Hey everyone this is Azura my new friend 

I got her a little over 2 weeks ago and she is about 5 months old now I believe.

I did a fair amount of research on leopard gecko care before getting her, or at least enough to feel confident I can start off on the right foot 

I have noticed a few things in her behavior and want to just field some advice for some things and maybe clarification on what is normal and what i should work on

First, some context of my setup which you can see in the first photo

I’m using a 31 gallon tank with a bioactive soil substrate 

She has 3 hides and I put spanghum moss under the middle and give it a couple mists daily 

I have a heat emitter bulb on 25/7 and a basking bulb and uvb that both go on and off on a timer every 12 hours

Right now she almost exclusively will only eat insects that i put in her bowl. And she normally will eat when I’m not on the room  
Or looking at her, I’ve literally turned my head away from her for a second and turned back and a big was gone. I’m mostly doing dubia roaches with an occasional meal worm and cricket. I have put a cricket or two in the enclosure before and I think she hunts them at night (I have a camera I watch her one and she’s very active and running around) and I don’t end up seeing the crickets later dead or alive in there.

I refill her water once a day to every other day. I have noticed she spends a lot of time there at night, I was watching her on the camera be there perfectly still for almost two hours the other day. I dont know if that’s normal but she doesn’t seem to be lethargic or anything 

I’m also curious about supplements because when I did research it seemed like I should definitely be giving them a d3 supplement but then the breeder I got her from said I shouldn’t if I have a uvb and that it’s a common misconception that they need supplements and that it could lead to abnormal bone growth. So I dont know what to believe anymore.

I have this calcium powder without d3 that I’ve been putting in that food bowl and the bugs will crawl around and get some on them and then she’ll eat them so shes getting a little bit of that right now. The powder is also almost expired I dont know how much that matters.

I also am a little unsure how much to feed her because i was hoping to feed her as much as shed eat in a separate area within ten minutes, that’s what I’ve heard to do but she’s still pretty skittish and will hiss at me and run away if I try to pick her up and the couple times I’ve been successful in getting her into a separate space with insects she doesn’t want to eat she just wants to get out 

I’ve kind of just been doing maybe 4-6 insects in the bowl per day and they seem to mysteriously disappear so that’s where we’re at right now. I did get her to eat from my tongs once the other day though. I’ve been putting wads of paper towels with my scent in her hides to hopefully acclimate her to me. I don’t want to stress her out too much by continuing to try to pick her up and her getting angry and hissing/nipping at me

And lastly I haven’t seen her poop or pee at all except for once on the first day when I took her out to try to feed in a separate container and I think it stressed her out. I assume it’s happening but I don’t see anything in the enclosure and it doesn’t smell at all yet. I dont know if that’s just cause I have a bioactive soil that’s doing its thing?

Sorry for the huge brain dump I’m just new to this but also committed to treating her well so any advice and answers to this is welcome and appreciated :)

New gecko advice