Eating/Behavior Questions

I have a 7 1/2 month old beardie. When I first got him, he would eat dubia roaches out of a dish in his enclosure. For a while he went through a stretch where he would only eat them if I ran them past his nose on the floor of his enclosure. A few weeks ago, he stopped eating pretty much everything for almost a week.

Now, he's been back to eating his roaches, and he eats them out of his bowl, but he only will eat in the morning (about 6-10 3/4" roaches) and then pretty much ignores food for the rest of the day. We did get some hornworms at a pet shop last week, and fed them one of those every night and he was very eager to eat that. He also doesn't really bother with his salad, which we offer everyday. Mix of different greens, mostly collard and mustard, topped with sweet potato, occasional red pepper and also butternut squash.

He spends most of the day in his basking spot, but by about 5 at night many nights, he's off his basking spot laying on the floor of his tank, sometimes in the warm area and sometimes in the cool.

Any suggestions for why he isn't interested in a nighttime meal? I feel like at 7 months, he should still eat quite voraciously. He's never been a huge eater, compared to some beardies I read about here.

He's 17 1/2 inches (LONG tail) and 290 grams right now.

He's in a 40 gallon enclosure with a Reptisun 10.0 T5 (which reads 4-6 UVI at his basking spot), a halogen PAR 38 flood light with basking temps around 102-105. His hot side is around 85-90 and cool side 75-80.

Also, he only poops about once a week.

eta: His substrate is paper towels.

Hello,

Your tank set up sounds very good. Do you have any pictures of that for us, along with your
7 month old we could see?
How long has he been slown down or not eating as much? He is getting to the age to where
he could be going through a minor brumation type of phase. This is fairly common among the
youngsters. Also, they go through periods of time where they tend to change their eating
preferences for some reason. They like change sometimes~!
What time do you feed him in the morning? He just may not be hungry for some reason. You
could let him eat more in the first feeding then if he's more hungry earlier in the day.
How often do you give calcium & vitamin supplementation?
Has he ever eaten any greens previously?
Let us know how he is doing.

Tracie

Drache613":fkrmfy9p said:

Hello,

Your tank set up sounds very good. Do you have any pictures of that for us, along with your
7 month old we could see?
How long has he been slown down or not eating as much? He is getting to the age to where
he could be going through a minor brumation type of phase. This is fairly common among the
youngsters. Also, they go through periods of time where they tend to change their eating
preferences for some reason. They like change sometimes~!
What time do you feed him in the morning? He just may not be hungry for some reason. You
could let him eat more in the first feeding then if he's more hungry earlier in the day.
How often do you give calcium & vitamin supplementation?
Has he ever eaten any greens previously?
Let us know how he is doing.

Tracie

Click to expand...

Here's some pics of him and his enclosure.






His enclosure also has a halogen standard style light bulb to light/warm the cool side of the enclosure, as our house is kept at 68 during the day, and he has a CHE to keep the temps above 65 at night.

It's probably been a month or so total where he's been pickier about eating, though he's never been a huge eater like some dragons I read about on here, though I know they're all different. His lights come on at 5:45 and I give him his bugs at about 6:45 before I leave for work. He usually doesn't run right to them. Because he doesn't eat them right away, I have to leave them in his bowl all day. I usually put about 12-15 dubias in there (3/4") and when I come home, there's between 0-6 left in the bowl. I usually offer his evening bugs around 6 PM and his lights go off at 8:30.

I dust his morning bugs with Reptical w/d3 5 days a week, and Reptivite on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I previously had a t8 Reptisun 10.0 at about 7 inches from his basking spot, but added a t5 on top of the screen to boost the UVI to 4-6 from the 2-ish range I was getting from the t8 alone. Today after cleaning the enclosure, I removed the back-wall mounted t8, and mounted the t5 inside the enclosure, setting his basking spot for 4-6 UVI.

He seemed to be more interested in veggies earlier on, but now not so much. He never ate a ton of them, and I've never seen him eat them, but I'd come home and they were scattered around and it looked as though he'd eaten some, so I kind of assumed he had. Now, it seems like his bowls of salad go all day undisturbed.

I tried some BSFL a while back, but he seemed to have minimal interest in those, eating only a dozen or so of the 500 I bought. =( He did eat a few of the flies after they pupated.