Meet Iggy! My beautiful teenager

I adopted him just a few days ago and the mother of my closest friend, Maz Dei'jai, decided to name him Iggy after the godfather of punk himself, Iggy Pop






He is 4.5 months old and highly suspected to be a male. He LOVES water and instantly calms the moment he is in it and recongizes it for what it is, but otherwise panicks getting into it, silly thing! As such, I give him a daily bath. From what I can determine so far after a few days of caring for him, he seems to enjoy squash the most out of all the veggies and is attracted towards yellow/creamish coloured veggies and fruits, otherwise he'll instantly gobble up any cricket that comes within his range of vision (provided he's not full). Iggy's a gentle eater, not voracious or that. I've tried to bribe him into eating more veggies by putting a silkworm or two into them, but the little cheeky brat usually manages to eat said silkworm with the smallest amount of veggies possible.

Iggy has a most curious nature about him and loves to explore any room he is in, given that he has the freedom and trust to do so. Thankfully, because we have cats within the house (two of them), he doesn't seem to recongize what they are. I do usually lock them outside of any rooms he is present in if he's outside of his vivarium, unless there's other individuals present to offer help on hand with minding the cats.

I've found a vet just up the street who's willing to take Iggy under his wing, and said vet offers VERY fair prices, thank goodness. He's extremely gruff and straight to the point, which I LOVE. But with that said, I'm getting wellness check done on Iggy next pay-day along with a fecal exam at the same time to check for anything like harmful parasites that may be present.

And finally, have a photo of him being a derp:

He's a good looking dragon =). I'm glad he has a happy home with you. The squash is a favorite of my guy too.

CooperDragon":3av5r9i5 said:

He's a good looking dragon =). I'm glad he has a happy home with you. The squash is a favorite of my guy too.

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Awwr, thank you ^_^ I fear the squash and other watery goodies are giving my Dragon watery feces though, as detailed in this thread: https://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=237483

Iggy seems very happy in his new home. He was quite unsure of his new surroundings at first, but seems to be slowly adapting at last now

Here's another picture from this morning as he was having free roam of the computer room on the floor, whilst being carefully supervised

Well, this is a first and partially second degree burn I gave myself as I was trying to get Iggy off his basking spot. I was going to offer him a bath but he clung for dear life to his basking area, clearly wanting more warmth. So as I was about to let him go and leave him be, I briefly touched the 150 W Ceramic Heating Coil and badly burned myself It is VERY painful at the moment and I have no cream with any lignocaine in it, unfortunately.

OW! Yeah those coils can get really hot, it's nuts. I stopped using them because they'd get so hot I felt they were dangerous (risk of burn and fire hazard).

CooperDragon":2m9ylpq8 said:

OW! Yeah those coils can get really hot, it's nuts. I stopped using them because they'd get so hot I felt they were dangerous (risk of burn and fire hazard).

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Definitely! I don't want to present any harm to my Dragon nor the people who live here along with me :<

Hello again all! Another update to the new living conditions of my Beardie, Iggy ^_^ His vivarium now has a 120 cm Zoo-Med Fluorescent Hood Reflector with an appropriately sized Arcadia 14% UVB fluorescent tube! I was ecstatic that Kellyville Pets [ 1 ] sent me one and for such a cheap price at that too, after all the trouble I had with the 90 cm Zoo-Med Hood [ 2 ] that I purchased from them. Which, by the way, they actually let me keep along with the appropriately sized fluorescent tube, where in which I will repair using my skills in electronics For the basking spot, Iggy now has a 125 W Exo-Terra "Solar Glo" MVB (mercury vapor bulb), which seems to be quite well reputed here. I have re-purposed his 150 W Ceramic Heat Emitter by putting it in the middle and attaching it to the thermostat, which gives a boost of heat if the man cave becomes too chilly. I do need to get a better thermostat though, of which I will then be able to attach the MVB onto as well and thus ensure that the vivarium never reaches a temperature that's deadly to Iggy. Right now, I'm just carefully monitoring the temperature throughout the day.

For those that are wondering, the ambient air-temperature throughout the day is usually around 31-34 *C. On hot days, it of course goes above that but then, I just attach the MVB to the thermostat temporarily (even if they don't do well being turned on/off repeatedly).

[ 1 ] - https://www.kellyvillepets.com.au/
[ 2 ] - https://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1826231

Any comments will be deeply appreciated, thank you!

EDIT: Iggy just had his bath

That's a nice upgrade! The 14% arcadia is a new bulb and incredibly powerful. That should produce plenty of UVB for that tank. I wouldn't bother with the MVB with that in play. Just a halogen flood light from Bunnings should do the trick. They will handle dimming much more easily too so you can fine tune the temps as needed.

CooperDragon":s43kb36w said:

That's a nice upgrade! The 14% arcadia is a new bulb and incredibly powerful. That should produce plenty of UVB for that tank. I wouldn't bother with the MVB with that in play. Just a halogen flood light from Bunnings should do the trick. They will handle dimming much more easily too so you can fine tune the temps as needed.

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I still like the MVB because the Arcadia tube is situated at the front of the vivarium, as you can see below. Unless you and others here still think it isn't necessary? (The duck tape is there purely to stop the cats in this house from knocking off the fluorescent hood and breaking it if they were to ever jump up)


I do like that you can dim the halogen flood lights but those dimmable thermostats are very expensive, so much so that they are currently out of my price range for a few months. Plus once I buy a good day/night thermostat, what will I do with that when/if I get a dimmable? Plus simple rheostats don't seem to be available in Australia like they are over in the states.

Yeah the programmable thermostats are expensive. Nice to have but a luxury item to an extent. You might be able to find a lamp dimmer that will do the same thing manually. I have one on one of my portable basking lights so I can fine tune the output and cut it back a bit if it gets too hot. You need to monitor temps and adjust it yourself but they're $10-15 or so rather than over $100.

The UVB light at the front of the tank is fine. It will create a gradient as you move back in the tank which is nice to have. I have my Arcadia at the front of my tank too so that Darwin can move to the back if he wants to be under the hot area but have less UVB exposure which he does choose to do sometimes.

CooperDragon":1mow7rmg said:

Yeah the programmable thermostats are expensive. Nice to have but a luxury item to an extent. You might be able to find a lamp dimmer that will do the same thing manually. I have one on one of my portable basking lights so I can fine tune the output and cut it back a bit if it gets too hot. You need to monitor temps and adjust it yourself but they're $10-15 or so rather than over $100.

The UVB light at the front of the tank is fine. It will create a gradient as you move back in the tank which is nice to have. I have my Arcadia at the front of my tank too so that Darwin can move to the back if he wants to be under the hot area but have less UVB exposure which he does choose to do sometimes.

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I'm surprised to learn that they self UVB regulate o_o That would explain quite a bit of Iggy's behaviour though with regard to some of his movements around the vivarium. Thanks!

I was surprised to the extent of it. I've seen some interesting time lapse videos and done my own observations showing they tend to really move about over the course of the day. Leads me to really try to offer as much variety as possible so they have what they need.

Here's Iggy, being snuggled by one of my closest of all friends, Deanna He really cuddles in close to her at times, closing his eyes and everything. It's so adorably sweet XD

I recently acquired a HabiStat Thermostat [ 1 ] from Arcadia themselves and it is such an upgrade over my older thermostat! Iggy's temperatures are taken care of so much better now and the Solar Glo MVB is turned off appropriately as needed, if things get far too hot. I still have the CHE on the old thermostat though as unfortunately, the HabiStat only supports one heater output.

[ 1 ] - http://www.arcadia-aust.com.au/thermostats/

CooperDragon":1523k28k said:

I was surprised to the extent of it. I've seen some interesting time lapse videos and done my own observations showing they tend to really move about over the course of the day. Leads me to really try to offer as much variety as possible so they have what they need.

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I'm even happier that Iggy has such a branch that he currently does at the moment, as it offers shade from the lights. Though I think I might add a cave or something for him also. What do you think?

Awwr, no-one is replying to my topic

I recently got my Iggy some ceramic tiles that actually fit into his vivarium this time! It only took three purchases worth of ceramic tiles and a waste of ~AUD$60 in cash c_c


I decided to keep the shredded paper for two reasons. 1) Iggy loves to burrow into it at night, both for warmth (I turn down the temperature slightly at night to simulate desert conditions) and probably because he feels much safer there away from the cat that sleeps in the same room. I cannot remove this cat from the room, that is a given. The cat was here first. I was told that if I were to get Iggy, this is how things would be, so I just have to accept that. And 2) He likes to poop there. Yes, I know what some of you will say but really, Beardies aren't that delicate. They've lived in the wild for thousands of years and whilst they may garner a few extra years out of life in domestication, they still aren't all that delicate as made out to be. To begin with, Iggy doesn't eat the paper and when I observed him trying it once, he immediately spat it back out. Plus if he were to ever get an open wound and/or an infection of some kind, I would remove the shredded paper from his vivarium completely so if that's the case, and just have the ceramic tiles until the issue is well and truly gone. So I am trying to be reasonable about it.

With that said, I would still like to know people's thoughts on all this. I'm very open minded and do try to be as reasonable as possible, plus I just want what's best for Iggy.