Blackenedsabbath
Hatchling Member
Hello all!
First off I'd like to apologize, this post turned out being much longer than I had originally planned haha.
I adopted my first beardie, Pancake, at the beginning of January. I work at a pet store, and this random lady walked in and dumped a tupperware container down on the counter and left. In the tupperware container was poor little Pancake looking rather upset.
The lady returned a little while later with his terrarium and some accessoires, explaining that she could no longer keep him. Since there is no place to set up a bearded dragon enclosure in the store and we don't sell reptiles, my boss told me if I wanted him, I could take him for free. After doing some research and getting permission from my parents, I brought Pancake home with me.
I have no idea how old he is, but he is 18 inches in length so I'm assuming he's fully grown. At the moment I'm trying to find a good vet that can look him over just to be on the safe side, as when I cleaned out the terrarium and accessories he came with, they were absolutely disgusting and even Pancake himself smelled bad and when I first gave him a bath the water was discoloured by the end of it :/ (both of those things stopped after I bathed him a second time). He also came with a Zoo Med basking light and a blue daylight bulb, both of which were burnt out, and his terrarium had cracked glass and multiple corners broken off, as well as holes in the screen. I replaced his terrarium with an Exo Terra 40 gallon terrarium about a week and a half ago now (he's adjusting well to it). For lighting, I have a 100W Exo Terra Intense basking bulb and a 13W Exo Terra 10.0 UVB (I tried a Zoo Med Reptisun UVB for him as well just in case, but he's much more active with the 10.0 UVB and it doesn't seem to be effecting his eyes at all). For heating I'm using a 1500W heater (probably excessive, but it gets pretty cold in Canada and when I tried a 100W ceramic heater it barely brought his tank up to 77 degrees F) with a thermostat and an Exo Terra under tank heater. During the day his tank is 82 degrees F and his basking spot is around 95 degrees F, during the night his tank is 70 - 72 degrees F. As a substrate I'm using ceramic tile.
For food, I'm feeding him primarily butternut squash, dandelion leaves, collard greens, and live crickets. He also occasionally has kale and/or Fluker's bearded dragon food mixed in with his greens. I have zoo med calcium powder that I've been dusting his food with three times a week. I don't know how often he was fed or what he was fed previously (he was afraid of the crickets the first time I put them in his tank), but since I've had him he's been given food every morning. He has quite the appetite and gets very excited about veggies :lol:
As Pancake is extremely energetic, I've made a playpen for him out of those foam puzzle piece mats and he runs around in it daily.
Overall, is there anything else I should be doing or could improve to make sure Pancake will be happy with me as his new owner? As I've only ever owned dogs my whole life I want to make sure my little guy can be as comfortable as possible (p.s. his tank is also out of the view and reach of my dogs so no worries there).
Thanks so much for reading this! I'm looking forward to being a part of this community and the world of Bearded Dragons!
First off I'd like to apologize, this post turned out being much longer than I had originally planned haha.
I adopted my first beardie, Pancake, at the beginning of January. I work at a pet store, and this random lady walked in and dumped a tupperware container down on the counter and left. In the tupperware container was poor little Pancake looking rather upset.
The lady returned a little while later with his terrarium and some accessoires, explaining that she could no longer keep him. Since there is no place to set up a bearded dragon enclosure in the store and we don't sell reptiles, my boss told me if I wanted him, I could take him for free. After doing some research and getting permission from my parents, I brought Pancake home with me.
I have no idea how old he is, but he is 18 inches in length so I'm assuming he's fully grown. At the moment I'm trying to find a good vet that can look him over just to be on the safe side, as when I cleaned out the terrarium and accessories he came with, they were absolutely disgusting and even Pancake himself smelled bad and when I first gave him a bath the water was discoloured by the end of it :/ (both of those things stopped after I bathed him a second time). He also came with a Zoo Med basking light and a blue daylight bulb, both of which were burnt out, and his terrarium had cracked glass and multiple corners broken off, as well as holes in the screen. I replaced his terrarium with an Exo Terra 40 gallon terrarium about a week and a half ago now (he's adjusting well to it). For lighting, I have a 100W Exo Terra Intense basking bulb and a 13W Exo Terra 10.0 UVB (I tried a Zoo Med Reptisun UVB for him as well just in case, but he's much more active with the 10.0 UVB and it doesn't seem to be effecting his eyes at all). For heating I'm using a 1500W heater (probably excessive, but it gets pretty cold in Canada and when I tried a 100W ceramic heater it barely brought his tank up to 77 degrees F) with a thermostat and an Exo Terra under tank heater. During the day his tank is 82 degrees F and his basking spot is around 95 degrees F, during the night his tank is 70 - 72 degrees F. As a substrate I'm using ceramic tile.
For food, I'm feeding him primarily butternut squash, dandelion leaves, collard greens, and live crickets. He also occasionally has kale and/or Fluker's bearded dragon food mixed in with his greens. I have zoo med calcium powder that I've been dusting his food with three times a week. I don't know how often he was fed or what he was fed previously (he was afraid of the crickets the first time I put them in his tank), but since I've had him he's been given food every morning. He has quite the appetite and gets very excited about veggies :lol:
As Pancake is extremely energetic, I've made a playpen for him out of those foam puzzle piece mats and he runs around in it daily.
Overall, is there anything else I should be doing or could improve to make sure Pancake will be happy with me as his new owner? As I've only ever owned dogs my whole life I want to make sure my little guy can be as comfortable as possible (p.s. his tank is also out of the view and reach of my dogs so no worries there).
Thanks so much for reading this! I'm looking forward to being a part of this community and the world of Bearded Dragons!
