pet store dragons

this probably won't get any response lol , but if it does , i'm just curious to know how people's pet store dragon experiences were. ( with pictures of your dragon ! ) i got mine from petsmart and he's made big improvements in only 4 weeks. so i was just curious to know how anybody else's were (good & bad)
* top is him in petsmart , bottom is him now ? ( i realize his eyes are squinted and i'm sure that might trigger some of you & make people think he's unhealthy , but he is shedding on his head and i am aware that can irritate their eyes. his eyes are fully opened and alert all the time , and they are fully opened and alert as i type this right now. he is perfectly healthy and well taken care of.)

Very hard for pet shops to become licenced to stock and sell reptiles here in Australia, there are some , even one in my town (in our case the owner is president of the local herpetology club and been breeding pythons and skinks and geckos for many years and he makes sure all his staff are keen reptile enthusiasts and keepers (else don't apply for the job essentially). I live in Australia and it's illegal to keep reptiles unless you have a permit to do so.

I've bought all my pet reptiles (with the exception of the two rescued skinks) from LOCAL breeders.

I would not even consider buying a reptile from a pet shop unless the care and conditions their stock were kept under was TOP KNOTCH. if not, I wont even give them my custom (for insects , or assessories either).

Squinty eyes - no big deal - mine often squint esp when basking, even bask with their eyes closed. S

We got our snake from a pet store as a baby and our bearded dragon from a rescue as a young adult. They both seemed to be in decent shape when we got them, and we had a pretty good experience with the people we got them from in both cases, especially the rescue. I've heard a number of horror stories about pet stores, but most of the local ones here in Anchorage (except for one that has since gone out of business) seem to be pretty good for the most part, even the local Petcos and Petsmarts (believe it or not, Anchorage has at least two of each). The Municipality also runs a very good animal control facility as well. I guess we're pretty lucky here, compared to what I've heard about other areas.

I got my little guy from a Petco, and he was sick for the first two months I got him. After about two weeks, we took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with adenovirus, and an eye infection (from being told to purchase an incorrect UVB). At one point, we thought we were going to have to put him down. With the help of the people here, a good herp vet, and supplements, we've nursed him back to normality. Now, he's a voracious eater, has healthy BMs, has clear and alert eyes, and is developing quite the belly!

Side note: We received almost completely incorrect care information from Petco. We were, however, reimbursed for all three of his vet bills. Still, I will never buy another animal from them, let alone supplies for the one I have now. I don't even buy feeder crickets from them, as they can carry diseases as well.

Yikes! I hate to think that even the crickets and roaches aren't safe -- Petco is about the only place I know of where we can get ours locally, since the little "mom and pop" business we used to buy them from shut down a couple of years ago. Trying to order live feeders and get them shipped here is problematic as well, so we don't have much of a choice. So far so good, except that I'm not 100% sure where the adenovirus came from, although I don't think that insects can carry that?

The worst that's happened so far is a poop with a bunch of little white things in it that looked like miniature grains of rice. I rushed a sample to the vet, thinking that my beardie had some sort of parasites, but it turned out to be cricket eggs. (I'm not trying to breed my own crickets, but I guess the crickets had other ideas.)

Wow, I've never heard of cricket eggs in poop. But then again, we can only feed our beardie medium-sized crickets because of his size, and most of those are too young to reproduce. The adenovirus was contracted from another reptile, I'm assuming at Petco or wherever they bought him. He had it already when we purchased him. I would advise anyone, when buying a beardie, to get it tested for adenovirus, especially if it's from a Petsmart or Petco

I bought my baby Mandrake from petco and i cannot tell you how sick he was. Of course my being a new dragon guardian I had no idea not to do that. After we brought him home he showed definite signs of illness so I contacted petco and they took him to one of their vets who gave him the wrong dosage of calcium. He has metabolic bone disease and it got worse. I was frantic looking up symptoms online and trying to figure what I needed to do. Finally I found a good herp vet and wet took care of it. He is a healthy little man now but I would definitely recommend adoption or a breeder. It's just sad to me too think that these babies suffer like they do!

I bought my beardie at a Petsmart. She was 2 months old and 11 inches long. She has been perfectly healthy and tame. She even cuddled with me on Day 3. Though she did scratch at the glass when I was looking at her, so she probably picked me rather than me picking her.n

i'm a new beardie owner, but i did my research before buying. the lady handed me a double basking light (for night and day) and said one was a basking light & one was a uvb. i ended up putting it back and ordering a uvb. i went in to buy wax worms (he ran out of crickets- in the process of getting silk worms) and they were huge and said it was safe to feed a baby. he did get impacted (cause i honestly had no idea about impaction before that) but he got cleared up within a day. i would never take advice from petsmart. i went in there yesterday just to see the conditions of the new babies and one was tinier than mine when i got him, and the other had a nasty eye infection. petsmart is risky , but i think i got very lucky

YoursTruly":1rgw76jn said:

Wow, I've never heard of cricket eggs in poop. But then again, we can only feed our beardie medium-sized crickets because of his size, and most of those are too young to reproduce. The adenovirus was contracted from another reptile, I'm assuming at Petco or wherever they bought him. He had it already when we purchased him. I would advise anyone, when buying a beardie, to get it tested for adenovirus, especially if it's from a Petsmart or Petco

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We usually buy sub adult crickets for our beardie too, but since we only have the one beardie and he doesn't eat them in huge quantities, sometimes we keep the crickets long enough for them to grow up before he eats them.

There seems to be an epidemic going on with adenovirus. Our beardie was a rescue and he was about a year old when we got him, and he didn't start getting sick until over a year later, so we're really not sure exactly how he caught it. The important thing now is that he seems to have recovered reasonably well, and we keep him away from other reptiles.

The virus can live dormant in dragons and show up later in life. Or, like mine, it can present almost immediately. Some dragons are simply carriers and never show symptoms. It's good that you are keeping yours separate from other reptiles, because that's extremely important for the health of any other reptiles you might have.

My fiancé desperately told me to stay away from the chain petstores to get my beardie and wanted me to wait until a reptile show was nearby but I was extremely impatient.. I got mine in the very beginning of December and I had watched her a few times in there before I made up my mind that she looked healthy and full enough to buy. She was 4" then and a foot long now two months later She gets more and more orange with every shed too. I never imagined shed grow this big this fast.
I will say that PetSmart literally sold me every wrong lighting, food and calcium products they possibly could and I ended up exchanging everything the same week and getting everything right thanks to this amazing website and everyones tips!!

got both of my beardies for christmas this year. roscoe came from a denver petsmart and stella came from a petsmart in pueblo. stella is a hypo and possibly a paradox,(see "hypo paradox beardie?")roscoe is normal and they are only a few months old. roscoe is giddy and full of energy and may have mbd( look for "weird beardie hump") but stella is fat and laid back and will let you put anything on it. it is waving at me right now. both love to chase and eat crickets and they have grown on me. dunno what I would do without them. check them out. they're snuggling!!!(they trade sitting on top of each other every night to sleep)
stella top
roscoe bottom

Yep, emilyzabeth that's exactly what happened with me when I went to Petsmart. They had almost no correct husbandry information.

ghostarcherbeardie":2zurekhz said:

they're snuggling!!!(they trade sitting on top of each other every night to sleep)

stella top
roscoe bottom

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I hate to say this, but this kind of piling on top of each other is not usually due to affection even though it looks like snuggling. It's usually dominance behavior where one or the other is trying to hog the best basking or sleeping site. These two are probably fairly evenly matched for the time being, since you say they often trade places, but it probably won't stay that way for long.

Even though you may hate to do it because they seem so cute together, it's best to separate them and put them each in their own enclosure as soon as you can. One or the other is likely to eventually get stressed out and fail to thrive, or even get hurt. Bearded dragons are not really social and they do best if they have their own space.

Sorry to be the one to point this out They look good otherwise