Dar21
Member
- Beardie name(s)
- Darren
Hi everyone, I would really appreciate some feedback on my tank setup.
Darren is approximately a year old (bought him last September and estimated he was about 12 weeks old by his size then). He’s now about 19” and 423g.
For the last few months he has seemed to not want to bother basking unless I pick him up and put him in his basking spot. His appetite has been hit and miss and he point blank refuses crickets. We are in Canada so can’t feed him live dubias (I have a supply of the fresh preserved ones which he used to love but turns his nose up at those too). He only eats Repashy bug pie, mealworms or Superworms (which are not ideal i know)
His basking lamp is a 75w reptile basking lamp. We had a T5 5.0 mounted on top (without the screen) but after reading all of the recommendations here we changed it to the T5 10.0 over a month ago. It sits on top of the mesh screen. (I tried it without the screen and had the basking spots 12-15” away but he seemed to want to avoid the light all the time and hid under his hammock). His basking rock is about 10” away and the hammock on the cool side is about 8”away. The temperature on the rock (using a digital probe) is about 95 and gets to just over 100 on the branch. It reads a bit higher with the temp gun.
We have had some great sunny days recently so we have been bringing him out and he gapes and poops and just generally seems in better form which leads me to think something isn’t to his liking in his terrarium.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated- i have messed about with his setup so much over the last few months trying to get him to want to bask that I also just wonder if he is just maybe annoyed about that?!!
Darren is approximately a year old (bought him last September and estimated he was about 12 weeks old by his size then). He’s now about 19” and 423g.
For the last few months he has seemed to not want to bother basking unless I pick him up and put him in his basking spot. His appetite has been hit and miss and he point blank refuses crickets. We are in Canada so can’t feed him live dubias (I have a supply of the fresh preserved ones which he used to love but turns his nose up at those too). He only eats Repashy bug pie, mealworms or Superworms (which are not ideal i know)
His basking lamp is a 75w reptile basking lamp. We had a T5 5.0 mounted on top (without the screen) but after reading all of the recommendations here we changed it to the T5 10.0 over a month ago. It sits on top of the mesh screen. (I tried it without the screen and had the basking spots 12-15” away but he seemed to want to avoid the light all the time and hid under his hammock). His basking rock is about 10” away and the hammock on the cool side is about 8”away. The temperature on the rock (using a digital probe) is about 95 and gets to just over 100 on the branch. It reads a bit higher with the temp gun.
We have had some great sunny days recently so we have been bringing him out and he gapes and poops and just generally seems in better form which leads me to think something isn’t to his liking in his terrarium.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated- i have messed about with his setup so much over the last few months trying to get him to want to bask that I also just wonder if he is just maybe annoyed about that?!!
i have attached a pic of the setup when it was 12-15”. He spent most of the time under the hammock - it was definitely much brighter than it is with the screen on - how do you know when it’s too bright for them? 
