MBD/Brumation worries & Phoenix Worms

[cmh3988]

Several questions – sorry for the book. Here’s some background:

I’ve had Puffy since June 5th. She’s 14” and 170 grams. I estimate her to be around 7 months old. She was acting really lethargic and not moving around so I took her to the vet and he said she had early signs of MBD (lethargy, not standing up fully, slinking when she does walk around). He also checked for URI (no) & her fecal came back clean.

I told him I was feeding phoenix worms and dusting them with vitamins with D3 but not calcium because everything I read said I didn’t need to. He looked at the phoenix worm nutrition ratio, researched online with other vets and told me to go ahead and start dusting with calcium as he didn’t think anything was out of whack with my UVB lights/setup in general. (Her warm side temp is 102-110, cool is around 80 and I have 2 (18”) Reptisun 10.0 UVB lights). After I took her, her appetite started decreasing and she was hanging out on the cool side of her viv more, laying down but not sleeping (although her eyes look heavy lidded). She had been not basking as much before I took her, but her appetite was still up.

I took her to another vet last Friday (a week after the first vet) and he agreed with the first vet’s MBD diagnosis, also told me to start dusting the worms with calcium, and gave me liquid calcium to give her. Didn’t know why she wasn’t basking/staying on cool side so much.

So my questions are, could she be going into brumation or could this be just side effects of the MBD? I never see her totally asleep, but she looks tired a lot of the time and doesn't want to bask. Her appetite has really slacked off, but she does still eat some (and is still pooping daily). If it IS brumation I hate to give her a spot to go down in because she needs her liquid calcium to get the MBD better. Plus she’s fairly young to go down from what I’ve read. The other thing – has anyone else heard that about dusting phoenix worms with calcium? I asked both vets and they said it was pretty hard to OD a dragon on calcium when I expressed my concern about dusting a feeder already high in calcium. The second vet also said some dragons are just naturally more genetically susceptible to MBD and maybe not dusting led to her symptoms.

Any thoughts/opinions/experience with this is much appreciated...

 

[AHBD]

How old is her UVB bulb, and how close is she to it ? Those bulbs should be changed every 6 months and need to be within 8-10" of the dragon. She sounds too small and not quite healthy enough for brumation.

 

[cmh3988]

I got them both after I got her so less than 4 months old on the UVBs. At first I had them mounted to the top of her viv and they WERE too far away. About a 6 weeks ago I lowered them to 6" away from her on her basking spot. I told both the vets about that too - that they were too high at first but neither vet seemed to think that could have caused it (which I found kind of strange).

 

[AHBD]

I think that was the problem. Hopefully with some time and the UVB light closer, and the extra calcium [ she will need it now because she was not able to absorb it before, so she probably is lacking ] she shold improve. There may be other underlying problems now, but that's the first , or at least most obvious explanation.

 

[AHBD]

Another thing, how do you hydrate her ?

 

[cmh3988]

She will NOT drink from her bath or lap up water if i drip it on her nose. So I give her a bath 5 times a week so she soaks it up from her vent. No chalky urate to date.