Radioflyr":00e52 said:
I really appreciate all the help and advice I have been given today. I just want to say thanks to everyone who posted and lent me their knowledge.
As I sit here I cant help to be bothered about another important aspect of getting my beardie healthy again. He is about 9 months to a year old and I have been feeding him mostly crickets his entire life with some fruit and veggies thrown in every now and then. But I want to get him on a more healthy diet. how many times a day should I be feeding him and what quantity? I have been feeding him about a dozzen crickets a day but after reading through the forums a bit I have seen people sudjesting 3-4 dozzen a day for babys. what age group does my guy fit into and what can I feed him to get him healthy again?
As your beardie is still a juvie, you want to be offering live feeders 2-3 times per day, as many as he will eat in 10-15 minutes. Healthy growing beardies can eat up to 50-100 live feeders per day. Are you dusting with calcium and/or vites? Take care to dust 5 meals per week with calcium with D3, 1 - 2 meal per week with vites. I can give you specific links to those products as well if you wish. Crickets are a good staple source. Are you gut loading them then, with protein (either cricket food or beardie pellets), water gel, or veggies, fruit? If you would like to vary the live feeders, you can also try phoenix worms, dubia roaches (both can be used as staples), and for supplemental feeding: butters, silks and horn worms are all good. Offer greens/veggies/fruit
daily (some prefer first thing in the am, so it can be left in for beardie to nibble as he wishes). The following is a link to an EXCELLENT food source list for dragons (do's and don'ts):
http://www.beautifuldragons.503xtreme.com/Nutrition.html.
Being that his diet has been spare, may I ask: what is the exact size of your dragon, tip of tail to nose? It's difficult to tell from the pic. Also, being that he's been under the coil lamp, his appetite may have been affected, and it will very likely take some time to catch up once you have the ReptiSun tube in place. Offer live feeders as advised, and beardie will most likely incrementally increase the number of feeders over time.
I wanted to say also, as Diane mentioned that you will want to look into a larger tank (we found ours on Craigslist, after a couple of weeks of checking in daily), as smaller sized tanks are more challenging to heat properly, and as your beardie grows, you will want a minimum size of 40 gallon.
Hope that helps a bit!
The best,
Em