My girlfriend just picked up a juvenile leather-back and I had a couple questions/concerns that I feel like I need to ask about...
1: Our apartments temperature is controlled by our landlord and tends to hover around 60F. Just to get the get the basking area up to 90F we needed to upgrade to a 100 watt basking bulb (20g long tank and we are using a reptisun 10.0 CFL; we want to upgrade to a t8 or t5 but wanted to wait till this one needs to be replaced. Cool side is at 79F). Because of the basking light it is a never ending battle to keep the humility up. Is there anything we could do about this?
I have already taped off a large chunk of the mesh top to try to keep water in and have given him a much larger water dish and it still drops like a rock to ~10-20% 45 minutes or so after misting the cage.
2: is 90F enough (measured with a digital probe just above the basking rock)? We had an UTH which helped get it up to 96F but it felt like the floor under his basking rock was way too hot and its where he sleeps so we turned it off out of concern. I would add a heat emitter but it would just make my humidity issues worse.
3: He always hides, never comes out and never eats minus a few nibbles of veggies. The way he acts around crickets make me think he is scared of them. He is starting to loose weight and nothing we do will get him to eat. He doesn't bask and always looks depressed. He always holds his head down when we pick him up to clean the tank or bath him and he normally has a death grip on your hand but will randomly violently try to roll out of your hand. While I would normally think he is just getting used to his new environment the weight loss and behavior really concerns me. This is our second dragon and our last one acted nothing like this.
My girlfriend was concerned that he wasn't getting enough light (we have had him for a week now) so she temporarily removed the hiding spots for today and I know this isn't ideal but its all we could think of.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you!
1: Our apartments temperature is controlled by our landlord and tends to hover around 60F. Just to get the get the basking area up to 90F we needed to upgrade to a 100 watt basking bulb (20g long tank and we are using a reptisun 10.0 CFL; we want to upgrade to a t8 or t5 but wanted to wait till this one needs to be replaced. Cool side is at 79F). Because of the basking light it is a never ending battle to keep the humility up. Is there anything we could do about this?
I have already taped off a large chunk of the mesh top to try to keep water in and have given him a much larger water dish and it still drops like a rock to ~10-20% 45 minutes or so after misting the cage.
2: is 90F enough (measured with a digital probe just above the basking rock)? We had an UTH which helped get it up to 96F but it felt like the floor under his basking rock was way too hot and its where he sleeps so we turned it off out of concern. I would add a heat emitter but it would just make my humidity issues worse.
3: He always hides, never comes out and never eats minus a few nibbles of veggies. The way he acts around crickets make me think he is scared of them. He is starting to loose weight and nothing we do will get him to eat. He doesn't bask and always looks depressed. He always holds his head down when we pick him up to clean the tank or bath him and he normally has a death grip on your hand but will randomly violently try to roll out of your hand. While I would normally think he is just getting used to his new environment the weight loss and behavior really concerns me. This is our second dragon and our last one acted nothing like this.
My girlfriend was concerned that he wasn't getting enough light (we have had him for a week now) so she temporarily removed the hiding spots for today and I know this isn't ideal but its all we could think of.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you!