First Bearded Dragon ever. NEED HELP!

[LizardGiblets]

This is my first foray into the world of Bearded Dragons, I am pretty excited, but I am developing paranoid tendencies and obsessive compulsive disorders when it comes to the health of my baby dragon "Giblet" I have done tons of research on the subject, but I had some more questions concerning:

Temperature gradient at night time? (should there be one?)

How many times a week do I use a multivitamin?, while the dragon is young...

I have heard some multivitamins have too much Vit. A, is this a problem?

What greens should be a staple in the diet and which should be occasional?

How far should his basking spot be from a 75 watt reptile spotlight?

Can my Reptisun UVB 10.0 bulb hurt his eyes if he is too close?

His belly seems to be patterned versus plain white, is this a stress indicator?

He never seems to spend much time on his cool side of the 20gal long, is this weird?
(The cool side averages 75 F. and the warm side 99 F. at about 6 - 8 inches from the heat bulb)

Is a red night bulb for heating harmful for him?

When I clean the crickets out of his tank before bedtime he likes to eat them when I flush them out, do I need
to leave the lights on longer afterwards so he can digest the crickets he just scarfed? Or should I not let him eat before bed?

I would greatly appreciate anything you guys could tell me about these great pets!
By the way here is some background info on "Giblet"
apprx. 4 weeks old
eats on average 10-15 dusted crickets a day (dusted using repti-cal no phosphour or D3)
After his first 4 days I was able to get him to eat some dandelion greens and collard greens.
He is in a 20 gal long aquarium screen top, 75 watt spotlight heater, reptisun UVB 10.0
And I am using paper towel as a substrate.

Here are a couple close up pics of little "Giblet"

http://g.imageshack.us/img258/gibletcloseuptw1.jpg/1/][IMG=http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/gibletcloseuptw1.jpg/1/w1208.png][/IMG][/URL]

[IMG=http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7643/dsc01108uv7.jpg][/IMG]
[IMG=http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/dsc01108uv7.jpg/1/w800

 

[LizardGiblets]

Sorry I messed the first picture link up, Im a new forum member and dont really know what Im doing...

 

[KristenT]

Hey! Welcome to the site! And no worries about the pic - it's hard for me to figure them out too. What I found easiest for me is to upload them to photobucket, and then just copy the forum link they give you and post it just like that here. lol. I was able to pull up one of them - he's so tiny!
Since he's so small, I'll keep my mouth shut on answering those questions, because I'm not 100% sure - kinda new to the beardies myself! But one of the ppl here or more I'm sure will post and answer them all for you! I do know though that they can get Vit.A toxcisity(sp?) from too much Vit.A, and that you should in general just stay away from lettuce as a food - especially iceburg lettus I think it was. However, squash is GREAT for them, and so are most other greens. Mine loves mustard greens! I think those are pretty much staples for them as far as veggies go, but there's a sheet somewhere here that has a huge list of lots of foods - take a look up at the top where it says "Care Sheets and Articles". There's a ton of info there!
Good luck and welcome! Congrats on your little baby.

 

[LizardGiblets]

Thanks for the response and the warm welcome. I checked out the care sheets and they are great, I was just hoping for clarification on some of the topics I pointed out in my first post. Everyone here seems really knowledgeable so I am sure I will get all the help I need here.

 

[KristenT]

You're welcome! Wish I could help more, but I'm not totaly sure on those questions. lol.