How to Clean Gecko Habitats

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Johan Svahnström on behalf of Expert Village. So, how do you keep your leopard gecko tank clean? Well, it's really important to do that, but it's also really easy. Because leopard geckos have a tendency of going to the bathroom in the same corner of your tank the whole time. So, once every four or five days, you get yourself a little container and you get yourself a spoon. And you just scoop up the fecal matter, put it in that little container together with the substrate that's kind of moist from the poop. You take the poop out every four or five days, as I said, and then maybe once every two weeks or so you need to do a more thorough cleaning. What you do then, just take all the cage furniture out, the rocks, if you have plants in there take those out. Shake those off real good. Look at them so there's not any strange stuff on there, any poop or any parasites or anything like that. Cork bark there. Take the water out. You take the whole take, you go out and you dump all the bedding or the sand or whatever you may have as a substrate. You dump that in the trash, and then we're going to clean it with a solution. After you've dumped out all the substrate, take a rag, put a little bit of bleach on there and a lot of water. And then you go over the bottom of the tank really well, especially the corners where the lizards tend to go to the bathroom. Wipe it up real good. If there's anything stuck to the bottom, go over it really well. Then, you take a regular spray bottle, put a little bit of water on the bottom, just so get rid of the remaining bleach if there would be any on there. Moisten it a little bit, then you take a clean rag, dry, and wipe it really dry. That's important because leopard geckos do not like moisture. It can't be wet on the bottom. It will not like it and might get sick if it's like that. So, go over it really well. Take care of some smudges and stuff on the side of the glass. That's more for looks than anything else. But wipe it really dry. Now the tank is dry and clean. You put the substrate back in, and put all the cage furniture back to normal. I always try to put it back the same, or as close as I can, to the same way I had it before, so the lizards don't think they get a new environment every time you clean the tank."