vitamin deficiencies can make it hard for geckos to shed, make them sick, or cause diseases like metabolic bone disease.
In the environment, leopard geckos obtain their vitamins and minerals by licking them straight off rocks, roots, and plants. However, the bugging question for most leo owners is, which vitamins do these lizards need?
Which Vitamins Are Essential For Leopard Geckos
Essentially, there are two kinds of vitamins;
- Water soluble vitamins
- Fat-soluble vitamins
For optimal growth and healthy living, leopard geckos need these vitamins. Let’s break down the vitamins in each category.
Which Water-Soluble Vitamins Do Leopard Geckos Need
Because of their soluble nature, these vitamins can’t be stored in the body. For this reason, you must ensure that your leo has a steady and consistent intake of these vitamins daily. While several vitamins fall into this category, your leopard gecko will only need two.
- Vitamin C – This powerful vitamin helps geckos recover from illness and prevent oral diseases.
- Vitamin B – This category carries a vast set of vitamins that aid in the digestion process as well as the general upkeep of the body
Which Fat-Soluble Vitamins Do Leopard Geckos Require
A leopard gecko can store these vitamins in its reserves and utilize them when required. They Include:
- Vitamin E – This vitamin helps your gecko maintain healthy skin and remove dead skin cells.
- Vitamin A – It’s crucial for maintaining healthy eyesight and strong skin.
- Vitamin K – Although the vitamin is produced in the gut by bacteria, it’s crucial for proper blood clotting.
- Vitamin D3 – This vitamin is the most talked about in leopard gecko’s nutrition. It is essential for calcium absorption and maintaining healthy bones and teeth.
Which Vitamins Can Be Offered Through Supplementation?
One of the greatest ways to provide your leopard gecko with all the essential vitamins is supplementation. However, a gecko’s system is intricate, and a generic supplement won’t do the trick. While it can be challenging to strike the correct balance between all these vitamins, you don’t have to purchase them independently.
Below is a breakdown of the most important categories of nutritional supplements any leopard gecko owner should know about.
· Vitamin D3 Supplement
If you’re a leopard gecko enthusiast, you might have already noticed that calcium plays quite a significant role in leopard geckos’ growth and development. However, most people don’t know that calcium has a symbiotic relationship with vitamin D3.
Being fat soluble, vitamin D3 plays a pivotal role in facilitating calcium absorption into the bloodstream. If your leopard gecko doesn’t have adequate vitamin D3 in the body, it won’t be able to utilize the calcium it consumes. In addition, vitamin D3 is beneficial to your gecko’s immune system.
The combination of calcium and vitamin D is crucial for the development of healthy bones, the regulation of muscle contractions, and the transmission of nerve impulses. Calcium is also required in the formation of eggshells; hence female geckos need it in abundance.
Therefore, once you own a leopard gecko, you must supplement its diet with vitamin D3.
· Multivitamins
A multivitamin is a supplement that contains multiple vitamins needed for various functions in a leopard gecko’s body. You’ll find several multivitamins in the market from different companies; all formulated to meet the unique dietary needs of your lizard.
They usually come in the form of dust supplements that should be offered alongside feeder insects. Essentially, owners should coat insects with multivitamin supplements before they feed them to their leopard geckos.
If you want your scaly friend to get all the vital vitamins they need, always go for reptile-specific supplements. Remember to read the label to know which vitamins are contained in a multivitamin and whether it also comes with calcium and vitamin D3.
· Vitamin A Supplement
Another vitamin that can be offered to leopard geckos through supplementation is Vitamin A. This vitamin helps maintain healthy eyesight, boosts immunity, and strengthens the skin.
Most top-quality multivitamins designed for reptiles include beta-carotene as part of their formulation. The leo’s body is capable of generating vitamin A from beta-carotene. Therefore, you don’t need to look for a vitamin A supplement if you’re serving your lizard a multivitamin with beta-carotene as one of the ingredients.
· Vitamin E Supplement
Geckos don’t usually require vitamin E, only if their diet consists solely of crickets. Essentially, if you only feed your leo on crickets, it may suffer selenium toxicity.
If your lizard’s daily staple is crickets, you have to orally administer a drop of vitamin E oil once per week.
How to Administer Vitamin Supplements to Leopard Geckos
As mentioned earlier, supplements should be incorporated into a leopard gecko’s diet in various ways. Here are the most popular ways supplements are integrated into leo’s diet.
· Supplementation through Gut Loading
This is a supplementation technique that involves giving minerals and vitamins indirectly. Essentially, owners need to feed the insects with supplements and nutrients before they serve them to reptile geckos.
The feeder insects should be fed with minerals, nutrients, and vitamins 24 to 48 hours before they are served to geckos. The theory behind this method is that when leos ingest and digest the insects, they absorb all the minerals and vitamins from the insects.
· Supplementation Through Dusting
Unlike gut-loading, which involves feeding the feeder insects on minerals and supplements, dusting involves dipping the feeder insects into vitamin or calcium powder. Essentially, supplements designed for dusting come with a unique formulation that allows them to stick to the insect’s body for utilization once ingested.
Final Verdict
If you own a leopard gecko and have been wondering whether vitamins are an integral part of their diet, we hope you’ve found your answer in this article. For optimal growth and performance, leopard geckos need a diet that contains all essential vitamins. Nearly all functions in the leopard gecko’s body need vitamins.
