Adoption update

I really have and he really does so much character. I can't imagine anyone not taking care of him or not anything to!! He wags his tail like a cat sometimes too ^_^

Hi Zombie!

I was sorry to find out that you had lost Maggie -- somehow I missed that post. (Too much happening on this website for me to keep up with it all) But I'm glad to hear that you resolved your "empty tank syndrome" problem by getting another beardie. That's what is usually recommended. And it sounds like you're having lots of fun with him and taking good care of him and like he's doing well.

Hi Bailey!! It's ok sometimes I'm away for weeks and miss a ton as well. Heck sometimes I swear I replied to a post and realize months later I never actually did. I am in love with this guy so much, but I need to spruce up his viv some more and get his hammock hung. The old hooks I had for mags don't work for this 1.5lb guy!!

Ok so I have a few questions that I need clarified for an adult please I use a 100w household bulb now and it puts my temp rang from 77-105 (cool to bask spot). He hangs in the 90-97 spot and won't really use the warmer areas. I want to put his hammock back up but it in the bask spot so I doubt he'll use it. Should I drop to a lower wattage bulb? I'm thinking it'll put his bask spot in the "desired" range but then the cool side will drop significantly.

Also I've got a family emergency and we have to leave out of town tomorrow night and won't be back til Sunday night. I have NOONE who can watch him and I can't take him with me. Will he be ok? What should I do? Will he be ok? Mags was fine when I went out of town but she was tiny and had tiny formed poops. He's a picky beast with giant messy poops!!

We've left our beardie alone for one night on a couple of occasions, the most recent one just this week, but I wouldn't feel safe leaving him alone for more than one night. We leave half the heat lamps on and the other half off so that the cool side of the tank is at nighttime temperatures, although I suspect that he probably just lays up on the platform and basks all night because that's what he tends to do if we forget and leave the lights on too late, but you could probably put the lights on a timer.

Your trip may be over by the time you read this so I hope everything went well.

Some beardies seem to have enough sense to stay out of their own poop, others not so much.

I try to keep Puff's basking temperatures between 95 and 105 F and he seems comfy. Dimmer switches are really convenient for fine tuning temperatures without having to swap out bulbs for ones with lower or higher wattages and without having to adjust the distance from the bulb to the basking area, but not all bulbs work with them. I stocked up on cheap incandescent light bulbs for heat before they stopped manufacturing them. I hope I have enough to last the reptiles for the rest of their lives, but if I run out I'll have to go shopping for whatever is available at the time -- I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

Hey!! Luckily I did splurge on a time back at the beginning and let me tell you it's the most amazing and glorious contraption ever. I highly suggest one! A dimmer should really be my next splurge. The 100w seems slightly low depending on the room temp but the 150w is too high all around. I've seen lost of people use 72watt flood lamps and that'd be great because they have such a large spotlight instead of more focused, but I'm afraid my temps would be too cool then.

Fat boy does not have enough sense, or he's a jerk one. Hell wait about a minute after he poops and then he runs through it and tracks and smears it EVERYWHERE!!! Worse than a child.

How's your guy doing? Since it's been a good amount of time, have you noticed a difference with the new uvb?

I don't seem to get along very well with timers, and since I'm home most of the time, I usually don't need them, but I LOVE the dimmer switches.

Puff is still holding his own, but I haven't seen much change since we got the new light. Most of the time he's mellow to the point of being listless, but that just seems normal for him nowadays. He still sometimes does the little dance that says either "Get me out of here I have to go to the bathroom" or "Get me out of here I want to run around the house and get into mischief" -- it's hard to tell the difference. And we did get a couple of afternoons of black bearding and head bobbing in the spring, so apparently he's still healthy enough to be thinking about making little dragons.

He still tends to get some kind of infections in his finger, wrist, and elbow joints, possibly in the bones, and we did another round of antibiotics a couple of months ago. One of his little pinkie fingers is still a little swollen and the claw tends to grow a little funky, but it doesn't seem to be bothering him so we opted not to try anything more drastic at this point. Amputation and/or biopsy was discussed, but I would only consider that if the infection was spreading and it came down to a matter of saving a finger or saving the rest of him. His calcium and uric acid levels tested normal, so we're not thinking MBD or gout. It may be an opportunistic infection related to the adenovirus, but they've never been able to culture anything identifiable from samples out of similar swellings in the past.

Worse than ever when it comes to being a lousy shot with his tongue. I finally resorted to giving him a little dish of roaches right on his basking platform instead of putting him in the feeding pen (a large plastic tub) which may have been getting too cold as well as being too slippery for him to get a good footing. He seems to do better with that. The roaches can get out of the dish, but they're a lot easier to catch than crickets just as long as I can keep track of them.