Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus granti – that’s a mouthful – I keep this cool little gecko species in one of my large thumbnail dart frog enclosures – they help catch stray flies on the ceiling of the enclosure. They ignore the frogs, and the frogs ignore them. This is what you typically see when catching a glimpse of these geckos in a large enclosure (36″W x 18″D x 36″H):
We have actually gone 6+ months without seeing them, but rest assured, they are there patrolling the upper reaches of the vivarium knocking down our fruit fly population. We also know they are doing well when we periodically spot an egg deposited in the viv somewhere:
We acquired our pair in 2015, and as of 2022 they are still going strong. We have not hatched out any young in our vivs yet, but we’ll see if we can improve on that now that we have moved them into a new setup. UPDATE – as of the fall of 2022, after a year in their new enclosure, they are now consistently producing offspring! What a relief – it was well worth the wait!
Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus granti links
- https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/75605549/75607814
- http://www.dwarfgeckos.com/sphaerodactylus/s_nig/sphaerodactylus_nigropunctatus.php
Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus granti information
IUCN current lists Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus as “least concern”.
fun video
Here’s a quick compilation of what interactions you can expect with our little dwarf geckos – they are fast, and they don’t trust us 🙂
Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus granti male photos
The male is much more reclusive than our female. He’s got a beautiful orange coloration to his head and tail with a solid gray base to his body. We don’t have many crisp pictures of him because of how nervous he is around us, so you’ll have to make due with some fuzzy images. There are a mix of photos from his original vivarium where he was often seen on the glass wall under full spectrum grow lights, as well as our newer vivarium where he enjoys the foam rock ledges covering the vertical walls.
Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus granti female photos
She is much bolder than the male. We regularly catch a view of her out and about. Her pattern is very interesting compared with the male – her combination of banding and spots is really striking. The extreme sexual dimorphism in these species of microgeckos is still fascinating. You can see the species of dart frog they cohabitate with in the first image, Ranitomeya fantastica nominal.
Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus granti eggs & juveniles
Though long awaited, it was with great satisfaction that we started getting our first juveniles in the Fall of 2022 from our original pair of Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus granti. The move to the new vivarium (actually a smaller enclosure than the original, though massive for microgeckos) was combined with a hardscaping change that I thought would benefit them – this pair of microgeckos had shown a preference for living in a large stand of small bromeliads. The original vivarium had these bromeliads growing on a large cork round. While building the new vivarium I decided to create a large foam shelf near the upper portion of the vivarium for the bromeliads. I also added lots of nooks and crannies in the foam rock work surrounding the walls of the vivarium, including in this upper portion. The end result was a large flat platform with a field of leaf litter and bromeliads for the geckos to hide in.
Though it took a year, the new arrangements appeared to have worked, with the pair consistently producing viable eggs. This section of the post contains pictures of the juveniles that I have managed to capture from the larger vivarium. They are now in separate grow out vivariums, and I am building out additional smaller vivariums that will be dedicated to holdbacks of this species.
