A dusk feeder on an every-other-night rhythm
Crested geckos wake at dusk and eat in the dark, so the feeding day runs on their clock: fresh mix goes in during the evening, not the morning. The staple is the prepared powdered diet made for this species, stirred with water to a smoothie consistency and offered in a small cup. Adults hold condition well on that cup every other night, while hatchlings and growing juveniles should find a fresh cup waiting nightly — their growth is fast and their reserves are small. Each offering should be genuinely fresh rather than yesterday's cup topped up, and whatever remains comes out the following evening at the latest, because the mix ferments and grows mould quickly in a warm, humid vivarium.
Reading the cup, not the gecko's manners
New keepers often panic because the cup never looks empty. Crested geckos lap small amounts at a time, so the honest evidence of eating is a pattern of lick marks and shallow troughs in the surface of the mix, plus steady droppings in the enclosure. Judge the rhythm over a week, not a night: an adult that leaves clear lick marks on most offering nights is feeding normally. Keep two cups in rotation so one can be washed and dried while the other is in use, and mount the cup on a feeding ledge at height — this is an arboreal animal that prefers to eat off the ground, among the branches, rather than descending to the floor. Note which flavours get eaten and which get ignored; individuals have firm preferences, and a refused flavour is data, not stubbornness.
Insects as the supporting act
Two or three evenings a week, add live insects to the pattern: small crickets or roaches, no wider than the space between the gecko's eyes, dusted with calcium before they go in. Insect nights do more than add protein — the chase is exercise and stimulation for an animal that would hunt nightly in the wild, and watching a gecko stalk a cricket tells you plenty about its coordination and condition. Some geckos raised purely on prepared diet hunt clumsily at first; offer insects in a smooth dish at floor level on those nights so the prey stays findable while the skill builds. Keep insects a supplement rather than a replacement, since the prepared diet carries the balanced base this species needs.
When a gecko goes off its food
A crested gecko may eat lightly around a shed, in a cooler room, or for a few nights after any change to its enclosure, and a plump adult missing two offerings is seldom an emergency. Act when the pattern is loss rather than pause: visible thinning at the tail base, a gecko that feels light and papery when handled, stuck shed clinging to the toes, or complete refusal stretching across many offerings. Those signs earn a visit to a vet who knows reptiles, and your notes on which nights food was offered, and which cups came back untouched, will help. The alternating rhythm is simple to run but easy to lose track of in a shared home, so it helps that KinsLe's Care Teams can put mix nights and insect nights on one shared schedule, with whoever refreshes the cup marking it complete.