What am I doing Wrong? Sleepy, hunger striking juvenile.

Hi Beardie Friends,

Can I have some advice please? Im doing my best to look after little Gandi but she is still hardly eating, sleeping loads and not pooping regularly. I recently re-assessed the vivarium set up - moved the UV as advised on this forum, changed my basking bulb and got the temp gradient just right - but this hasn't changed any of the behaviours yet. I have our first appointment with a herp vet next week but I want to make sure I'm doing everything I can until then.

So I'm gonna use this list of questions and if anyone spot something I'm doing wrong please let me know - Gandi is my first dragon baby!

How old is your dragon? - 7 months +/-
How long have you had your dragon? - 5 months
How long is your dragon? - 41cm (250grams)
What is the sex of your dragon? - We think female...
What size enclosure do you have your dragon in? 48x18x18inch wooden vivarium
What type substrate do you have on the bottom of your tank? - Newspaper and a few slate tiles
Do you use UVB lights? - YUUUP
If so, Is it a coil, compact, fluorescent tube, or Mercury Vapor bulb? - fluorescent tube
What is the brand name and number of your bulb? Wattage (if MVB)? - Arcadia T5 D3+ 12% - 24 Watt
How old is your UVB bulb? - 5 months
How close can your dragon get to the UVB? - 28cm
Do you use a separate basking bulb? What kind and what is the wattage? Is it a white or colored bulb? - Yes a 150watt clear household bulb
What are the basking temps? - 41 Celsius (105F) to 38 Celsius(100F) (I use a angled sandstone rock as a basking spot)
What is the cool side temp? 27 Celsius (78.8F)
Do you take the temps with a stick on thermometer, a digital thermometer with a wire and a probe end or a temp gun? - a digital thermometer with a wire and a probe
Where exactly are you taking your basking temps? on the top of the rock closest to the basking bulb and a little further down the stone.
Do you use a heat rock or heat pad? - No
What do you feed your dragon? Please be specific.
Live - offered small locusts, crickets, silkworms and occasionally claciworms as she is not eating much. Salad daily of endive, butternut, dandelions - occasionally bell pepper, cucumber, watermelon, asparagus - whatever dragon safe veg/fruit I have in my house.
How often do you feed and what time do you feed (morning, afternoon, night)?
Eating has been a problem for about a month with it getting less and less. I am currently hand feeding and offering nutritious delicious silkworms by hand and she's not eating anything usually. Yesterday I got her to take 10 silkworms but nothing today yet. Salad is offered in the morning and afternoon and live food offered 3 times a day.
Do you gutload (feed) your crickets, worms, etc? yes - fed on what ever Gandi is being fed as salad.
Do you use vitamin or calcium supplements? What brand(s)? How many days a week do you use each of them? Rep-Cal Herptivite and Rep-Cal Rep-Cal Ultrafine Calcium Powder - everyday alternating between the two.
Is your dragon having regular bowel movements (poops)? NO! Once a week I'd say for two weeks. Last one was two days ago.
Do you bath your dragon? How often? every 2-3 days
Do you mist your dragon or offer water other than in the bath? Fresh water bowl daily and misted twice.
Have you gotten a vet check and fecal done? Next Wednesday....
Does your dragon share an enclosure with another dragon? Nope - Only lizard child.
In addition - Sleeping pattern...
Gandi doesn't get up in the morning, I'll take her and move her to her basking spot and she will warm up and wander around and seems fine, but not very active. After a few hours she goes and buries herself in her hideaway and wont come out again until unless I take her out. Should I be leaving her to sleep or trying to get her warm?

I really need some assurance that I'm not missing something - Thanks :dontknow:

Your setup sounds good. Is her weight stable? She's a bit too young to brumate. Hopefully the vet visit will turn up something helpful. It sounds like you're doing things properly.

Just wanted to double check. Is there anything between beardie and uvb, such as screen or plastic lens? Also what is the distance between the uvb and your beardie's back at the closest point?

It's unusual,but if her weight is stable then it really does sound like brumation. Though rare for them to brumate so young, it's not unheard of. You definitely want to take a fresh fecal sample with you to the Herp Vet to rule out parasites, worms, etc. because that's always a possibility, as is some type of infection, but your setup sounds perfect, and as long as the UVB tube isn't blocked by anything like a clear plastic safety cover on the fixture (they do this sometimes and it blocks pretty much all UVB light from penetrating through) or a glass lid or very dense mesh lid, I'm guessing this is either parasites or very early brumation. But you don't want her to brumate if she has parasites or any type of infection, so the Herp Vet visit is a must.

There isn't anything new or different in the room her enclosure is in, is there? Something that might be stressing her out? A new pet, like a cat? Any twitching, spasms, limping, dragging of legs, lumps or curves in spine, swelling in her extremities, or any other signs of pain or discomfort? If you lift her lip up and look at her gums, are they the normal pink color, or are they pale/white?

Thanks for the responses.

Theres nothing blocking the uv light and I don't have a reflector on it. It was moved 2 weeks ago because I realised it was too close. The distance now to beardies back - Closest is 28cm (this is on the ground under the light) and 30cm from beardies back on the basking spot.

Weight to be honest I'm not sure - I hadn't weighed for a month before this started. Weight has been steady for the last week but may have dropped before.

Checked her mouth as best I could and its a light pink.

Nothing environmentally changed in her room except the change of season but her temps have been steady.

No twitching, limping, dragging or lumps in spine. Also no noticeable blockages in her abdomen (I give her gentle tummy rubs in the bath).

My main question now is do I keep waking her to bask and try to eat? I'm taking her out of her hide and setting her on the basking spot to warm up at mean times so I can offer her food 3 times a day.

Once again thank you for your time!

BadgerGirl":343vvu2g said:

Thanks for the responses.

Theres nothing blocking the uv light and I don't have a reflector on it. It was moved 2 weeks ago because I realised it was too close. The distance now to beardies back - Closest is 28cm (this is on the ground under the light) and 30cm from beardies back on the basking spot.

<<<< An Arcadia T5HO 12%UVB without a reflector hood gives 80 microW UVB / sq.cm @ 30cm , I have one and just measured it using my Solarmeter 6.2 UVB meter. This is not enough.
<<<< easy fixed by installing an Arcadia slipon reflector , will essentially double the UV and bring it up to where it needs to be (about 160-200 microW UVB / sq.cm @ the same distance)..



Weight to be honest I'm not sure - I hadn't weighed for a month before this started. Weight has been steady for the last week but may have dropped before.

Checked her mouth as best I could and its a light pink.

Nothing environmentally changed in her room except the change of season but her temps have been steady.

No twitching, limping, dragging or lumps in spine. Also no noticeable blockages in her abdomen (I give her gentle tummy rubs in the bath).

My main question now is do I keep waking her to bask and try to eat? I'm taking her out of her hide and setting her on the basking spot to warm up at mean times so I can offer her food 3 times a day.

<<< think once you either move the 12% naked tube closer , or install a reflector hood or slip on reflector , the big boost in UVA will boost her activity level and apetite. Might take a week or two.
In the mean time it's perfectly OK to assist feed her , see this for method : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=235583

Once again thank you for your time!

Click to expand...

Chances are her metabolism has slowed , so it's taking longer for the food to be processed and pass through her GIT , a week to two weeks between poos is common . You might find this interesting :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=232446 , not much food in ==> not much poo out and if she saves it up, a longer interval between poos.

Oh the darn UV positioning! I've been given bad info on this from the start so I wouldn't be surprised if this is our issue. And I tried so hard to make sure I got it right!

I've ordered a clip on reflector as I don't want to move the light back to the back wall of the viv as the angle of light is bad for there eyes... Right?

Thanks for those posts kingofnobbys - Thats a lot of poo data!

She is more active today, possible from having a bath last night. I'll look at more forceful hand feeding if she doesn't eat today. How often should I do this if she refuses to eat?

Honestly don't know if I would have gotten a lizard without this wonderful community <3

Hi Badger, can you post pics of your girl [ body shots ] as well as the viv ? And I just wanted to add that giving multivitamins every other day may be a bit too much....it's difficult to gauge how much they are getting. It's like if we just sprinkled a multi vit every other day on our food at random + we would not be sure how much we were getting and some vits. can cause health issues when given in excess. Just use the vitamins 1-2X a week.

UPDATE:
Got my new delivery of insects and she munched down 20calciworms and had a small poo! Still lethargic and sleepy but I guess it will take a few weeks to get back to full power after I instal the reflector.

I'll cut back on the vitamins.

Here is the viv:

And Gandi

She looks pretty good and her tank set up is beautiful. [ but does look a tad " sleepy".] Does she spend much time under the uvb in the basking area ? One thing to be aware of is that the rock holds a lot of heat and she may be avoiding it for that reason. With a 150 watt bulb it's going to be too hot. How long do you leave the probe on the rock when you measure the temp. ? I think that might be part of the problem, not that the Arcadia bulb is lacking in uvb output at that distance.

Try switching the rock with a basking log [ wood holds less heat ] and put the rock off to the side, or maybe use a 100 watt bulb with the rock instead of the 150.

Hey,
The probe lives on the top of the rock unless it gets knocked off and keeps a steady 41c throughout the day. Would this not give me surface temp?

She used to bask on the rock all the time - first few months we had her - but rarely goes there at the moment.

Because I'm in Scotland if I drop the wattage of the basking bulb the cool side temp drops and I find it hard to regulate and keep the temps steady using the che during the day.

I'll have a look for a good wooden basking log and see if a change helps get her under the light.

Thanks! Xxx

You're welcome. Again, everyone is just guessing at this point but maybe a fecal test will show something [ hopefully not ]

How about moving the log that she's perched on there in your pic over to the basking spot ? Or the other log ?

And do you keep the CHE on all the time or just at night ? How far does the uvb bulb reach ?

Every day is a school day and happy to be learning more!

CHE is only used at night - I tried a lower watt bulb before and had to use it during they day then but not with my current set up - and the UV runs from the right edge of the cage to more than half way across the cage - so getting UV even on the wooden stump in the middle.

I may have a play with the set up tomorrow when I install the reflector and see if she is more eager to bask.

If you want, maybe do one change at a time. Go ahead + install the reflector first as was suggested and see if there's any difference. After a few days if there's no difference, try switching to the log under the basking area. If still no change. maybe a lower watt basking bulb. Then maybe another very low watt bulb in the CHE fixture to provide more light during the day.

Then the vet visit might show if she has parasites which could explain everything. Hopefully there will be an easy solution and Gandi will be feeling better soon.

Great advice AHBD... I'll see if you can rule anything out in the process.