Leopard geckos unlike most of the other animals have their body temperatures far more attached to the environment than anyone can ever fathom. Their survival and healthy highly depends on the availability of natural light for the provision of the required nutrients. Research indicates that leopard geckos use the environment as a means of body temperature control. If you have such an animal at home as a pet, you have to ensure that you provide an alternative source of UVB light. Otherwise, the health, comfort and survival of your pet will be at stake.
Sources of Leopard Gecko Light
Mostly, pet owners are advised not to keep their pet cages in places where sunlight can reach. Excess sunlight can overheat your animal and its habitat resulting in dehydration or death in severe cases. Also, taking them outside to bask in the sun might as well not be okay because you will be required to do it the same time every day. With the human busy days, such a schedule might not be possible hence leading to a situation where the animal does not get enough vitamin D. to avoid such an instance, you should consider artificial light for a leopard gecko. Through the use of heat and light bulbs, you can provide a thermogradient where you place a lamp at one edge of the cage where heat and light are at its maximum and less in the other corners. Where the bulb is placed, the temperatures during the day should range between 28 t0 30 degrees and 24 to 26 degrees at night.
At night, the temperatures in the cage should not be allowed to go below 18 degrees. The use of a ceramic heat lamp or a heat mat makes this possible. It is not only the heat from the lamps that are necessary but also light. The light spectrum of natural light is rich in vitamin D3 that is very essential to the gecko. Creating bulbs that have almost a similar spectrum has ensured easy keeping of leopard geckos as pets. If the environment in which the pet lives does not receive any UVB light, the survival of the animal becomes threatened. You can easily notice the obvious health issues that the animal starts to suffer from. These pets are crepuscular animals rather than nocturnal as it was earlier speculated. This means that they mostly tend to busk in dusk and dawn when the light is not so much. At such a time, their skin is able to absorb almost all the vitamin D that strikes it. They have the ability to absorb more UVB when the light is low in comparison with the other animals. This makes the best time for their busking to be the few hours when the sun is rising and when it is setting