Lighting a Gecko Cage

Video Transcript

"The next thing I want to talk about, is the lighting for your leopard gecko, not heating, we're not there yet. We're talking about lighting right now. When we're talking about lighting, we're talking about UVB light. There's two different ways of getting UVB light, you can get it from compact fluorescent bulbs, like this one, or you can get it from your standard fluorescent bulb, the long tubes. Now you may have to make sure that you're buying the special right kind. You can't just go down to Meijer's and pick up the compact fluorescent bulb and they're in the grocery department, that's not going to do it for you. You need one that's coated with a special coating for UVB light, generally you're going to find that in a pet store, or possibly online, as well. Quite a few companies make them. What this does, is the UVB light is part of the visual, part of the spectrum of light that causes reptiles, and other creatures, as well, to create what's called vitamin D3 in their body. Without UVB light, they don't make vitamin D3, so well. And what vitamin D3 does is, it moves calcium into the bone structure, and without these things, you can get problems like metabolic bone disease, also called rubber jaw or spongy bone, things like that. They're going to cause bone problems. So, we don't want that, especially in a baby leopard gecko that's growing, it's doing a lot of calcium moving around in his body. We want to make sure he gets to the right place at the right time. So you want to get yourself a UVB light. Now, this light needs to be replaced every six months, whether or not it's burnt out, because the coating on them wears out. So, be aware of that, you can stretch it a little bit longer, but, you pretty much want to be on that six month dot. After that, your lighting definitely starts to suffer."