Day-active, egg-laying, always female
The mourning gecko breaks the usual gecko rule. Most pet geckos are nocturnal and can manage without UVB, but this tiny Pacific species is awake and busy through the day, climbing, displaying and basking on leaves and glass. It is also parthenogenetic — every individual is female and lays fertile eggs without a male — so an adult colony is producing eggs almost continuously. Egg production is a constant drain on calcium, and UVB is the gecko's own factory for the vitamin D3 that makes dietary calcium usable. Skip it, and the cost lands on jaws and bones.
Fitting UVB over a tiny planted vivarium
Use a low-output UV tube or compact lamp suited to shade and forest species, mounted above the mesh top or inside the canopy, a short distance above the highest basking leaf. The enclosure is small, so the gradient matters more than raw strength: bright at the top, shaded in the planting below, giving each gecko a choice of exposures. Run the lamp on a timer for the full day, around 12 hours, and replace it roughly every six months, since output fades invisibly. Never let the little enclosure sit in direct window sun while you rely on the lamp routine — a small glass volume overheats dangerously fast.
Misting, feeding and the calcium balance
UVB works alongside dietary calcium, not instead of it. Mourning geckos eat prepared gecko diet plus small live insects, and the live food should be dusted with calcium — plain calcium at most feeds where UVB is provided, so lamp and powder share the job between them. Morning misting gives the geckos droplets to drink and holds the humidity this tropical species needs; watch for geckos lapping at leaves after spraying as a sign the routine is landing. A female carrying eggs shows two pale oval shapes through the belly skin, which is a good moment to confirm the calcium side of the setup is actually happening.
Eggs glued in the leaves: what to expect
Expect the colony to grow. Females glue pairs of hard-shelled eggs to leaves, décor and the undersides of the lid, and in warm conditions they hatch into tiny clones of their mother. You do not need to move the eggs — they are cemented in place and hatch where they lie — but do note where each pair is, and expect hatchlings small enough to escape through gaps an adult cannot use. Because numbers creep up quietly, the checks that keep this species healthy are counting, misting and egg-spotting, done little and often rather than in one big weekly session.
Sunken jaws and other warnings in miniature
At this size, problems show as changes in shape and behaviour: a jaw that looks soft or slightly rubbery, a wavy or kinked tail, trembling limbs, or a female who stops climbing and sits on the floor all point at the calcium system and earn a prompt reptile-vet visit — in a laying colony they point first at the UVB and dusting routine. Keep the lamp's fitting date, misting and dusting schedule on the colony's KinsLe Care Teams list, and the small daily jobs that protect these tiny bones get done even on the household's busiest days.