Hello again! 8 year hiatus...

Hi all!

It's been about 8 years since I posted here and since I rehomed my bearded dragon, Elliot, after the birth of my first son.

He now 9 years old and has shown quite the interest in slimy and scaly critters. At the moment, he has a Pixie frog that he has taken incredible care of for the past 5 or so months. We worked really hard together to build a custom paludarium as a forever home.





Well...with Christmas coming and all...he wrote Santa a note that said, " Dear Santa, I only want a bearded dragon Christmas and nothing else. Please? Love, (name removed)"

Now me...being quite the bearded dragon lover myself, know a thing or two about beardies and how can I possibly disappoint my little guy?!

So...off to the secret woodshop to start working on his custom enclosure. I've only been able to work on it a few hours one night but this is the progress at the moment.



Last night, I wanted to run to the store to pick up my UVB bulb and a fixture so I could that test fit/mounted and I just so happened to walk right past the baby beardie cage when I saw a little flash, from the corner of my eye, run to the front of the tank and put his belly against the glass. Darnit! How am I supposed to resist that?!

The answer is, I couldn't. So back to my office I went with a spare tank, heat lamp, and uv bulb to hide out until Christmas. For now...he's keeping me company while I'm working and already showing me how much of a character he is.



He seems to be obsessed with my little nano fish tank I also have on my desk :roll: :lol:



I can already tell I'm going to have a hard time bringing him home for Christmas :lol: :lol:

Anyways, great to be back!! I'll update some build pics as I go!

Looks like you know what you're doing with that enclosure, how fun that's going to be ! Little Flash is a pretty leatherback and I hope he remains in good health being a pet store beardie but many of them do. Do you have pics of the temp. tank ? Be sure to keep him in the smaller tank until he's grown quite a bit more. Putting babies in a large final home often causes problems if the baby becomes sluggish or has other problems, I see it here pretty often. Is he eating well already ? BTW, nice paludarium.

Thanks! "froggie" seems to love it and spends a ton of time in the water chasing down the little white cloud minnows in there. He's not very good at catching them but he seems to enjoy himself.

For the moment, he's in a little 20g with a zoomed 10.0 and 25w basking light on one end. He's downing baby dubias with gusto!

That's great, Froggie gets plenty of activity ! And a 20 gallon will be fine until your beardie is about 9-10", that way he's off to a good start and not floundering in a giant tank. It's also good in case he does for some reason become ill, much easier to care for him in the smaller tank.

Welcome back =). I'm glad to see this little guy is going to have a good life in a happy home with you. The enclosure already looks amazing!