How often should I feed my leopard gecko?

How often by life stage

Leopard geckos (Eublepharis macularius) are obligate insectivores — they eat live invertebrates and nothing else. Feeding frequency drops sharply with age because hatchlings are building bone and fat reserves while adults conserve. Per PetMD's leopard gecko care sheet and consistent guidance from ReptiFiles' diet guide, the standard schedule looks like this:

Which insects to feed

The modern staples in well-kept leopard gecko collections:

• Dubia roaches (Blaptica dubia) — high protein, easy calcium absorption, low fat, gut-load well, don't smell, can't climb glass, don't fly. The default if your local laws allow.
• Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL / "calciworms") — naturally high in calcium, soft body, accepted by most geckos, ship live easily.

Rotate in for variety, not as staples:

• Crickets — fine nutritionally but loud, smelly, escape and bite resting geckos at night. Remove uneaten ones within 15 minutes.
• Hornworms — water-rich and gut-loaded with carotenoids; good treats for an underweight or dehydrated gecko.
• Silkworms — soft, calcium-rich, expensive and short-lived once shipped.

Treats only, not staples:

• Mealworms / superworms — too fatty as staples and the hard chitin shell is harder to digest. A small dish for grazing is fine; don't build a diet around them.
• Wax worms — dessert. Geckos love them and refuse better food afterwards. Maximum once a week, 1–2 worms.

Sizing the prey

Rule of thumb across every reputable care sheet: a feeder insect should be no wider than the space between the gecko's eyes. Wider prey can choke or, more often, cause impaction (an undigested mass that blocks the gut). Smaller is always safer — a row of small insects is better than one large one. For a typical adult leopard gecko this works out to medium dubias (~1.5 cm), small to medium crickets, or ½-inch (12 mm) hornworms.

Gut-loading: the invisible feeding

The gecko gets whatever sits in the insect's digestive tract. Feed insects nutrient-dense food for 24–72 hours before offering them:

• Fresh greens (collard greens, dandelion greens, mustard greens).
• Diced squash, carrot, or sweet potato.
• A commercial dry gut-load such as Repashy Bug Burger, Zoo Med Cricket Crack, or Mazuri Better Bug Diet.
• Fresh water from a small sponge or gel cubes (never an open dish — insects drown).

Insects starved in a tub for three days are nutritionally hollow no matter what supplement you dust them with. The ReptiFiles diet guide explicitly flags gut-loading as the most under-rated feeding step.

Calcium, D3 and multivitamin schedule

Leopard geckos in the wild get most of their vitamin D3 from a small amount of low-level UVB exposure. In captivity, most setups skip UVB (though it's increasingly recommended at low UVI), which makes supplementation non-negotiable. Per the Merck Veterinary Manual, metabolic bone disease in captive leopard geckos is almost always a calcium / D3 deficiency.

• Calcium with vitamin D3 — dust insects with the powder immediately before feeding. Frequency: 4–5 of every 7 meals for hatchlings and juveniles; 3 of every 7 for adults.
• Plain calcium (no D3) — for occasional extra dustings beyond the D3 schedule; an open dish of plain calcium in the tank is harmless but mostly unnecessary if dusting is on schedule.
• Multivitamin (Repashy Supervite, Arcadia EarthPro-A, or equivalent) — once every 2 weeks for everyone. Covers vitamin A, E and trace minerals that calcium powder misses.

Skip generic "reptile vitamin" liquids; they don't survive insect gut-loading and overdose risk is higher.

When the gecko refuses food

A leopard gecko that suddenly stops eating is almost always an environmental signal, not a feeding problem. Check temperature first — the warm side must sit at 28–30 °C (82–86 °F) for digestion to work, see the temperature guide. Then check whether the gecko is mid-shed (cloudy eyes, dull skin), in seasonal slowdown (autumn through early spring), or recently rehomed (give two weeks of no handling).

The full diagnostic walkthrough is in the not-eating guide. For shedding-related appetite drops, see stuck-shed care. If temperatures and routine are right and the gecko is losing weight, that's a vet appointment, not a feeding tweak.