Blood in stool

My beardie is about a year and a half old and lives in a bioactive 40 gallon (I think?) terrarium. He's been acting pretty normally but he only poops about once a week, which is normal for him but the last two times I noticed a little blood. I fed him his first pinky not long ago so is this just the excess blood passed?

Hello,

Can you review your tank setup, such as the type/brand of UVB, temperatures, supplements,
etc so we can be sure it is all correct.
We normally don't recommend pinkies since some tend to have trouble digesting & passing
them. It sounds like he might have had some trouble, so I would feed soft foods right now,
until the stool can normalize. You can give some softer foods like squash baby food, sweet
potato baby food, or pumpkin (no spice or sugar) baby food, mixed with a drop or two of olive
or coconut oil to help soften up the stool & urates some.
If the blood continues, I would get a fecal done on him to be sure there isn't any high counts
of worms or parasites that are affecting his system.

Tracie

Drache613":1bftrbf8 said:

Hello,

Can you review your tank setup, such as the type/brand of UVB, temperatures, supplements,
etc so we can be sure it is all correct.
We normally don't recommend pinkies since some tend to have trouble digesting & passing
them. It sounds like he might have had some trouble, so I would feed soft foods right now,
until the stool can normalize. You can give some softer foods like squash baby food, sweet
potato baby food, or pumpkin (no spice or sugar) baby food, mixed with a drop or two of olive
or coconut oil to help soften up the stool & urates some.
If the blood continues, I would get a fecal done on him to be sure there isn't any high counts
of worms or parasites that are affecting his system.

Tracie

Click to expand...

I have a 40 gallon terrarium with a terra sahara substrate from the biodude. He's been in the same terrarium for two years now with a 75 w Zoomed basking lamp and a Zoomed Reptisun T5 10.0 UVB bulb that's full spectrum. His terrarium is on the cooler side, and it's been something I've been trying to fix for forever. In the day, he has his basking light on a timer and his medium heat mat on the outside. At night, he just sleeps by his heat mat. His terrarium averages at 78 degrees during the winter months. During the coldest times, his basking area usually stays at 90.3. I could definitely use some advice for keeping him warmer. I tried red lights at night for three-four months but he seemed lethargic and had diarrhea. After a clean fecal, the vet recommended complete darkness, but now he's getting too cold for comfort. Even in the day, his terrarium never seems to get warm enough.

As for food, he gets 24 dusted crickets three times a week. He gets romaine, a little kale, and collard greens every day. Occasionally I'll give him shredded carrots, broccoli, or strawberries. I usually give him six mealworms once or twice a week and have only given him four pinkies, one every other week. I gave him tomato horn worms for the first time the other day and am hoping to switch him to dubia roaches in six months.

I'll try the soft foods this week! Thanks for the suggestion!

I would use a stronger basking light and either set it further up or put it on a dimmer as needed. 90 is a bit low for basking surface. I'd like to see that closer to 100-105 or so which will help with digestion. I agree with Tracie about the soft foods for now and advise offering drops of water on his nose to lick up. The extra hydration may help as well. Dubia roaches and horn worms are good proteins to offer. It's best to keep adults on a primarily vegetarian diet though. Lots of dark leafy greens and veges like squash and green beans and bell peppers etc as you've been doing. Keep that up daily but maybe bring the bugs down to 1-2 times per week, especially if he's good about eating his salads.