Sorry it’s so long.
I know that I am preaching to the choir with this post but I felt like sharing my experience. The forum was so instrumental in solving this problem.
Early December when the weather started getting cold my Juvenile beardie, Izzy started to get lethargic. She would hide under anything she could find and wasn’t eating much.
I started hand feeding babyfood and the only live feeder she would eat was wax worms.
With the forums help I ruled out brumation because of her age.
I thought it might be temps at night because according to my digital probe and my temp gun the temps were fine during the day. So I added a CHE for night. That didn’t help.
So off to the vet. The vet said that she had a high coccidia counts so I ordered Reptaid. Two weeks of treatment with Reptaid and not much improvement in behaviour. (still waiting on the “all clear” fecal test)
Everywhere I went people told me the same thing – check your temps. And I thought they were good but to be sure I checked and rechecked and this is what I determined;
1. The laser temp gun gets the surface temperatures of the object that I am pointing at. This is not the same as the air temperature. A dark colored branch can retain & reflect heat and some parts of it were reading 105° but when I started getting air temps they were lower.
2. Temps up top on her basking spot were “pretty good” but other parts of the viv where she liked to spend time were a bit too low.
So I did two things; I left the CHE on 24/7 and I put aluminum foil over most of the screen on top of the viv to hold heat in. Actually I wasn’t expecting much because I didn’t think the temps were that bad based on my measurements but low and behold within about 48 hours she is SO MUCH BETTER.
She is eating like a champ. She is no longer hiding. She looks like she is working on a shed.
I bought some Dubia to start a colony and I let her try a couple last night. I didn’t know what to expect because she is just getting her appetite back. She ran across the viv and attacked them. She seemed so happy! She sat there in her basking spot digesting these new treats with a big smile on her face!
This morning this little girl ate a record 27 phoenix worms!
I have learned that getting the right temps in your viv for your beardie is not as easy as I thought.
Thanks to everyone who posts in this forum. If not for you guys this beardie would still be sick.
I know that I am preaching to the choir with this post but I felt like sharing my experience. The forum was so instrumental in solving this problem.
Early December when the weather started getting cold my Juvenile beardie, Izzy started to get lethargic. She would hide under anything she could find and wasn’t eating much.
I started hand feeding babyfood and the only live feeder she would eat was wax worms.
With the forums help I ruled out brumation because of her age.
I thought it might be temps at night because according to my digital probe and my temp gun the temps were fine during the day. So I added a CHE for night. That didn’t help.
So off to the vet. The vet said that she had a high coccidia counts so I ordered Reptaid. Two weeks of treatment with Reptaid and not much improvement in behaviour. (still waiting on the “all clear” fecal test)
Everywhere I went people told me the same thing – check your temps. And I thought they were good but to be sure I checked and rechecked and this is what I determined;
1. The laser temp gun gets the surface temperatures of the object that I am pointing at. This is not the same as the air temperature. A dark colored branch can retain & reflect heat and some parts of it were reading 105° but when I started getting air temps they were lower.
2. Temps up top on her basking spot were “pretty good” but other parts of the viv where she liked to spend time were a bit too low.
So I did two things; I left the CHE on 24/7 and I put aluminum foil over most of the screen on top of the viv to hold heat in. Actually I wasn’t expecting much because I didn’t think the temps were that bad based on my measurements but low and behold within about 48 hours she is SO MUCH BETTER.
She is eating like a champ. She is no longer hiding. She looks like she is working on a shed.
I bought some Dubia to start a colony and I let her try a couple last night. I didn’t know what to expect because she is just getting her appetite back. She ran across the viv and attacked them. She seemed so happy! She sat there in her basking spot digesting these new treats with a big smile on her face!
This morning this little girl ate a record 27 phoenix worms!
I have learned that getting the right temps in your viv for your beardie is not as easy as I thought.
Thanks to everyone who posts in this forum. If not for you guys this beardie would still be sick.
