jjsonic1883
New member
about 8 months ago around july 17, i got my bearded dragon dusty from petsmart, after my old one died after only having them for 3 weeks. i thought i would make this post to introduce him to this community, and to see if i need to improve on anything for his enclosure. i’ve checked his gender, and from what i found he seems to most likely be male. when i got him, he was around 3 weeks to a month old, and i kept him in the enclosure i kept my previous beardie, copper in. to this day, he is in a 40 gallon 18x18x36 enclosure, and his enclosure came from a thrive starter kit, i hear starter kits are usually bad but this one was honestly ok, it had good accessories, a good enclosure and it came with a carpet instead of some kits that come with sand. the only thing that wasn’t too good were the coils it came with. it came with normal lamp holders, just the basking bulb was a lower wattage around 100 watts, and there was a uvb coil bulb, which i hear isn’t good enough for your bearded dragon. he now has a 150 watt basking bulb, but he still uses the uvb coil bulb, however i’m soon planning to try and get a uvb tube stick, which i hear works a lot better. for his flooring, if thats the right word, he uses a thrive carpet for 40-gallon enclosures, i’m thinking about getting tiles soon, since i hear those can be better, and even file your beardie’s nails. anyways, his enclosure accessories include a basking rock with a hide, some rocks from my backyard, a food and water bowl, a hammock, and a fossil accessory for looks and for him to sit on if he wants to. well, moving on from his enclosure, it’s time to talk about dusty himself. i predict him to be around 9 months old right now, and he’s about 14-15 inches long and 2-3 inches wide. i don’t know his weight because i don’t have anything to measure it. his diet consists of around 15-20 large crickets a day, and he gets daily salad consisting of mainly collard greens with occasional other things like carrots and blueberries. he’ll also sometimes get other bugs, such as dubia roaches and sometimes waxworms as a treat. every other day i dust his crickets with calcium and reptavite as well if i have any. he goes to bed around 8 pm est and wakes up around 8 am, and his basking bulb is 150 watts so it should be around 100 degrees fahrenheit, but the thermometers in the enclosure say its around 90-95 degrees, but it’s probably off, and i don’t have a temperature gun to measure the accurate temperature. but anyways that’s about all there is to say about him, and i’ll also include some picture of him along with this post. i’d like to know what i should improve on with his enclosure, because i feel like my care could be off a little. but anyways, there isn’t much else to say, and this is an indroduction to dusty as well as a care check to see what i should improve with his enclosure.