About Colors

Color Change: Day to Night

Pictured below are two crested geckos. Note the color change that occurs from day to night. Because they are nocturnal, they usually show blander colors during the day to avoid predators. But at night, they get “fired up”.

Gimli

Color Change: Hatchling to Juvenile

Crested geckos generally hatch out with a reddish color. Within a few days to weeks, this color fades, leaving the hatchling a rather blah color. Around four to six months of age, depending on growth rates, the juvenile hatchlings will begin to show hints of their adult colors. These colors tend to intensify as the gecko grows older, and they will usually show their true adult colors at about a year to year and a half of age.

Here are a few examples:

Sora Hatching

Bly Hatching

Sora (top) and Bly a few days old.

Note that Sora has already lost all of the hatchling red

A few weeks later Sora (left) and Bly are showing colors that will return several months later

Sora: Starting to show

a little color.

Weight: 3.1 grams

Bly: Still blah

Weight: 2.6 grams

Sora two weeks later—Nice!

Bly two weeks later—Wow!

Sora at 4.2 grams

Bly at 3.2 grams

Sora at 7.2 grams

Bly at 5.2 grams

Both geckos are beginning to show colors closer to their parents’ as they get older, and they will continue to intensify at the geckos approach adulthood. Each clutch hatched by these parents (pictured below) has produced similar results: One orange tiger (like mom) and one red flame. Dad is red, but not a flame. So it will be interesting to see how these two develop.

Orion

Daytime colors above

The bottom pics show the same two geckos “fired up”