The Safe Cohabitation of Crested Geckos
(The Cohabbing Myth Officially Busted)

by Anthony Caponetto - Updated/Softened :-) 2026

This resource page discusses the safe cohabitation of Crested Geckos, a practice that used to be standard operating procedure for literally everyone and is now suddenly unsafe and unethical, according to a bunch of experts who've clearly never actually tried it.  Today, there are breeders who honestly believe and tell people that crested geckos are territorial and solitary creatures, things I can assure you are completely untrue. 

I initially minded my business, but eventually started having my integrity/ethics challenged on social media for talking about keeping geckos in groups.  Nope, not me - I put this page up, which probably came off like a hit piece than a source of information that it actually is. 

This myth that you can't safely house crested geckos together is just a viral misconception, and something I feel takes a lot of the fun out keeping one of very few species where cohabitation is not only safe, but can be more interesting, rewarding and advantageous - especially for kids. By housing them together, you'll have a more complete learning experience of their natural behavior and biology.

As a breeder who has personally hatched and shipped 250,000+ crested geckos over the years, I feel a bit of a responsibility to my customers and the community to give them not only an honest answer. The answer is yes, you can - and I'm going to tell you everything I know about doing it as safely as possible. 

Here's the nuts and bolts of what we'll dig into:
- How to house crested geckos together safely
- Why you may not want to house multiple geckos together
- The potential benefits and efficiency of doing so


If housing ciliatus in groups was inherently dangerous or causing regular injuries (however minor), it wouldn't still be standard procedure here. I would have noted a pattern long ago, and we wouldn't still be doing it 20-some years later.  We keep geckos of all sizes in groups and we keep geckos of all sizes individually as well - both ways have their place in our collection and both probably will in most other serious collections.  Even at our scale, injuries caused by cagemates are almost unheard of.

How to House Crested Geckos Together Safely
Crested geckos are one of few species you'll ever hear me tell you is perfectly safe to keep in groups.  There aren't very many things you need to worry about, but here are a few quick guidelines we follow:

- Keep Similar Sizes from Hatchling to Subadults
We try to ensure we're keeping geckos of the same size in an enclosure together.  This is important with young, growing geckos and often times means you'll need to regroup as geckos grow from hatchling to subadult size.

With geckos from hatchling to subadult sizes, you will see better rate of growth - maybe even an unnatural rate of growth - when they're housed alone.  For geckos I want to grow out fast, that's the way - but there's no way we could do that with everything, as there is quite a large trade-off in terms of efficiency - including time and money...you're doing more work and spending more money - making more cups of food, more cleaning or replacing water bowls, cleaning more enclosures, you're spending more time on everything and this all takes up more space.

For a lot of breeders, and most hobbyists, it's probably not worth raising them ALL individually - I know that can be said for us.  And in all reality, captive geckos raised in groups are still going to grow much faster than they ever would in the wild, so you're not hurting them by letting them grow at a more natural pace.

- (Almost) Never House Mature Males Together
Males that show a hemipenile bulge that were not raised together will usually fight like two bulldogs in a cartoon, rolling around, making noises and BITING the whole time. And it often starts upon first sight of one another - no sizing each other up, no warnings - they will get straight to business.  I. won't even put two males in the same holding container for 30 seconds, if that tells you what a difference it makes. 

However, and here's where it gets interesting, mature male crested geckos that have been housed together since prior to puberty (bulge appearing) will almost never fight. This is true, even if you put mature females in the cage with them.  It's really remarkable how well these males seem identify with one another and instantly know not to fight, when unfamiliar males will automatically fight like a pair of roosters.  They don't even sniff one another or have minor scuffles - they just know one another and it's somehow all good.

Anytime we grow out a small group of juveniles together, I'll pull the females out before the males reach puberty and then let the males live together until we decide where each of them goes next. Zero fighting and this is pretty standard procedure here.

- Breeding Pairs/Groups
Size discrepancies can be a bit wider with adult groups, but it's smart to watch them or be within earshot for the first several hours they're together.  If you're going to see a cage bully in an adult group, it's usually going to be the largest female - though a lot of times, big girls are gentle with everyone and there's no problem.

I currently have several thousand breeding geckos housed in groups of 1.2 to 1.4 (that's 1 male with 2 to 4 females) and the incidence of fighting or injury is almost non-existent. We might see 1 or 2 minor injuries some years, and some years there are none.  If I were to go through during the day and open 100 breeder enclosures at random, I would probably find piles of geckos sleeping on top of one another in 95 or more of them.

Our breeder males are left in the cages year-round.  Contrary to internet lore, they don't run around trying to mate with the females all year round, all day long.  Breeding activity is signaled by hormones.  When females aren't receptive or in-season, they won't put off the pheromones to entice the male.

Another thing to note - when crested geckos breed, the male often bites the back of the female's head in order to get things lined up, down at the other end.  This may look rough, or like he's attacking her, but (newsflash) they are wild animals and that is how it's done at times.  Other times, they can be very creative, as shown in the photo below (they stayed like that for 20 minutes, just FYI).

It is a misnomer that male crested geckos will harass females to breed with them constantly, year round. 
We keep breeding pairs/groups together year-round.  Trying to guess when it's time for them to breed starts putting certain aspects out of your control - and now you're doing guesswork.  Consistency and guesswork don't go hand in hand. We leave them together and allow them to breed on a natural cycle, dictated by hormones and pheromones that tell them when it's time. 
 
PS - I don't recommend letting babies hatch in the cage if you're going with a bioactive setup - they may get eaten before you find them. :-0

Here are the main 3 reasons why we don't house multiple geckos together:

1. It's vital to keep close track of genetics/lineage. Non-visual (recessive) hets and more subtle genes are good examples of this. 

2. We need that gecko to be breeding size as soon as possible.  Very rarely does it make that big of a difference, my excitement factor often dictates how soon I "need" it to happen. lol

3. The gecko seems to be shy, stressed, not eating well, recovering from stress, rapidly falling behind the group in rate of growth, etc. Separating these geckos always helps them bounce back faster.  Those little guys still take a while to catch up, but they all tend to catch up eventually.  

The Anti-Cohabbing Argument

What is this "cohabbing" myth and why is this now a bad thing?
The myth, as it relates to housing crested geckos, is that the species is solitary and territorial - and therefore should be housed alone.  Housing them in a group would be cohabbing and that's dangerous - according to legend, anyway.  The reality is this: I have extensive experience keeping crested geckos together and I can assure you none of that is true.  When sizes are kept similar with younger, growing geckos, injuries are very highly unlikely (far less than 0.1%). The key is keeping sizes similar by frequent regrouping. It's not maintenance free, but it's still less maintenance than housing them individually.  I honestly don't know that I've ever seen a serious injury with any of our younger geckos - a bitten tail tip or foot (when feeding crickets) is about the worst I've seen and that rarely breaks the skin.  But remember - we're talking about crested geckos.  For snakes and younger gargoyle geckos, one per cage is the only way we do it. 

Why did this myth get its own page?
Because it's false, it causes people to think keeping crested geckos is harder than it is and it's become incredibly pervasive in our hobby.  An alarming number of reasonably intelligent people now seem to believe it, including breeders who seem to otherwise know what they're talking about. 

This "cohabbing" myth causes crested gecko owners to buy more cages/housing, more food and more supplies than they need to, not to mention spending double or triple the amount of time feeding and cleaning. 

When or how did this myth start?
Cohabbing is a term I first saw become part of the jargon within the crested gecko hobby on Facebook, sometime in the late 2010's. This was maybe a few years after I had started talking publicly about (and defending) our practice of raising babies individually in lidless racks, and how they are plenty comfortable and actually grow considerably faster this way - low stress, no competition for food, no food-bowl bullying, etc. 

Around this time, I started advertising that our geckos were raised individually, which is a good thing because every gecko we sell will be well-started and confident eaters - not shy.  Something you might not expect coming from a large scale breeder.  Because we're talking about social media, people heard "faster growth" and "no bullying" and it was  eventually spun into something far worse than the reality.  There are now breeders out there who tell their customers it's dangerous to house crested geckos in groups.

About the "bullying" I spoke of...
With crested geckos, bullying is usually some squeaking (gecko trash-talk) and lunging to scare off the other gecko away from a bowl of food - any experienced breeder would have known that at the time I wrote it.  Leave it to the least experienced of the internet experts to take it and run with it.  Physical bullying for crested geckos is usually nothing more than a quick nip to the other gecko - and it's not very common at all.  Plus, young ciliatus have teeth just slightly sharper than the hook side of velcro.   If you've given them enough food for everyone, which you should have, then any geckos who get "bullied" can just come back and eat after the bully is finished.  Eventually, your geckos will develop a routine like this. If housed together long enough, they become familiar, bullying tends to stop as the geckos grow larger and they learn that nobody is actually a threat.

The Bottom Line
Yes, it's safe to house crested geckos in groups - but raising them individually has it's advantages too.  We do both here and most serious breeders will probably tell you the same thing is true for them.  I'm not here to tell you one way is better or correct because scenarios differ and that won't always be the case.  Now that you know your options, you'll be able to determine what fits best with your objectives, so that you can make the best decision for your situation. 

Never take someone's word for it because they appear to know what they're talking about and no one appears to be arguing with them. The reality is people who spread false information will gang up and try to bully you if you disagree with them on social media. For that reason, most people who know better remain silent. 

More importantly... When it comes to breeding or keeping reptiles, remember to always educate yourself, check your sources and then do your own thinking and make your own decisions.