Meet Saphira, my first female beardie!

[Kiara1125]

Everyone, meet Saphira! She's my birthday present from my fiancé and a lovely little sweetheart. She's got an injured tail because someone at Petsmart mistreated her when she was a baby. They dropped a piece of decor on her while trying to catch another beardie. She's perfectly healed now and is a big, healthy 3 year old. She is a citrus tangerine (possibly a tiger?) and I love her color and patterns. She ate EVERY petal from a triple hibiscus flower (BY HAND!!) only a few hours after I got her in her tank and she kept eating afterwards! She's such a piggy! She may be shy and skittish (her ownerhas handled her only occasionally in the past year due to starting a family), but I love Saphira so much. I love her golden eyes and how she looks at everything with such wonder. When she looks at my fiancé and I, she cocks her head with curiosity and walks up to us. She's so adorable and she has instantly captured my heart. I'm so happy to have her.

As for some added info, she's 16" from nose to tail tip and she's into a 40gB. She has a coil ReptiGlo bulb, but I'm getting a new one on the 16th (Tuesday) and it will be a compact 10.0 ReptiSun. I'm still debating if I should get a tube fixture or not, but since she basks into the UVB and I'll be taking her outside, I'm guessing that it's not needed. I only have her on sand because it's not the calcium carbonate sand, it's quartz sand. Her previous owner and I feed her everything either by hand or in a dish, so she doesn't ingest sand. I'm taking extra precautions with her and she's been doing great. She's been on sand since she was a juvenile and she's done well so far. Plus, sand is easier for me to clean than a reptile carpet - and with how skittish she is, I want to keep handling to a minimum right now.

I hope you all enjoy the pictures!

 

[destiny1998]

Hi. She sure is a pretty girl I would not do a compact uvb those cause eye, appetite and lethargy problems the best uvb is the reptisun10.0 Tube or Aracidia tubes. Just to let you know beardies lick every thing thats how they learn about their environment. So she can easily lick the sand. Just something to think about

 

[Kiara1125]

Hi. She sure is a pretty girl I would not do a compact uvb those cause eye, appetite and lethargy problems the best uvb is the reptisun10.0 Tube or Aracidia tubes. Just to let you know beardies lick every thing thats how they learn about their environment. So she can easily lick the sand. Just something to think about

I know that they lick. She's been doing it constantly. Plus, I had a male beardie for 4 years before Saphira. She hasn't licked the sand. She was sold with her tank, so she mainly licked the decor and the glass, but not the sand.

I'll try and look for a fixture later, but for now she'll be fine with the compact. She's super active and a pig, so there's no problems yet. I just heard that the only difference was that the compact UVB bulbs were more concentrated in a smaller area and that the tubes were more distributed - that's why there's the eye problems and such like that. I'm planning on rotating the light and possibly hanging it above the tank so she doesn't have any problems. That's just if I don't get the tube fixture first. The Arcadia (hey, the city I live in! xD) bulbs are a no since they're so expensive. I'd love to have one, though.