Hi New Member, New Beardie... Any help would be great!

[AlbiHolmes]

Hello everyone, I have been looking around for a good forum to join and this seems to be the best one with the most knowledgable people. Lets start from the beggining. My name is Keith. Our 6ish month old bearded dragon's name is Albi Holmes. My girlfriend and I went to see a movie on Febuary 20th and the movie was sold out, so instead we go to our local "Jack's Aquarium" to look around. Baby bearded dragons were on sale for $99.98 and out of the 5 little guys inside, 1 stood out. He would follow your finger and stand on the ledge looking all like "pick me! pick me!" Coincedentally, they also had " Zilla Deluxe bearded dragon set ups" on sale for 149.99. That consisted of a 20gal long tank, 2 big fixtures, 1 small fixture, one 150w blue day bulb, one 50 night incandescent bulb, and one coil compact uvb bulb. Also, a water dish, food dish, and alfalfa pellets for substrate. I will have to admit 2 things, first, i wanted to buy everything seperate to be able to pick out exactly what i wanted but the lady kind of scammed me into getting it, and second, I really didnt know a whole lot about bearded dragons.

I was quick to learn as much as I could in a short period of time to make sure our BD had a good home. I quickly changed the substrate to tile and got rid of the incandesent and replaced it with a CHE, However, she has been using the compact for these 4 months. I just recieved our Exo terra light cycle unit and 36" reptisun tube today. She has eaten her greens ever since we brought her home. Never really has any trouble eating vegs/crickets.

We brought her to the vet approx. 5 weeks ago and found out she had pinworms... I thought something was up when her poop began to stink a lot more and was runnier than normal. They game me 2 syringes with 1cc of Panacur in each, we gave 1 to her when we got back from the vet and one 2 weeks later... She only poops every 3 days or so, and never poops in the bath??? HER POO IS STILL PRETTY RUNNY??? We both work full time and with her not pooping daily, it doesnt give us much of an opportunity to get it tested again.. But the first poop beginning next week I will be sure to get it there.

So, 4 months after getting Albi and "SHE" is doing pretty good we think! She is 15 inches long (6 inches when we got her) and I dont have a digital scale or any means of weighing her so.. We switched her into a 75gal tank and I built her some sweet ass platforms to accomidate the tank. , I got the motivation from seeing everyone elses set ups After over $150 and 25-30 hours of work, it turned out great!... I have a whole bunch of pics if I can figure out how to upload them.

Any suggestions or questions, dont hesitate to ask, I will be open to any advice if you have it. I will upload the pics of the enclosures in order that the were set up (Oldest to present..) I will be changing it this week to put the reptisun inside of the tank and also going to do HALF TILE, HALF FINE PLAY SAND??? I know its controversial but I always see her "scratching/digging" on the tile, I will monitor her closely for the first few days to make sure she isnt eating a bunch. I will add those pics when completed.


Questions:
Could the runny stool be from her eating a decent amount of Kale/Mustard Greens/Collard Greens?\
Is pooping one every 3 days normal?
How do I insert images?????

Sorry its soo long, and thanks in advance for any and all help!
Keith & Albi

 

[sambob27]

sorry but you payed way to much. i got mine for 30$ at a herp show.

 

[pogvitt]

I paid $120 for my first beardie, and he was a half-blind runt! (now he is a big, handsome boy with a liiitttllle bit of trouble with depth perception - it takes him 3-4 strikes to get a cricket) Anyways, your set up sounds great, your beardie is lucky to have such a devoted owner. If you are going to put sand in, I would recommend having one side elevated above the sand as a feeding platform - that way, when they toss their salad around it won't get sand stuck to it. Also, I've found that they really only like to scratch and dig when they are settling in for the night - you could always just have sand in the hide.

Best of Luck

 

[cmh3988]

Hi - Congrats on your beardie and her new setup. I'd love to see it. Here's a link to the 'how to post pics' viewtopic.php?f=30&t=37103.

 

[thegreybush]

Runny stool could very well be from the veggies. It happens. It sounds like your dragon is still pretty young. Probably around 5 months now? You can safely cut back on veggies a little bit and feed mostly live feeders for protein. veggies + feeders in the morning, then feeders for lunch and dinner.

As far as inserting images, this will make more sense when you reply....

Above the text field is a row of buttons (B, i, u, etc.) The button that says "Img" is used for inserting pictures. Your pictures will need to be uploaded to the internet in order to insert them. You should consider a photobucket.com account or something similar. You press the "Img" button and you get a set of tags that look like this [ img ] [ /img ]. In between the two tags is where you will put the file location for your picture. So it will look like this [ img ]http://www.photobucket.com/somenameofyouralbum/blahblaha$!@#^/%blahblahblah[ /img ]. Of course after you press submit, all we're going to see is a picture of you and your dragon.

But that sounds complicated. I'm not good with computers! Okay well the great thing about photobucket is that if you upload your pictures to an album there they will generate this [ img ] code for you for sharing on the interweb. beneath every picture is a set of various code types that will enable you to embed that photo where ever you like. One of those codes you'll see starts with the [ img ] tag. You can click that code, hit ctrl+c (copy), come to the forums here, start your post and then ctrl+v (paste) the code right into this text field here and POOF! your picture is here.

I hope that helps you in your picture uploading needs! We can't wait to see them.

 

[AlbiHolmes]

Hello, thanks to those who replied... So today is Monday June 20th and we brought Albi in for his vet appointment and wow am I disappointed in the "Doctor"... if he can even be called such. He has never owned a BD, never studied them, only has books... We are 99% sure we have a female and he wasnt even able to give us a guess, he just simply didnt know how to sex a dragon haha.. what a vet.. So he goes to pick Albi up like you would pick up any non living object, instead of a pleasent scoop, he grabbed ahold from the top so Albi squirmed and he drops her.. My girlfriend and I are thinking, "oh boy.." anyways come to find out he doesnt know a da mn thing... he wasnt even going to weigh Albi, and I said "so when if we come back in 6 months, how are you going to tell me how much weight she has gained or how much she has grown..." so he said he would get the scale, and I told him not to worry about it but he insisted at that point. He was definetly aware of me being very unsatisfied.

Anyways a long story short, we need a new vet.

I was able to get some pictures of Albi, Albi's past and present enclosures/set ups, and part of the process of building the platforms for Albi... They are all in sub-folders on photobucket. The link is here ------> http://s1121.photobucket.com/home/AlbiHolmes/index

Any input would be great...

We also had a fecal test done today at the vet and he said they didnt find any pinworms which I find hard to believe, Any chance I can post some pics of Albi's stool and somebody tell me if it looks anywhere close to normal??? I would appreciate it much! The stool we brough to the vert today wasnt very solid and had the white pee sack along with some orangeish looking sacks, which the vert said Albi might be poohing some of his pigment???

Thanks foor any help