We love red crested geckos. So much so that we’ve dedicated most of our breeding plans to producing only red crested geckos. 

Crested geckos come in a variety of colors and patterns and through line breeding you can enhance these colors and patterns. 

It is very common for reptile breeders to focus on improving a particular trait within a reptile species. Our focus is on producing the reddest crested geckos possible. 

The easiest way to do this is for us to breed the reddest crested geckos to the reddest crested geckos. But first you have to acquire red crested geckos. 

Buy Top Quality Ready To Breed (RTB) Red Crested Geckos

Top quality adult red crested geckos cost a lot of money. A top male red breeder can cost anywhere from $750 - $1,500 depending on color, pattern and most importantly, lineage (what their parents and grandparents looked like). And a top breeder quality red female can sell for $1,500 - $2,500, of course, you can find ‘B’ quality red females for $750 - $1,250. 

The other problem is finding top quality red breeders for sale, everyone is looking for one, so when they become available they usually sell quickly. 

This leaves you with two other options. 

Buy Reddish Crested Geckos With Good Lineage (Red Parents) 

The first option is to buy kind of reddish breeders for less and hope that these  'kind of red breeders' produce you real red baby cresties. This route can be effective and a lot less expensive, if you can find kind of reddish breeders who have a good red lineage. 

This means that the sire/dam (parents) of your breeders are/were good solid red crested geckos. Presently our top red crested gecko is Cherry Bomb and her sire/father is Kamikaze. 

He is a real interesting breeder because he has a nice white wall and a full cream dorsal stripe but his color is better described as brick red with orange highlights. I guess you could call him ‘reddish’. 

But his parents are both solid red harlequins and his red harlequin grandmother, Baharat, can be found in the lineage of many of the top red breeders across the US. 

What is cool about Kamikaze is that he produces quality red crested geckos no matter who we breed him too. But, we got lucky, at first glance, he probably isn’t a crested gecko you’d imagine building a red program around. 

Kamikaze Offspring

Buy Baby Crested Geckos Before They Have Turned Red

The difficult thing about breeding for red crested geckos is that many of your best reds don’t turn red until they are close to adult size. This can mean that you have to hold onto your babies until they are 12 - 18 months to see how red they will actually be. 

For some reason the red doesn’t usually start developing and showing until 15 - 20 grams. Up and until that point they will usually just look like a light colored brown which is also what most brown crested geckos look like at that age.

So how do you pick out a baby crested gecko that is probably going to be red when it grows up? 

Research, a lot of research into their lineage and the offspring of the crested geckos. We make this easy at Tenny’s Crested Geckos because we have an entire page dedicated to each of our breeders that includes their lineage and pictures of their offspring. 

Usually, this isn’t available and breeders are reticent (reluctant) to put together this information for you. So you have to dig around on their websites, instagram posts and Facebook posts to find pictures of parents and offspring. 

Sometimes, the lineage takes you to other breeders websites, instagrams and Facebook pages. It can be exhausting to research the lineage of the baby you wish to buy. 

This is why breeders who track lineage and provide pictures of lineage usually charge more for those babies. First, because they are able to show a possible projection of what that baby will look like in 12 months. Second, it saves you a ton of time having to do all the detective work to figure out the lineage of the baby. 

If you are looking to get red crested geckos, I would suggest you only buy babies that have a proven lineage of producing red crested geckos. 

I would not purchase a young crested gecko without its parents and grandparents having a solid red track record. If the seller doesn't know the lineage of the baby gecko, I would recommend that you keep looking based on many experiences of being disappointed. 

We have built up one of the top red crested gecko breeding programs in the country in only a few years by properly projecting brownish baby crested geckos who would ultimately turn red as adults. 

The strategy is pretty straight forward, we are constantly looking for crested geckos with a nice pattern and lineage with a strong history of red. We purchase multiples of these babies each year for much less than an adult breeder and grow them up. 

The ones that turn red we keep and the others that don’t we sell to people who like nicely patterned brown or dark crested geckos. 

Buy Powerhouse Top Quality Red Male Crested Geckos 

We usually try and only purchase female baby crested geckos that are projected to be good quality reds when they mature. 

This is because most reptile breeders search far and wide looking for the best looking males to breed to their females. It makes sense, a mature male crested gecko can breed multiple females throughout the year. While a female can only breed to one male a season and produce a limited number of eggs. 

By investing the most money into a top quality red male crested gecko you are giving your program a much better chance of having successful red babies one day. If you are looking for an investment quality red male, check out our Cherry Bomb Line of male red crested geckos on our for sale page.

The most popular and most expensive red crested geckos are the red extreme harlequins and the super reduced patterned red lilly whites. For that reason we invested a ton of money, $2,400, in Rogue, our extremely reduced red lilly white male. 

We bought Rogue when he was only 9 grams as he already had the look of an A+ breeder. In a lot of cases you won’t be sure until they get a bit bigger but the price will also go up as they mature and are closer to bein the STAR in a red breeding program. 

If your intended red breeder male isn’t the best looking or a close second to the best looking red crested gecko in your collection, you need to start looking for a new male. 

All of TCG’s red crested gecko breeder males are either incredibly red or have lineage and offspring to secure their spot in our program. 

Make sure you invest into a top quality red male that you can be proud of and everyone else can be envious of. 

Summary

So if you want to get into the red game look for crested geckos that have a proven red lineage regardless of their age. 

Breed the best reds to the best reds and grow them all up to almost adult size to see how their red will develop. 

Contact us via email, Facebook messenger, or Instagram DMs if you’d like to discuss putting together a red program with some of our available Cherry Bomb Line crested geckos.