Hello all.
I will start off by saying that I'm not new to raising reptiles but all of the ones i have owned or do own are Iguanas. i've read a lot about Bearded Dragons and recently got the opertunity to adopt a 1-1/2 year hold Male BD from a young boy that got bored of it.
Background on the BD that i could find out from the pervious owners was pretty minimal but he has always been healthy, alert and friendly according to them but he did escape once in the spring and was outdoors for a few weeks before they found him i was told.
anyways he looked healthy to me when i visited them but was definitely under fed, stomach was skinny for a BD of his size and as they gave me his cage and everything that they had for him with him they appeared to just be feeding him very little, what they gave me was a cricket container that had one cricket in it and a small tub of small meal worms (yes i read they are bad for them and i am not feeding him the meal worms)
so the ride home was kind of stressful for him i'm sure. i put him in a 10 gal terrarium i had so i could keep him on the passenger seat of my truck for the ride home (1 hour drive) he was constantly clawing at the cage etc.
so got him home and i left him in the 10 gal so i could clean and fix some minor issues with his old wood cage they gave me (replaced the plastic front with glass because it was scratched, cut the top open more and screened it with chicken wire so the new MVB bulb would penetrate into the cage real well.
I bought a Powersun 100 watt MVB for him because they had been using a crappy Exo-terra 10.0 compact FB that i know is no good plus it looked very old even though they claimed it was not but thats besides the point.
so anyways got him all setup yesterday and he was very active and basking under the MVB (i had it raised up real high for break in i know they output more UVB when new and need to be broken in before moved closer) he ate a ton of crickets yesterday and had a very watery bowl movement that did not look normal, the feces looked orange but the urates were white as normal. this concerned me but from what i read it could have just been his diet that caused it and to see if it changes with a change in diet.
so today i get up in the morning and the lights for him and my iguana come on (have them both running on the same timer on a 12/12 cycle) last night he had dug a hole in the sand in the corner of the cage and slept there (yes i read sand is bad for them but more specifically smaller dragons, i figured if hes been in sand for this long he must be used to it and its ok for him) so today he stays in that corner pretty much all day and not moving around very often and usually has his eyes closed, ate 1 cricket in the morning when it went in front of him but that was it never ate another one and never bothered to even go to the side of the cage with the water bowl and collard greens i put in there for him this morning. spend 90% of the day with his eyes closed and doing nothing. the good news is he had two bowl movements today and both looked normal, no more orange color, just brown with a little green and white urates.
is he stressed out or do you guys think i should cut off the MVB bulb as its putting out to much UV for him?
here is photos of him and his setup taken yesterday
and this is him today, he has moved out of the corner he dug but is still pretty much not doing anything
maybe i'm jumping the gun here i'm not sure, you think i should just give him some time to adjust to the new home and he will get back to normal and is just stressed out from the trip and the new home?
I will start off by saying that I'm not new to raising reptiles but all of the ones i have owned or do own are Iguanas. i've read a lot about Bearded Dragons and recently got the opertunity to adopt a 1-1/2 year hold Male BD from a young boy that got bored of it.
Background on the BD that i could find out from the pervious owners was pretty minimal but he has always been healthy, alert and friendly according to them but he did escape once in the spring and was outdoors for a few weeks before they found him i was told.
anyways he looked healthy to me when i visited them but was definitely under fed, stomach was skinny for a BD of his size and as they gave me his cage and everything that they had for him with him they appeared to just be feeding him very little, what they gave me was a cricket container that had one cricket in it and a small tub of small meal worms (yes i read they are bad for them and i am not feeding him the meal worms)
so the ride home was kind of stressful for him i'm sure. i put him in a 10 gal terrarium i had so i could keep him on the passenger seat of my truck for the ride home (1 hour drive) he was constantly clawing at the cage etc.
so got him home and i left him in the 10 gal so i could clean and fix some minor issues with his old wood cage they gave me (replaced the plastic front with glass because it was scratched, cut the top open more and screened it with chicken wire so the new MVB bulb would penetrate into the cage real well.
I bought a Powersun 100 watt MVB for him because they had been using a crappy Exo-terra 10.0 compact FB that i know is no good plus it looked very old even though they claimed it was not but thats besides the point.
so anyways got him all setup yesterday and he was very active and basking under the MVB (i had it raised up real high for break in i know they output more UVB when new and need to be broken in before moved closer) he ate a ton of crickets yesterday and had a very watery bowl movement that did not look normal, the feces looked orange but the urates were white as normal. this concerned me but from what i read it could have just been his diet that caused it and to see if it changes with a change in diet.
so today i get up in the morning and the lights for him and my iguana come on (have them both running on the same timer on a 12/12 cycle) last night he had dug a hole in the sand in the corner of the cage and slept there (yes i read sand is bad for them but more specifically smaller dragons, i figured if hes been in sand for this long he must be used to it and its ok for him) so today he stays in that corner pretty much all day and not moving around very often and usually has his eyes closed, ate 1 cricket in the morning when it went in front of him but that was it never ate another one and never bothered to even go to the side of the cage with the water bowl and collard greens i put in there for him this morning. spend 90% of the day with his eyes closed and doing nothing. the good news is he had two bowl movements today and both looked normal, no more orange color, just brown with a little green and white urates.
is he stressed out or do you guys think i should cut off the MVB bulb as its putting out to much UV for him?
here is photos of him and his setup taken yesterday
and this is him today, he has moved out of the corner he dug but is still pretty much not doing anything
maybe i'm jumping the gun here i'm not sure, you think i should just give him some time to adjust to the new home and he will get back to normal and is just stressed out from the trip and the new home?