Update on the Zilla Micro Habitat and a Couple Interesting Stories

In an earlier video on housing young crested geckos, I put the Zilla Micro Habitat on my list as a neat little hatchling cage. I liked it but didn't love it. After using it for a while, I like it less and less, and I no longer use it for geckos.

How I used it

I have a breeding colony of about 30 mourning geckos, and a separate group of 4 type C mourning geckos with an unusual pattern. I wanted the type C eggs kept apart so I could hatch and grow out their babies and expand that colony. The Micro Habitat seemed perfect: tight, secure, with vents far too small for an adult mourning gecko to fit through.

What went wrong

The cage is acrylic panels held together by rubber bands. I kept it very humid, as mourning geckos need, and the humidity slowly warped the acrylic. As it warped, the panels flexed apart and left gaps between them big enough for a mourning gecko to get through. It happened so gradually I didn't notice.

How I found out

One day I pulled an adult crested gecko cage out of the rack to feed it and found an adult type C mourning gecko inside. She had got out of the Zilla cage and crossed 9 to 12 m (30 to 40 ft) of the room into the crested gecko racks. Somehow she got into a cage with 3 adult crested geckos and wasn't eaten, even though an adult crested gecko will eat a mourning gecko; to them it's snack-sized. She had also stuck her eggs to the side of their lay box. I moved the whole lay box, eggs and all, into my mourning gecko hatchling cage.

The other three were still in the Zilla cage. I moved them out straight away, and that's when I found the gaps.

A second escape

While setting up to film this, I found another mourning gecko on a cable next to my desk. She was the last one missing from an escape about six weeks earlier, when my colony got out of a gap in my Thrive crescent terrarium. After six weeks loose she was fat, with two eggs visible in her belly. She is back with the rest of the colony in a Thrive hexagon terrarium. If she laid before I found her, there may be eggs glued somewhere in the room.

What it teaches

• Acrylic held together with bands can warp in high humidity. Check the seams of a cage like this regularly, because the gaps open slowly.
• Small geckos find small gaps. Mourning geckos are tough survivors, and an escapee can turn up weeks later and far from where it started.

Verdict

Be careful with the Zilla Micro Habitat. If you keep it humid, it can flex and animals can get out. I've retired mine; it may become a display cage, but I won't keep geckos in it any more.