As of today, Walter has been part of the family for two weeks.
After yesterday’s misting, he climbed onto his branch to warm up, and showed off some awesome sexy legs!
A very large Dubia climbed up out of the substrate , trying to catch a few droplets from the misting. Walter seriously thought about trying to eat it (it’s practically as big as he is!) and I had a mini panic attack and tried to catch it. It ran back into the substrate, at which point Walter decided to ignore it. I’m on the lookout for it, and as soon as I can I’ll be transferring it to the breeder colony. I’m not sure how it got in there.
Walter has made lots of progress over the past few days. I’ve managed to pick him up a few times and hold him for a few minutes. Yesterday he was very calm about being pickup up and then put back in his cage. I pet him and talked to him. I’m not sure if he enjoyed it, but at least I didn’t get a
black beard or stress marks.
Today he was waiting for breakfast, but when I put his bowl of roaches in his cage, he continued to stare at me. Trying to encourage him, I pointed at the bowl (he has learned to watch where my finger points to find yummy bugs) but he continued to look at me. I offered him a few in my hand and he gobbled them down. In the end, I fed him his whole breakfast by hand! He was much better about my hands moving around near him, and climbed up to sit on my palm many times. Such a heartwarming moment! We did have a brief incident where he missed the roach and grabbed my finger instead. I felt his little baby teeth and started to get nervous when he bit down on me. But it really didn’t hurt at all, and after I managed to get my finger free, Walter gobbled up the rest of his bigs with perfect aim.
His feet are shedding today. A few days back I found his first piece of shed tail.
Here are some pictures of how the plants are doing.
He’s demolished one of them quite badly, and I think I’ll need to replace it soon. The others are doing fine. His wheat grass is getting pretty trampled, but is still thriving, though he doesn’t eat it. The clover has completely died - looks like it got too dry. I was surprised about the clover, I thought it was meant to be pretty hardy.
Humidity levels are at 27% on both hot and cold sides.
Brandon, to be honest, I’m not finding the bioactive setup to be all that much work. Perhaps this is largely because I’m having so much fun maintaining it. The initial setup (adding all the substrate, logs, and doing a big water etc) took an hour, but keep in mind the size of my tank - 6’ x 2’ x 2’. After that, for the next week or so before Walter came home, we misted it quite heavily once every day, and then once the substrate was at the right moistness, began to reduce the number of misting until we found what works to keep his setup maintained (about every other day). Misting takes no more than five minutes. I spot clean his poop daily, though that typically involves brushing it off logs and such and into the substrate. If he has leftover veg I’ll toss that into the substrate (or sometimes I dump it in with his roaches). So far, I feel like maintainence is much simpler for Walter than it was when Rygel was a baby. Plus, Walter does not get all distressed about poop in his cage, so he doesn’t run over it in a panic or sulk in his hide until I clean it up.
To be honest, I thought the bioactive setup would be lots more work. But it’s really not been like that so far. I can see maybe it being harder for anyone if they have a beardie already and want to change their setup from sterile to bioactive - you’d have the initial period of high humidity until everything settles down, and it could be a huge cause of relocation stress for some dragons. I’m actually hoping that Walter being kept in a bioactive setup since I got him will lead to a more confident dragon that doesn’t get so upset by little changes. I added a big new rock to his cage the other day, and Walter just kept on with his day like nothing had happened.