Last week I bought a dragon off kijiji. However hes really fat the previous owner only fed him superworms and romain lettuce! I have been trying to get him to eat more veggies like squash collar/dandelion greens only time he eats them is when I hand feed him by dangling them in front of his face and he will only take a couple peices. My current set up is 40 gallon breeder tank with 22" T5 reptisun HO, 100 watt basking light for 14 hrs a day then a red 75 watt heat lamp to keep the tank a lil warmer at night as the tank is in a finished basement but gets a lil chilly down here. I bought rep cal calcium with D3 because couldn't find the stuff without d3 is that ok with the T5 reptisun? Also I haven't been giving too many crickets or supers cuz as you can see hes pretty fat. however he hasn't been eating all that much veggies either. I have been giving him like 5 crickets daily should I continue what im doing to get him to eat more veggies or should I just go ahead and give him all the crickets he can eat in 15 mins? hopefully these pics worked
Hi there.....the dragon is definitely obese. Are you positive it's a male, or did they just assume ? If it's a female it may be carrying eggs, so unless that is the scenario it's pretty tubby ! There is an article on the right side of this page that tells you how to sex the dragon.....there's also info that you can Google " sexing a bearded dragon with a flashlight". I might add that it's a good looking dragon though, and if it's just been over fed then you can definitely turn it around. Do as you are, just offer about 4-5 crickets a day, along with plenty of greens.
For night time heat, the red light is not ideal because it's still light and disrupts the sleep pattern. If you can, get a CHE [ ceramic heat emitter ] that produces heat with no light. Aside from that, it sounds like you have him set up very nicely.
well I did the flashlight trick to see if it was indeed a male and its actually a female. The guy I got it from did have 2 dragons but they were in diff cages hopefully shes not pregnant. looks like I need to do a bunch of research now to see how to see if shes pregnant and if so how to care for her properly. got any ideas where I should start?
O.K, well it's good that you found that out right away ! Just carry on as usual, but make sure she gets calcium on her food every other day. Even if she wasn't with a male a beardie can develop and lay infertile eggs. There is a thread at the top of the breeding forum on this site that describes what signs to watch for [ like restlessness + digging around ] and what to do including instructions for a lay box. I recommend going to that thread and reading a bit....then if she IS carrying eggs you'll know what to do. It's usually no problem.