Sheezafreak
New member
- Beardie name(s)
- Derpy
My bearded dragon, derpy, is close to one year old and he’s our first dragon but have had him all of his little life. The past few months we have been concerned with his behavior, eating habits, sheddings, and bowel movements. This summer we upgraded him to a 125 gallon tank and since then things have been going down hill. He hasn’t done a full shed since, jeez, I dont even remember when it’s been so long. His eating habits have decreased greatly to the point he’s BARELY eating anything right now. He’s been not having regular bowel movements. He’s been to the vet twice since this summer for lack of bowel movements and they relieve him but nothing really changes when he’s back home. he’s not very active because of everything going on with him. I’m worried and dont know what I’m doing wrong and wanted some help with his environment since that’s what its looking like the issue is. Any advice anyone can provide would be a tremendous help. I’ll tell you about the set up and post some pictures.
Diet: superworms + hornworms. He was eating dubia roaches most of his life but for some reason he started to refuse them completely. he is also very picky when it comes to veggies and will only eat romaine lettuce but like I mentioned he won’t eat much these days. We sprinkle flukers calcium with d3 on his foods but honestly with the lack of eating he probably hasn’t gotten much of it.
Enclosure: 125 gl. Tank we had to make a lid for it. It’s got three sections, one mesh side with 1/2 inch mesh holes so it’s not blocking too much I hope, and 2 plexiglass sides. On the left side, his hot side, has a 100w mercury vapor bulb in a wire cage sitting on top the meshing and derpy’s basking light because the mercury bulb alone wasn’t keeping his old 40gal tank warm enough and it wouldn’t keep an even bigger tank warm enough either.
We had a 22 inch t5 uvb hanging inside the cage to cover the middle section and on the far right no lighting but we recently decided to move the t5 onto the furthest right side because that’s the only spot he would be on all day and we wanted him to still be getting uvb exposure.
Both bulbs are not very old plus we have a decor item that lets us know if the uvb isn’t working so it’s not bad bulbs.
The hot side stays at about 100 degrees , the middle and cold side about 80-85 degrees. Humidity is anywhere between 30-40% sometimes even 50% on all sides.
His substrate is a mixture of sand,soil, and bark. All of them being made for reptiles. I know sand and other loose substrate isn’t a lot of peoples favorite but hes not ingesting it. If I get him to eat it’s by tweezers anyway.
He gets bathed 3+ times a week like his vet said because of dehydration. I can sometimes get him to go to bathroom if he sits in there for a little bit and maybe a gentle tummy massage to help but that doesn’t always work. Not even a little watery fruit gets him going.
I’ve never once seen him go to his water bowl for a drink. It’s always fresh bottled water changed daily. We have to get him hydrated other ways, like baths and using a syringe thing to drop water droplets on his nose. But he never really wants it but I can see him barely open his mouth to test out what it is. He’s very leery of anything in a syringe because we ONE time tricked him to get a medication administered for pinworm parasites but that has since been cleared up and retested again recently.
Ok sorry for the information dump, i tried to cover everything I could think of and probably overshared a little instead but any confusion with what I’ve said can be cleared if you get in touch with me. I really hope someone can help I’ve done everything I could possibly think of.
Diet: superworms + hornworms. He was eating dubia roaches most of his life but for some reason he started to refuse them completely. he is also very picky when it comes to veggies and will only eat romaine lettuce but like I mentioned he won’t eat much these days. We sprinkle flukers calcium with d3 on his foods but honestly with the lack of eating he probably hasn’t gotten much of it.
Enclosure: 125 gl. Tank we had to make a lid for it. It’s got three sections, one mesh side with 1/2 inch mesh holes so it’s not blocking too much I hope, and 2 plexiglass sides. On the left side, his hot side, has a 100w mercury vapor bulb in a wire cage sitting on top the meshing and derpy’s basking light because the mercury bulb alone wasn’t keeping his old 40gal tank warm enough and it wouldn’t keep an even bigger tank warm enough either.
We had a 22 inch t5 uvb hanging inside the cage to cover the middle section and on the far right no lighting but we recently decided to move the t5 onto the furthest right side because that’s the only spot he would be on all day and we wanted him to still be getting uvb exposure.
Both bulbs are not very old plus we have a decor item that lets us know if the uvb isn’t working so it’s not bad bulbs.
The hot side stays at about 100 degrees , the middle and cold side about 80-85 degrees. Humidity is anywhere between 30-40% sometimes even 50% on all sides.
His substrate is a mixture of sand,soil, and bark. All of them being made for reptiles. I know sand and other loose substrate isn’t a lot of peoples favorite but hes not ingesting it. If I get him to eat it’s by tweezers anyway.
He gets bathed 3+ times a week like his vet said because of dehydration. I can sometimes get him to go to bathroom if he sits in there for a little bit and maybe a gentle tummy massage to help but that doesn’t always work. Not even a little watery fruit gets him going.
I’ve never once seen him go to his water bowl for a drink. It’s always fresh bottled water changed daily. We have to get him hydrated other ways, like baths and using a syringe thing to drop water droplets on his nose. But he never really wants it but I can see him barely open his mouth to test out what it is. He’s very leery of anything in a syringe because we ONE time tricked him to get a medication administered for pinworm parasites but that has since been cleared up and retested again recently.
Ok sorry for the information dump, i tried to cover everything I could think of and probably overshared a little instead but any confusion with what I’ve said can be cleared if you get in touch with me. I really hope someone can help I’ve done everything I could possibly think of.
New here, possibly too old for this
