Red Spots On Beardie.

[Hoveringpie]

Hi

Its been a while i have been on here but i have been doing well with my new beardies untill now.
For the last week i have noticed little red dots on all three of my beardies bodys. Around the eyes and those little holes on the side of there heads (please someone tell me what these are because i dont know lol<could they be ears lol>) Any way i have been told that they could be mites but they dont seem to move around i havnt noticed any thing crawling around the wood or rocks or on the glass. Any way my g/f bathed all three of the beardies in warm water and gently stroked the red dots with a soft tooth brush and some of the red dots have gone away. My own conclusion is that its blood from them shedding but not one hundred percent.

I have dissenfected the whole tank today and all of the furniture to be on the safe side if it is mites.

Any help on this would be apreseated.

Thanks in advance

James

Viv Details...


3 foot wooden viv with glass sliding doors
Foot long piece of wood
Exo terra water dish
Exo terra Cricket feeding rock
Exo terra Feeding bowl (for salads)
Exo terra star cacti
Exo terra mealworm dish
2 foot UVA 10 Tube
A 100w exo terra sun glo basking lamp
The Three beardies

GEX (the biggest)
SPYRO (the one with the Calcium defisincy that has cleared up nicely)
FALCOR (The orange and black one)

Just thought i would add that they love watching tv it couldnt cause a problem for square eyes could it lol.


Thanks again

James

 

[catUK]

It would help if you could post some pics, but red spots do often mean mites. here's a link to a post on here about mites and how to treat them:

http://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=943998

The hole things are their ears lol. Ive never heard of shedding causing bleeding. Mites feed off the blood of beardies (hence the red spots) and are hard to see and get rid of- you often find them in their water dish or you might see them if you bathe your beardie as this drowns them. I hope you find out for sure what it is

 

[Hoveringpie]

First of all meet gex he/she wont go to bed without having a hour with me on a night.

here is the red dots on gex as i described earlier

Thanks again James

 

[ziggy23]

1) what are you using for substrate? some of that sand can discolor them.

2) are you leaving feeders in the tank? because they can bite the dragons

3) are they housed together? there's a possibility they could be hurting each other when your not watching. Also if there are mites, parasites, or any other illness then your pretty much guaranteed to have all 3 get it for as long as they are together.

 

[Hoveringpie]

I am using wood chippings for substate and yes they are all together but me or the girlfriend have never seen them biting each other or any thing.
I use live crickets and i just throw about 6-8 in at a time i use calci powder quit a lot so i would see if there were any left over but i suppose on some occasions they could be some alive in the viv at some stage.

Thanks James

 

[catUK]

I would be careful about housing them together, they are not social animals- they will fight at some point and can cause serious injury or worse. there was a poster on here recently whose female beardie broke the other ones jaw by biting down on his head and ive heard many other sad stories. please think about separating them

 

[Hoveringpie]

i know i read about that. If i ever see any signs of violence i will definatly re home them they are only 2 months old. but i am only on a low wage and this setup cost me £300 so far i cant spend another £600 to rehome them as yet if they get nasty the only thing i would have to do is sell them which i would be sad to do.
Any ideas on the red dots though?

Thanks

James

 

[ziggy23]

They aren't necessarily violent all the time. At best they tolerate each other, but don't like each other. they could just snap and bite each other then just as quickly go back to acting like before. They are territorial by nature. so it's more likely to be a matter of when rather than if. Even if there isn't fighting, there's dominance issues which can be rather subtle that affects their health.

If they fight, you could end up with injuries that require a large vet bill and worse case scenario 2 or more dead dragons. they are capable of maiming, disfiguring and killing each other.

Another point to consider they'll hit puberty here in just a few months. Males do not get along with each other past that point. They will fight all the time. If you have a male and female then you'll be looking at a gravid female way too young to breed. Even worse would be 2 males and 1 female. The males would be constantly fighting and overbreeding the female. The stress of overbreeding or a pregnancy at that age is very bad and potentially fatal. If she does get pregnant you could end up with a lot more dragons to house. They can lay 3-5 clutches of 20-30 eggs each maybe more. If you have 2 females and one male you'll have even more babies to worry about.

Sorry about the novel, but I just wanted to let you in on the full extent of the potential consequences of housing together. In the long run, it's cheaper to house them separately. It doesn't have to cost that much money. I spent roughly the same amount that you did for 2 dragons. You can get used tanks for little or nothing. For uv, shop online for the best deals. Buy fixtures at a hardware store and use a household bulb for heat. For furniture you can gather rocks and branches from outside, use a shoe box for a hide, newspaper on the bottom.

Btw, throw out the woodchips. it's one of the worst substrates there is. It's very unsanitary. Little ones especially are not good at their aim and tend to eat it a little. Which means they're eating something that could cause impaction that is also infested with bacteria, and whatever else from their poo. And they should be eating way more crickets than that. Hatchlings eat anywhere from 20-100 crickets over the course of 2-3 feedings a day.

 

[bpebler219]

Those spots look like mites. My boyfriends dragon had them really bad. We think he had them ever since we got them but just realized what they were a few months back when we saw them moving around on the paper towels on the bottom of the tank. They are really hard to get rid of and they can kill your beardie if left alone because they get under the dragon's scales and suck their blood. We took the dragon out of his 40 gal and put him in another tank we had handy at the time and cleaned the 40 gallon with a bleach solution then wiped it down and didn't put him back in it for a while. We also removed all the tank decor from it and cleaned what we could and got rid of the rest just to be safe. We originally used Jurassimite I believe which we got from Petsmart and I'm not sure how effectively it worked but we switched over to an iodine solution that you have to put in their baths. You also have to keep cleaning the tank they're in religiously because the mites reproduce so fast. While they are in the bath, make sure you watch them to make sure they don't drink the water with the solution in it and use the toothbrush you were talking about to help scrape them off. The iodine is also supposed to help with the bites that the mites leave. Good luck and I hope this helped

 

[pogvitt]

I agree, I would say those are mites.

 

[niner]

Around the eyes and ear holes are a big clue that they are mites as is the fact that some went away after a bath. I would seperate them and get rid of the wood chips, you should also be feeding as many as the dragon can eat in 15 minutes and be diligent about removing any that are uneaten. Even if you dust with calcium the crickets clean themselves and the calcium does not stay on long and they can hide effectively to come out later and bit your dragon.
good luck,
Dale

 

[Screamin99]

My Dragon has one red spot near his eye, its actually on the Bottom eye lid. I have not seen any other red spots or moving spots on him. Would this one little place be a mite?

 

[bpebler219]

It's possible that it could be a mite. Hopefully not but just in case you might want to keep an eye on him. Some favorite spots besides the beardie's head are by his hip joints where his legs are close to his body and we found that a lot of them liked to sit in between his spikes. I'm not sure if it was because our beardie is a leatherback and doesn't have spikes all along his back or if that where they like to hide though. *Fingers crossed it's not mites*

 

[Livey]

I agree, they look like mites,
you need to separate them to stop them spreading if they already haven't...