Luna is randomly looseing weight

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hi so i went to check on luna and she is now VERY VERY skinny. she has not had crickets in a few days cause they all died. and her uvb cracked any tips on wats wrong? she's drinking and pooping fine and eating her salad which has vitamin d3, a, and calcium. and how often do they shed?
 

VenusAndSaturn

Sub-Adult Member
https://www.beardeddragon.org/useruploads/ Upload there, then when you go to hit reply hit the XIMG tab to select the photo.

Please post pictures of her, her tank, her lighting setup and the supplements your currently using. This will help greatly if i know what type of situation shes in.
I'll also need you to tell me her temperatures, basking, warm side and cool side temps.
Do you have a kitchen scale that weighs in grams? If so can you weigh her and tell me her weight, along with tell me her age.

For shedding it usually depends on age, when their young maybe every month or so, and then as they age up to adult maybe every two to three or more months.
 

lunaeclispe

Member
Original Poster
she is about to months we got her from pet co. we got the 40 gallon zoomed starer tank. she's on the zoo med calcium and retovite. its about 82 on warm side and 60 on the other. I'm a new reptile owner. i can't post pic my computer won't let me. we don't have a kitten scale but she's around 3 or 4 grams. she's 4 and a half inches.
 

VenusAndSaturn

Sub-Adult Member
Oh my, wow shes just a little hatchling then. Possibly not even more than a month if shes 4 inches from head to tail.

Try and take them on your phone and log into your account on there and upload them.
Your temps are way too low,
Basking temp needs to be 100-110
Warm side 90-95. This is basically the temp for the area around the basking spot and somewhat in the middle of the tank.
Cool side 70-85.

Make sure your substrate is plain white paper towels and you may want to go and get a 20 gallon for her while she is in this state of health.

You'll definitely need to get a new uvb tube, go on amazon and purchase a Reptisun T5 10.0 34" Bulb with a reflective fixture. You can put this on her enclosure so she gets correct uvb which will help, you can also put this on the 20 gallon, it'll overlap a bit but it'll save money so you dont have to upgrade.

Try and see if you can run to petco and get crickets, she needs them ASAP at her age.
You'll want to feed her 3 times a day, 10-20 bugs each feeding.
2x a week the insects should be dusted with multivitimins (reti-vite), 5x a week for calcium.

To save money on crickets go to flukerfarms website and get 2,000 or so small crickets for her, you can store them in a 60 quart bin with paper towel tubes or egg crates. Just feed them collard greens and occasionally mist the side for water and they should be fine as long as you keep them at 70 or so.
 

lunaeclispe

Member
Original Poster
oh if u meant from head to tail she's 6 and a half
she won't eat her meal worms she has been eating nothing but them and salad for a week or so so she could be tired of them. any beginner tips?
 

VenusAndSaturn

Sub-Adult Member
Oh okay, thats a bit better but still shes in the 1-4 month range range (most likely around 2 months or so. She'll still need to eat three times a day 10-20 crickets each feeding like i stated until she gets up to 4 or 5 months.
Mealworms cant be given at such a young age as they are harder for such a weak, and fragile beardie to really digest properly, they are also not the best staple feeder. You can give them as treats once shes 5 or 6 months however, 5-10 a day or every other day works.

Like I also stated before you need to order her crickets, and go to petco/petsmart to get her small crickets so she'll have something to eat until your bulk order comes to feed her for possibly a month or so.
Just to give you an idea of the food she will eat up until 5 or so months.
If given 10 crickets each feed, she'll eat around 30 crickets a day which then adds up to around 210 a week. She'll eat around 630 crickets a month if im correct. You'll most likely have to re-order crickets again around the 4th week mark to keep a constant flow of food. 2,000 each time, fairly cheap, around 30-47 dollars on https://flukerfarms.com/.
If you order online it will save you thousands of dollars rather than buying petco/petsmart crickets, you can do the math if you want for that.
Just so you know theres no way around this honestly, reptiles are not cheap pets and require tons and tons of money and research to thrive. On the bright side once shes out of the baby or hatchling stage she'll slow down on the bugs somewhat.
4-12 months eat two times a day, 12-20 months once a day and 20+ months every other day, 10-20 bugs each feeding for those and this is for the insect portion.

Can you please post pictures of her, her enclosure and everything like i asked this will greatly help me. If you log in on a phone you can upload pictures to the image up-loader, it should be on the menu underneath the "other fun stuff" category.

Also make sure you order her a proper uvb tube, if not she will not thrive or survive. She will die a great painful and slow death without it. Not to be harsh but after all we're dealing with a live animal here.
 

EllenD

Gray-bearded Member
What's wrong is that #1) She has no UVB light that's working I guess, and without a strong, adequate UVB light providing UVB/UVA for at least 13-14 hours every day it doesn't matter how much calcium w/D3 you give her, she cannot absorb ANY nutrition that she is taking in from supplements or food! And at only 1-2 months old she doesn't need salad, that isn't going to do it. They need tons and tons of live insect protein every single day from hatching to a year old, and up until 8 months old they should be getting 2-3 live insect feeding sessions, each lasting 10-15 minutes, where she is allowed to eat as many live insects as she wants to. At her age she should be eating between 40-60 appropriately sized live insects every single day!!!

Bearded Dragons do 90% of their growth and development during their first year of life, and this is why most dragons do not eat many, if any greens or veggies until they are around a year old. And even if they do, as yours may be, it's obviously not what she needs. They know that they need a ton of live insect protein every single day to grow properly, not greens/veggies. You shouldn't give a 2 month old dragon any greens or veggies until after their second live insect feeding session of the day, as they cannot be filling up on greens and veggies, and they not eating enough live insect protein. So please, go out and get her some appropriately sized crickets, roaches, silkworms, or BSFL/Phoenix Worms, or order them online in bulk, which is your best bet, as at 2 months old until she's around 8 months old she should be easily going through 1,000 live insects a month. Places like www.dubiaroaches.com are very cheap, you can buy 1,000 size large BSFL for $23 shipped. And they'll last for a month. And you need to be dusting all of the live insects in one of her 3 daily live insect feeding sessions in calcium powder 5 days a week, and in a multivitamin 3 days a week for the rest of her life...

That being said, if she doesn't have an adequate UVB tube, she's not going to want to eat much of anything at all, and she's going to become very lethargic and start to get sick from a severe Calcium Deficiency and eventually MBD. A strong, adequate UVB tube (T5 is best, as it doesn't need strapped to the underside of the mesh lid of the tank like the much weaker T8 tubes do) is the most important piece of equipment that you'll ever buy for her, as without 13-14 hours of strong, adequate UVB/UVA light a bearded dragon cannot survive. Again, without a proper UVB tube she is just excreting all of the calcium you're giving her out, along with all the other vitamins, minerals, and nutrition in general she's taking in from any food, and when you do start feeding her live insects again she's not going to be able to properly digest them or absorb any nutrition from them either. So the 2 main reasons that she's losing weight so quickly is #1) A totally inadequate diet for a 2 month old dragon, and #2) Either no UVB/UVA light at all because her light broke, or just inadequate UVB/UVA light from a bad bulb.
 
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