Hello everyone.
We had to put down our cat of 18 years and my son needed a pet to distract him from the loss. We purchased our baby dragon on Oct7th with no clue on what to do and one excited 7 year old boy and 13 year old girl as we took home our new dragon who was a baby. We purchased a 40 gallon tank and purchased everything they recommended. we made a lot of mistakes because the family wanted it now and not wait for dad to over research what to do. from the time the dragon was taken home it never ate. at first we were told it was just stressed from the move and wait. we started with carpet, then changed substrate to these chips. the lighting was all wrong. on day 2, we were told to put 35 crickets in the cage which didn't work. every day it got worse and worse. we tried purchasing the T5 light but it arrived not working. this lizard was not very active the entire time. we gave it a bath and it was a little active for about 5 minutes last week. On monday it started seaking out the cold parts of the tank and ended up in the water bowl and died there.
I am pretty sure it was sick from the store and moving it stressed it past the point of no return. I am sure we didn't help it with our decisions based on the vet and lack of knowledge. in the end it never ate and drank little to nothing.
so now I have a very upset family wanting to go buy another one. I am now going to do research on what we did wrong before I purchase another one.
I am going to throw out the substrate and clean out the cage. since I don't know why it died, I am going to figure this out because I don't think the kids can handle another loss. Not sure what to do and very worried I will screw it up and kill another one.
hoping to get info and prepare because my family needs a victory. I have attached a picture of the cage as it is now. new reptisun T5 with 10.0 bulb is on order. I have a digital therm to monitor temps. we keep house cold so I am going to purchase a ceramic heating to keep warm at night.
any advice is welcome to help prepare for changing the tank setup, buying another, how to choose it, how to determine a sick one at the store and learn from what I did wrong. I am very uneasy and not very confident that I can keep it alive.
We had to put down our cat of 18 years and my son needed a pet to distract him from the loss. We purchased our baby dragon on Oct7th with no clue on what to do and one excited 7 year old boy and 13 year old girl as we took home our new dragon who was a baby. We purchased a 40 gallon tank and purchased everything they recommended. we made a lot of mistakes because the family wanted it now and not wait for dad to over research what to do. from the time the dragon was taken home it never ate. at first we were told it was just stressed from the move and wait. we started with carpet, then changed substrate to these chips. the lighting was all wrong. on day 2, we were told to put 35 crickets in the cage which didn't work. every day it got worse and worse. we tried purchasing the T5 light but it arrived not working. this lizard was not very active the entire time. we gave it a bath and it was a little active for about 5 minutes last week. On monday it started seaking out the cold parts of the tank and ended up in the water bowl and died there.
I am pretty sure it was sick from the store and moving it stressed it past the point of no return. I am sure we didn't help it with our decisions based on the vet and lack of knowledge. in the end it never ate and drank little to nothing.
so now I have a very upset family wanting to go buy another one. I am now going to do research on what we did wrong before I purchase another one.
I am going to throw out the substrate and clean out the cage. since I don't know why it died, I am going to figure this out because I don't think the kids can handle another loss. Not sure what to do and very worried I will screw it up and kill another one.
hoping to get info and prepare because my family needs a victory. I have attached a picture of the cage as it is now. new reptisun T5 with 10.0 bulb is on order. I have a digital therm to monitor temps. we keep house cold so I am going to purchase a ceramic heating to keep warm at night.
any advice is welcome to help prepare for changing the tank setup, buying another, how to choose it, how to determine a sick one at the store and learn from what I did wrong. I am very uneasy and not very confident that I can keep it alive.