I write this with a heavy heart, as I just had to euthanize our 2 year old Taz. She was a vibrant red hypo-translucent leatherback that we bought from a local reptile store. At about 1.5 years of age her appetite began to decline. I took her to the vet, they ran a stool test and did an X-ray. All looked good and our husbandry checked out to all be correct.
In hindsight, our mistakes were:
1) Not taking her back in within a month or two, when her appetite still had not returned to normal.
2) We should have also had a blood glucose level checked in that first visit. This could have helped us determine cancer early on.
What would have shown up in another 4-6 weeks in a new Xray was that cancer was growing from her stomach. By the time we took her back into the vet it was 6 months from the first visit and all her major organs were already covered in cancer.
Aggressive cancer growth, starting in the stomach, in young beardies in captivity - is a growing phenomenon and I urge you to take your beardie to the vet regularly if their eating and pooing is at all unusual. Don't just go once. Go within 4-6 weeks, if it persists. Even our vets did not know what they were looking at, at first. Forums like this could save your beardie's life.
Attached are the X-rays of our Taz. The image on the right is from August, 2019. The image on the left is from February, 2020.
Our beardie stayed sweet as ever throughout it all.
Best Wishes to all of you and your beardies!