New Beardie Owner

[Nyxi]

A few weeks ago, I adopted a new bearded dragon. She is a female adult, approximately 17.5 inches from snout to tail. She's close to 1lb in weight and to my inexperienced eye, she looked quite healthy. Her estimated age is about 3-4 years old. She came to me with a full setup already, but I have since made a few changes to her enclosure. She really is quite different from the snakes I keep -- she's alert and sometimes spunky, but also quite mellow. Needless to say, I got attached to her pretty quickly. I named her Onyxia ;]

Her previous owner described her as a "suncrest" morph. I've done some research online for other examples of this morph, but I haven't come up with anything, so I don't know if this is really a thing. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to me though -- I do not intend to breed her, so she is just a pretty pet to me.

Her enclosure is a glass tank, 4ft long x 2ft wide. I have an 18" ReptiSun 10.0 bulb, which spans half of her enclosure. I have also gotten a stronger heat lamp, so her hottest basking area is about 120*F. Ambient temp is about 77*F. Humidity is currently at 26%. She also came with play sand, which I have since removed and replaced with adhesive tile. She has a food dish, a basking log, and a half-log hide. I removed her water bowl and I've been hydrating her with soaks (either daily or every-other-day).

Her staple diet consists of turnip & collard greens. I just bought a butternut squash to test with her too. She also gets superworms and dubia roaches every couple of days.

I do have a multitude of questions (esp recently she was diagnosed with parasites), but I will post them in the appropriate forums. In the meantime, please let me know if there is anything I'm doing wrong thusfar

 

[brittani299]

Hello. I would put the temp down. It is quite high. 102 to 110 is better. If you have any other questions just post them

 

[Nyxi]

Thanks for the reply! I'm not sure if it was karma or fate or other mysterious forces, but her heating bulb burnt out last night. I have put a temp bulb in, but I have to go shopping for another one now.

I had noticed that with the previous bulb, she moved around to thermoregulate pretty often. Her 120*F spot is at the highest point of her log, and the temps gradually come down to more appropriate values the further away from that spot. The reason I got such a high bulb was because about 1 week after getting her, she started to act very lethargic and sleepy. A friend suggested that she may have been going into brumation, and suggested the new bulb to combat it. I think it did the trick, as she snapped out of it really quickly and had been perky ever since.

This temp bulb only gets that spot up to 95*F or so. I'll see if I can find something in the middle :wink:

[Edit: Oh, I do have additional questions! They're actually posted here: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=179529]