Another question - beard black, digging, not eating right

[ABLuvsKatie]

OK, Katie is 18 months old. I feel like all I do is ask silly questions. We've had her about three weeks. She'll eat crickets and worms, she ate some turnip greens from my daughter early on but we can't get her to eat any veggies now at all. She digs sometimes but that's only been a little here or there...till this morning. She's digging and scratching at the glass and her beard is black. She has been where she could see my son's beta fish and I thought maybe that was irritating her so I moved it. She calmed down for a while but is back at it. What does she want?

...and if you could figure out what my whiney ten year old's problem is I'd be really grateful!

 

[Buggsy]

Was she housed with a male at all?? Inseccant digging is usually a sign that they have eggs to lay! You need to pop a box of moist sand in the cage (think sandcastle not flood, it should just retain its shape) it needs to be about 8" deep. Put her in the box and start a little hole for her, she should do the rest.

Its important that she has a good place to lay eggs as if not she will keep hold of them, which is called retention and is bad.

Some people use top soil, my female only like washed kids playsand, some like to have a seprate box with a heat lamp, i perfer to pop a deep box in the cool end, whatever works for you.

Hopefully thats it, if not are you sure she is a she??

 

[ABLuvsKatie]

She's calmed down again now. The people we adopted her from said she laid eggs a couple times before. She's in the same tank she's always been in with the same setup (we want a bigger one, maybe as a Christmas gift for dd, but need to find a place and didn't want to force drastic changes on her really fast). But I don't think her sand is deep enough. Maybe we'll stop today and get some more to try your suggestion and give her a deeper spot if that's what she's looking for.

 

[Buggsy]

When it comes to changing the encolsure, its best to do it all at once, instead of prolonging the stress. Does she have sand as a normal substrate?