Hello All

[Dracos Dragon]

My wife and I have kept snakes for years and about 1 week ago purchased two BD's named Piggy and Widget.
Piggy settled in straight away ate crickets on site.
Widget is smaller and would stay cooped up in one corner, was told to try wax worms and has eaten 3 and now eats crickets on site, was worried for a while.

Just a few questions really:

1) How can I dust the cricketand what should I put in for there food
2) Brown or black Crickets
3) Any recomendations for food other than crickets

Bye for now!![/list]

 

[sniches]

Welcome to the fourm, Dracos dragon. You will love it here. here are the answers to some of ur questions:

dust the crickets with calcum in a bag or a cup.
use brown crickets
feed greens such as: dandilion greens and collard greens
you can feed him crickets, wax worms, mealworms, and silk wormsfor the meat area. you can feed him only one meat, you dont have to feed them all to him

 

[Dracos Dragon]

Thanx for the tips.

Should I feed them everyday or every other day

Both have settled nicely and a joy to have.

 

[Catalyst]

Just a few questions about your setup and husbandry:

How big is your tank?
What are the temps?
How are you measuring the temps?
What UV light do you have?
How close can the dragon get to it?
Are the two dragons sharing a tank?
How old are they?
What do you feed them? How often?
Are you using supplements? which ones and how often?
What is your substrate?

This info will help us point out any potential problems for your new guys

As far as your questions, check out this site for a list of what foods are good and how often they should be given: http://www.beautifuldragons.503xtreme.com/Nutrition.html

Dragons should have a good salad available to them every day. Young dragons will likely ignore this salad most of the time, but it is important to make it available to them to try out and they will eat more and more of it as they grow up.
Young dragons should have live food anywhere from 1-3x a day depending on how old they are, as many as they will eat in about 15 minutes. This can work out to 50-100 crickets each per day. Don't worry about overfeeding - they only eat what they need and won't get fat at that age. If you have adult dragons then they eat far less live food - their diet is about 90% greens and 10% bugs as adults.
Good salad staples are collard greens, dandelion greens, endive, and squash among others. Good live feeders include crickets, silkworms, horn worms, pheonix worms, and roaches. Stay away from mealworms, and only feed superworms after the dragon is 16" long.

Hope this helps,
-- Catalyst

 

[Dracos Dragon]

Thanks for the reply and so many questions, here goes;

1) 800mm x 400mm x 800mm
2) Bask; 80-95C Cool; 75C
Night; 70C
3) Min-Max Thermometer (bask light on timer and heat mat for nights)
4) Repto Glo 8.0 (20w)
5) About 5" away
6) Housed together
7) About 3 months
8) Apple/carrot/kale/spinach, crickets and the odd wax worm for Widget
9) Nutrobol
10) Desert Blend,Lizard Litter

We have what I would say a very good shop that deals with reptiles and everything I got was a reccommendation Also spoke to a couple of others and bought some books and also found this very helpful website.

 

[Catalyst]

1) 800mm x 400mm x 800mm

So it's about 80 cm x 40 cm... which works out to 3 or 3.5 square feet of floor space. That'll be okay for a short time but it won't take long for them to outgrow that. A single adult dragon needs a minimum of 6-8 square feet of floor space, which equates to about a 75g tank or larger per dragon.

2) Bask; 80-95C Cool; 75C
Night; 70C

If those temps are in celcius than they are way too high (90c work out to 190F). If they're farenheit then they need to go up a bit during the day. Your basking spot should be in the 100-110F range, and the cool side around 85F. At night you don't need to heat the tank unless it drops below the low sixties, otherwise teh cooldown is natural and healthy for them.

3) Min-Max Thermometer (bask light on timer and heat mat for nights)
4) Repto Glo 8.0 (20w)
5) About 5" away

Sounds good - is that thermometer digital? The stick on ones aren't accurate at all.

6) Housed together

Housing dragons together is a tricky business since they are essentially solitary animals. If you keep two males together they'll fight, a male female mix and the male will constantly try to mate resulting in stress and injury for the female. The only combination that works sometimes is two females of the same size. You need to have a huge tank to keep multiple dragons, with multiple basking spots and feeding spots so that there is no competition between animals. You also need to be prepared to separate them at the first sign of trouble - there have been cases of owners coming home to find one dragon dead or severely injured because they just started fighting out of nowhere after years of living together peacefully. I'd personally suggest separating your little ones, its easier and less stressful for everyone.

7) About 3 months
8) Apple/carrot/kale/spinach, crickets and the odd wax worm for Widget

Apples as fruit should only be given occassionally due to the high sugar content I beleive, kale is also an occassional food. Check out that site I gave you earlier for more appropriate daily staples.

9) Nutrobol

I'm not familiar with that product.
The crickets should be dusted 5 or 6x a week with calcium with d3 (phosphorus free) and the remaining 1 or 2x a week with a multivitamin supplement.

10) Desert Blend,Lizard Litter

Particle substrates aren't generally recommended for young dragons because like human babies, everything ends up in their mouth eventually and since it's not exactly digestible it can lead to impaction. Particle substrates also absorb some of the moisture from their waste and is hard to keep clean, so it forms a breeding ground for bacteria and the like. For babies, your best bet is a solid substrate like paper towels, ceramic or slate tiles, nonahesive shelf liner, or reptile carpet. Once they are adults (therefore less "licky" and more adept at catching prey without getting a mouthful of ground covering) you can put them back on a particle substrate if you'd really like to.

Hope this is helpful to you. There's a lot to learn when you bring home a dragon and this is a great place to do it.
-- Catalyst

 

[Dracos Dragon]

Thanks for all your advice.

The temps are in F read the thermometer wrong, its about 90F in there during the day.

You say I need a 75 gallon tank, as I am keeping 2 what sizes dose this equate too, still very new at all this.

 

[Catalyst]

You say I need a 75 gallon tank, as I am keeping 2 what sizes dose this equate too, still very new at all this.

I'd imagine that you should then double the size and find something in the area of 12 square feet of floor space. I'd suggest that you post that question under the enclosures section of this forum though, - you'll probably get more replies there. There are some good building plans in that section as well, since building a huge enclosure would be cheaper than buying one, and there are also plans for stackable enclosures in case you do decide to split them up but don't have floor space for two tanks. Hope this helps,

-- Catalyst