A little bit of background on the dragons:
We purchased two bearded dragons around Aug/Sept 2013. We were told they hatched on April 6th 2013. We talked to the person at the pet store who convinced us that since they had been together their entire life they would be fine together despite what we had read about them being solitary creatures. We had purchased a 40 gallon tank for the two of them to share and they lived in there until around December when the one decided to start chewing on the other ones tail.
At this point we knew we needed to separate them so for the short term we bought a piece of plexiglass and split the tank in two. They were not happy about being separated and the one who had been chewing on the other one would find ways to climb over the plexiglass so they were on the same side but up till this point they were very social, friendly creatures. We would take them out and play with them daily and were confident enough in their gentleness that our friends children were even allowed to be around them without any fear of them being aggressive.
Around January they were moved into two separate tanks that we bought to stop the one from climbing over the glass and chewing on the other one. Around the same time we had a house guest move in for around a month with his Chinese water dragons. Around this time they started to get more and more anti-social. They would run away when we tried to pick them up and eventually got to the point where they were trying to bite us. We thought this aggression might have had something to do with the Chinese water dragons but when they left their attitude did not improve. We did notice that the water dragons owner would antagonize them from the outside of the cage when they puffed up their beards and don't know how many times he had done this.
Over time one of the beardies has gotten slightly better. We can now pick her up and have our hands in her cage without her puffing up but the other one has bitten us to the point where she has drawn blood and will not let us pick her up at all. We want to work with them to get them back to the friendly animals they used to be but without really knowing the ultimate cause of their aggression we don't know what to do. Any ideas or suggestions?
We purchased two bearded dragons around Aug/Sept 2013. We were told they hatched on April 6th 2013. We talked to the person at the pet store who convinced us that since they had been together their entire life they would be fine together despite what we had read about them being solitary creatures. We had purchased a 40 gallon tank for the two of them to share and they lived in there until around December when the one decided to start chewing on the other ones tail.
At this point we knew we needed to separate them so for the short term we bought a piece of plexiglass and split the tank in two. They were not happy about being separated and the one who had been chewing on the other one would find ways to climb over the plexiglass so they were on the same side but up till this point they were very social, friendly creatures. We would take them out and play with them daily and were confident enough in their gentleness that our friends children were even allowed to be around them without any fear of them being aggressive.
Around January they were moved into two separate tanks that we bought to stop the one from climbing over the glass and chewing on the other one. Around the same time we had a house guest move in for around a month with his Chinese water dragons. Around this time they started to get more and more anti-social. They would run away when we tried to pick them up and eventually got to the point where they were trying to bite us. We thought this aggression might have had something to do with the Chinese water dragons but when they left their attitude did not improve. We did notice that the water dragons owner would antagonize them from the outside of the cage when they puffed up their beards and don't know how many times he had done this.
Over time one of the beardies has gotten slightly better. We can now pick her up and have our hands in her cage without her puffing up but the other one has bitten us to the point where she has drawn blood and will not let us pick her up at all. We want to work with them to get them back to the friendly animals they used to be but without really knowing the ultimate cause of their aggression we don't know what to do. Any ideas or suggestions?