What you feed a small lizard depends entirely on its species. Most popular pet lizards fall into one of three dietary categories: insectivores that eat only bugs, omnivores that eat bugs and plants, or herbivores that eat only plant matter. Getting this right is the single most important decision you’ll make for your lizard’s health, since the wrong diet leads to nutritional deficiencies that can cause serious bone disease and organ damage.
Know Your Lizard’s Diet Type
Geckos (leopard geckos, crested geckos, day geckos), chameleons, and anoles are insectivores. Their diet should be almost entirely live insects. Bearded dragons and many skink species are omnivores, meaning they eat a mix of insects and plant matter. The ratio of bugs to greens shifts as omnivorous lizards age: juveniles need more insects for growth, while adults eat proportionally more vegetables.
If you’re unsure which category your lizard falls into, look up a care sheet for the exact species. Feeding a strictly insectivorous lizard a salad, or giving a herbivorous lizard only crickets, will cause malnutrition over time.
Best Feeder Insects
Crickets are the most widely available staple feeder, but variety matters. Dubia roaches are nutrient-dense and easy to keep. Black soldier fly larvae are naturally high in calcium, making them one of the best options for small lizards. Mealworms and waxworms work as occasional treats, but waxworms are high in fat and shouldn’t be a regular part of the diet.
Size matters more than most new owners realize. Never feed an insect wider than the space between your lizard’s eyes. Anything larger increases the risk of impaction, a potentially fatal digestive blockage. For tiny species like anoles and juvenile geckos, that often means pinhead crickets or fruit flies.
Safe Greens and Vegetables for Omnivores
If you keep a bearded dragon, blue-tongue skink, or another omnivorous species, dark leafy greens should form the base of the plant portion. Collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, and dandelion greens are all excellent choices because they’re high in calcium relative to phosphorus. Butternut squash, bell peppers, and shredded carrots add variety.
Avoid iceberg lettuce and regular head lettuce. They’re mostly water with almost no nutritional value. Spinach and kale are fine in small amounts but contain compounds that can bind calcium if fed too frequently. Fruits like blueberries, mango, and papaya can be offered sparingly as treats, but their sugar content makes them a poor everyday food. Keep fruit to roughly 10% or less of the plant portion.
Avocado is toxic to reptiles. Rhubarb leaves are also dangerous. Never offer either one.
How Often and How Much to Feed
Young, growing lizards need to eat more frequently than adults. As a general pattern for omnivorous species, hatchlings should get insects and greens daily. Juveniles can drop to insects five days a week with greens still offered daily. Adults typically do well on insects two to three days a week alongside greens four days a week, with one day of no food at all to mimic natural feeding rhythms.
For strictly insectivorous species like leopard geckos, juveniles eat daily while adults eat every other day. A good rule of thumb for portion size: offer as many appropriately sized insects as the lizard will eat in about 10 to 15 minutes, then remove the extras. Uneaten crickets left in an enclosure can actually bite a sleeping lizard.
Gut Loading: What Your Insects Eat Matters
Feeder insects are only as nutritious as the food in their gut. “Gut loading” means feeding your crickets, roaches, or other insects a nutrient-rich diet 24 to 48 hours before offering them to your lizard. This is not optional if you want your pet to thrive.
Common household scraps like lettuce and bran are inadequate for gut loading. Instead, feed your insects high-quality commercial gut-load diets or a mix of calcium-rich vegetables like collard greens, sweet potato, and carrots. The goal is to pack those insects with the vitamins and minerals your lizard needs, especially calcium and vitamin A. Research has shown that vegetables alone don’t dramatically improve calcium content in feeder insects, which is why dusting (covered below) is still essential even when you gut load properly.
Calcium and Vitamin Supplements
The most common health problem in pet lizards is metabolic bone disease, caused by insufficient calcium and vitamin D3. It leads to soft, deformed bones, tremors, and eventually death. Preventing it requires both proper supplementation and UVB lighting.
Dust your lizard’s food with a calcium powder two to three times per week. Chameleons need it daily. Sprinkle the powder onto insects or greens right before feeding, since it falls off quickly. In addition, use a powdered multivitamin one to two times per week to cover other essential nutrients like vitamin A.
Here’s where D3 gets important: reptiles produce vitamin D3 when exposed to UVB light, and without D3, their bodies can’t absorb calcium no matter how much you provide. All indoor lizards should have a UVB bulb in their enclosure. To avoid overdosing on D3 through supplements, use one product that contains D3 (either the calcium or the multivitamin) and one without. For example, pair a multivitamin with D3 with a plain calcium powder, or vice versa.
Hydration for Small Lizards
Every lizard enclosure should have a shallow, sturdy water dish, even for desert species. But not all lizards will drink from a bowl. Chameleons and crested geckos are arboreal species that naturally drink water droplets off leaves. For these lizards, you’ll need to mist the enclosure once or twice daily, or use a timed misting system or drip system. Crested geckos do especially well when misted just as the lights go out in the evening, which mimics the natural dew cycle they’re adapted to.
Leopard geckos and other species from drier climates benefit from a “humid hide,” a small enclosed area filled with damp sphagnum moss. This creates a pocket of higher moisture that helps with hydration and makes shedding easier, without raising the humidity of the whole enclosure to unhealthy levels.
Foods to Never Offer
Fireflies are lethal to lizards. Even a single firefly can kill a small gecko or anole. The compound that makes them glow is highly toxic to reptiles. Never feed any wild-caught insects, since they may carry pesticides, parasites, or be a species that’s harmful. Stick to commercially bred feeders.
Beyond avocado and rhubarb, avoid feeding citrus fruits, onions, or garlic. Large or hard-shelled insects like wild beetles can also cause impaction. If you’re growing plants in or near the enclosure, check them against a toxic plant list before allowing any contact.