The short schedule for a very small gecko
An adult mourning gecko does well on fresh complete powdered diet every other day, with tiny live insects offered two or three times a week alongside it. Hatchlings and fast-growing juveniles should eat daily. That rhythm suits an animal that weighs only a few grams: her stomach is small, her metabolism ticks along steadily in a warm enclosure, and a large infrequent meal is simply not how she feeds in the wild, where she laps nectar, soft fruit, and minute insects as she finds them.
Mix the powdered diet to a smooth, ketchup-like consistency and serve it in a bottle-cap-sized dish or a small ledge feeder. Mourning geckos are nocturnal, so put the food in during the early evening and let them discover it as they become active.
Why old food must come out promptly
A mourning gecko enclosure stays warm and humid, which is exactly what the gecko wants and exactly what spoils a fruit-based diet quickly. Remove uneaten powder mix after about twenty-four hours, wash the dish, and replace it at the next scheduled feed rather than topping up a crusty bowl. Stale diet grows mold, attracts mites and fruit flies from outside the colony's controlled feeders, and loses the vitamin content you were counting on.
Live prey needs the same discipline. Flightless fruit flies, tiny roaches, and pinhead crickets should be offered in numbers the colony can clear within a few hours. Loose crickets left overnight can nibble at resting geckos and will drown in water dishes and foul them.
Feeding a colony, not just one gecko
Mourning geckos are parthenogenetic, so a single female becomes a colony of mothers and daughters sharing one planted tank. That changes the feeding math. One dish in one corner lets the boldest females monopolize the food while shy or smaller animals wait. Place two or three small feeding stations at different heights and ends of the enclosure, and watch at night with a dim light to confirm the youngest animals are reaching food rather than only finding empty dishes in the morning.
Because generations overlap, a colony tank nearly always contains both daily-fed hatchlings and every-other-day adults. Serving a small amount of fresh diet daily is a practical compromise in a mixed colony: adults self-regulate at the dish, and the babies are never asked to wait a day their growth cannot spare.
Signs the schedule needs adjusting
A healthy mourning gecko has a gently rounded belly, a tail that is slim but not bony, and steady egg production in adult females. Visible hip bones, a sharply triangular tail base, or hatchlings that stop growing point to too little food or too much competition at the dish. The opposite problem is subtler: diet dishes emptied within an hour, every night, usually mean the portions are too small rather than that the schedule should change.
Dust live insects lightly with a reptile calcium supplement at most feedings, since feeder insects on their own run low in calcium and a growing or egg-laying gecko cannot afford that shortfall. If a gecko stops visiting the dish for several nights, check temperatures and humidity first, then look for mouth injury or a shed stuck around the toes, and involve a reptile veterinarian if she stays off food or loses weight.
Keeping the rhythm when several people help
Colony tanks are easy to double-feed because the food dish is tiny and a morning misting looks a lot like an evening one. Agree on one schedule, write down which days are insect days, and mark each feed as done the moment it happens instead of trusting memory at the end of a busy week. On KinsLe, Care Teams turns that agreement into assigned duties for this colony, with each completed feeding stamped by time so the next helper can see the geckos were already served.