New beardie parents please read.

Ok I have now had 2 beardies for ten days now and I think we are finally catching on. we went and bought one of those zoo med kits thinking it had everything we needed and it pretty much did. But do not trust the thermometer at all if I was not paying close attention to the cage I would of cooked the poor little guys. I had to in there varies on each side and they were off buy 28 degrees. It was definitely affecting the dragons. After reading in hear it was said to not trust the thermometer in those kits so I went to lows and bought a laser one that works great. Just be very careful. And I had one of those zoomed heat rocks DO NOT USE THEM. MINE HAD A SURFACE TEMP OF 146 degrees f.. sorry I am not the best at typing or spelling so thanks for bearing with me hope it helps someone

Wow that's crazy. I just got my 2 month old bearded dragon 5 days ago and also purchased the ZooMed kit. I've done a lot of research on this site and have changed a lot, but I still need a temp gun or a thermometer with a probe.

How much did you pay for the temp gun/laser you got from Lows?

That is a good word of caution. Having a reasonably accurate (within a few degrees) digital thermometer with probes (one for basking surface and one for cool side) or a temp gun (or both) is an important investment to make and they aren't very expensive. Even a cheap temp gun like this will do the trick https://www.amazon.com/Nubee-Temperature-Non-contact-Infrared-Thermometer/dp/B00CVHIJDK

I had tried using a pulp thermometer to take my cage temps (I work in logistics cargo with refrigerated freight, was easy to just have one) and based on those I believed my temps to be too low. I eventually got my temp gun and found out I was off by about 20-30 degrees in both enclosures. This was more so my fault as I did not allow the pulp thermometers to sit long enough to get an accurate reading.

Temp guns are definitely worth the investment