Getting my first beardie on Sunday He's only a month old, so he's going to be eating mainly small insects (probably crickets, I don't imagine my pet store will have much else). But, I'm confused, how does one remove uneaten insects from a tank? Do you have to remove them all individually? Is there a certain way to feed them so that you don't have to chase tiny insects around? *Inexperienced owner alert*
I use worms so I put them in a dish and dust with calcium or multivitamins. This way she can eat as much as she wants and I can easily remove the dish.
For crickets I have used a separate tub, that way she never has loose crickets in the enclosure.
When small we fed in a large bowl/tub to keep crickets out of the enclosure altogether. We fed a little at a time and stopped when he slowed down. if he refused the last few they were easy to "pour" from the bowl back to the cricket keeper.
Now he is getting too big for that so we take out as much from his enclosure before feeding (to reduce the # of hiding spots for the crickets) and then only feed a few at a time. We even sometimes use a plastic container with a hole cut in it so the crickets come out single file and get eaten as soon as they come out. At this age if 1 or 2 don't get eaten right away we just leave them in there - he will get them eventually and they will do very little harm.
Yep, offer them in small batches and you'll both have an easier time tracking them. I feed roaches to my guy one at a time but maybe 3-5 is easier when you're offering really small bugs to a young dragon. You'll have to play around with it and find a combination that works for you.
I put my dubias in a ceramic dish (made for hamsters) so I don't have to chase them around. When I got crickets, I just used a large bin that I put 20-30 crickets in and then put Loki in.
When I was tank feeding my water skink, or the beardies as hatchlings, I'd remove the lizard to another tub and use my BUGBLASTER vacuum to suck up the rogue crickets as I found them.