We're new owners of a 15 month old male beardie. He's hanging out under his red basking light and just went through a series of head-bobbing and puffing his beard out, and it got black. I know they do these things, but I don't know what they mean. He's the only animal in the tank, seems to be doing well.
The reason we have the red light in is that the CHE that he came with doesn't seem to be putting out enough heat - 90 degrees F maximum in his basking area, but his basking light broke on the transport and the most we had was a 75w bulb. There are new lights that should be arriving today, 150w basking spot, Reptiglo 10.0 UVB compact flourescent, which should then work together with the CHE to get the temp up, right? We're still trying to figure all of this out - I'll be putting in a 36" T8 fixture as well so that he can have UVB exposure in more of the tank. The red light won't be there for long.
He's only puffed out once in the week we've had him - that we've seen anyway. Daytime basking came today, so I put the CHE back in for him. He seems to be a bit more active with the red light gone, plus he looks better. He hasn't pooped in several days - hoping for a BM soon! I spent several hours today working on a new "custom" top to the tank - the previous owner only had some hardware cloth bent around the edges and it was a pain to get in and out of. I used 1x2" to frame the tank, which was a pain because the front is curved glass, and split the lid so that we can easily access the entire tank when we need to. It also worked well to mount two 18" T8 fluorescent fixtures to the frame - so now I'm ordering two 18" 10.0 UVB bulbs to cover the entire tank. Should work slick, I know it's a lot easier to get in the top now!