The Return of Smaug

Hi everyone! My name is Melissa and my boyfriend and I have recently adopted a 5-year-old adult bearded dragon named Smaug. She lived with him when she was a juvenile, and since then has changed hands several times. Unfortunately, her last humans were not responsible for her, so she has come to live with us (hopefully permanently, this time.)
I am an utter rookie when it comes to lizard care so I am hoping to get lots of information from this site! I already bought her a bigger tank and some better heating and lighting because when she came to us she was in a little aquarium with insufficient heat and no UVB source . I've been reading about beardies and I think I still have to change a few things about her set up, but she seems much happier. She spent the whole first day we had her basking as close to the lights as she could get (to the extent that she would climb to the highest edge of the hammock, push herself up, and lean over the edge to stretch her head INTO the lamps.... We had to rearrange) but now is spending some time lower down and chasing crickets around.
Her is (an attempt at uploading) a picture of our cranky little lady <3 <3 <3

I'm glad she found her way back to a good home with you =). She looks pretty healthy and content based on that photo so that's encouraging. Which lighting did you get for her? It's a good sign that she started basking and moving toward the lights. She probably really needed it. Please let us know if you have any specific questions about her care and we'll be happy to help out.

I'm glad she looks healthy! She's very friendly and cuddly when we take her out.
For UVB, I stopped using the CF UVB light from zoo med and ordered a repti sun 10.0 T8 to fit in the hood the aquarium came with. In the meantime, we're taking her outside during the hottest and sunniest part of each day.
For visible light, she's got room lights and a window in addition to her heat lamps and her tank gets quite bright!
I'm not sure what to do about her heat though. Her cool side and nighttime temps are fine, but her hot side only gets up to the mid-high 80s on the bottom, moving up to BARELY 95 as I measure along her hammock (which is slanted upwards.) I wonder if I am using my IR thermometer correctly, since with 3 (!) 100W lights and a "moonlight" bulb and a heating pad taped to the side of the tank with a blanket wrapped around it for insulation, it seems like it should be a lot warmer. It is a little tricky to measure her basking spot since it's her hammock and has holes in it. Still, her behavior indicates that she is too cold, since she spends most of her time as close to the lights as she can get and doesn't gape when she basks.
I'm pretty sure she has never in her life had proper heating & lighting, so I do worry that she may be making herself too hot because she doesn't know to go cool down How can I accurately measure her basking spot temperature? I have the All Living Things IR thermometer. Her body temperature does get higher than her hammock when she's up there since she's higher up and not full of holes. What would be a good body temp for her while she's basking? Should I worry that she doesn't gape? And is there such a thing as too close to her basking lights (which she can't reach because they're on top of a screen) as long as it's not too hot?

What are the dimensions of her tank? A T8 might not be the best choice for a larger tank. T5 is better suited for large tanks in most cases due to higher, more sun-like output. I think the lighting setup sounds too complicated. I would try to simplify that. I would remove the heat pad and focus on getting one basking light working to proper temps. I've had good luck using a PAR38 halogen flood light (90w in my case but this will vary between setups). That should produce temps over 100 at 25 inches away based on my testing. As I said though, this varies and may take some trial and error. See if you can get a combination of one basking light (I prefer more powerful sitting further away) and one good UVB light working for her. It's important to keep the basking lights out of reach but I prefer to keep them at least 12'' away from the basking area both to produce a wider basking beam and to keep them out of reach.

Thank you for your feedback! She is in a 75 gallon aquarium, I think it is 48" long by 20" tall by 19" wide.

To simplify, I put the hood for her UVB light back on the back of her tank to hold warm air in a little more and removed one of the 100W lamps and the heating mat. I am trying to work with the things I have for now because she has spent all of my money this pay period. For her basking spot, I tucked tinfoil into the wider fixture I have and put it with one 100W lamp over part of her hammock that is 8-12 inches below. I got the temps up to 98-108 by folding a fleece blanket onto her hammock at that spot to help hold heat! I turned off all the other lights to see how big her basking spot was and it's most intense in a circle about her size, and lights up about half her tank with medium intensity.

The other 100W lamp and the moonlight are in a double fixture near the middleish of her tank. This lengthens out her brighter basking spot a bit, and heats up a rock next to her hammock to get some heat down on the bottom of her tank and for nighttime. I will replace the moonlight with the CHE when I get it, and hopefully it will provide about as much heat, or a little more. The bottom is 76 degrees on the cool side to 86 on the warm side, and she has access to progressively warmer areas as she moves upwards, so I am happy with this set-up for her. I'll have to check nighttime temps without the heating pad, but I'm hoping my strategic rock placement and blankie + duct tape insulation will keep it at a good level.

Will the T8 really not work? I have a T8 fixture already and would have to buy a new one for the T5. The site says the T8's UVB penetrates to 20", and with the current set-up, the UVB tube will go all the way across her tank, won't be through a screen, and she'll be able to climb within a few inches of it. With the T5, I would have to re-finagle everything to keep her a safe distance away.

Thank you for all your help! Smaug appreciates it (even though she's grumpy that I accidentally booped her with a ruler taking all those measurements lol.)

That heat gradient should work. The T8 isn't powerful enough to provide adequate UVB for a bearded dragon at that distance. They produce shade levels of UVB at 6-8'' and not much at all beyond that based on my testing. A T5 produces mid-late morning/evening sunlight levels (when they usually bask most) at around 12-14'' so they are better suited for a larger tank like yours. Worth the investment in my opinion. For now, Try to get your T8 about 6'' above the main basking area for it to get the best out of it.