Stress over Male beardie seeing female

[RockyTurner]

Hello everyone. Myself and my family love our beardies. After losing my first female dragon, my son and I got two. They were too young to sex, and we ended up with one male, Leonidas, and one female, Roxy. Their personalities are so different, it is crazy.
They are both about 10 months old, and after our boy became less energetic, we had their stools tested at our exotic vet. Leonidas came back positive for coccidia and pinworms, both which are found in the dragon in the low amounts. He has received his Albon and Panacur. We are following all rules on lighting, feeding ( though he does not have his appetite back yet) light, flooring, extreme hygiene. He is to be retested in 3 weeks. Roxy tested negative and is fiesy as ever.
I am posting this because I believe the stress of his constantly seeing my girl from across the room must have caused this. YES.... they are kept separately. We do not want to breed them and love them both. Even though they are across the room from each other, I am thinking that I need to make it so he can not even see her. We thought that his silly antics of bearding, crazy head bobbing, and stomping were cute, but now I believe it is what caused him to get stressed, then sick because of the stress.
I am posting this to maybe help other owners beware, and if any of you who have more expertise have any thoughts or suggestions, and would like to share them, my beardies and I would appreciate that too.
Love this site

 

[AHBD]

Hi there, yes you have seen that the dragons must be out of each other's sight. I also wanted to mention that low levels of parasites are fine and Albon is a very harsh sulfa drug. A much better anti coccidial is Ponazuril [ toltrazuril ] which is far less harsh and usually works in just 2-3 days. You can actually order it from a site called beardeddragon.co if yourvet dopesn't carry it. Many dragon owners would not give Albon , totltrazuril is the go to med. now.

 

[RockyTurner]

Thank you so much.
That definitely seems in line with the things I have been reading SINCE giving him the medicine.?
I will definitely go that route if he needs follow up treatment in 3 weeks.
I am giving him lots of warm soaks- he stays in for hours at a time by choice- and he will happily eat his wax worms. They usually only get a couple of these at a time, but I am just happy I can get him to eat at all right now. His poop is looking and smelling normal again, so I know that we are making progress.
I will keep you posted on his recovery.

 

[AHBD]

Yikes, soaking for hours at a time is a bad sign, a healthy beardie would not do so. How would you keep the water warm, or is there a large bowl in his tank under the heat lamp ? Best to take it out ASAP, dragons don't even need daily soaks let alone for hours. Once a week for 10 minutes is best.


Can you post pics of him and his set up ? Here's how :

https://www.beardeddragon.org/useruploads/ Then use the XIMG to upload them

 

[RockyTurner]

I have only been giving him so many baths and letting him stay in- yes, he stays in for a couple of hours or until I take him out- because I read that the soaks will help his kidneys while he is recovering from the meds. You are correct in the fact the my healthy girl never stays in that long, and that he never did when he felt good. I do put the water tub directly under his heat lamp and it does stay warm.
He is in the 40 long with front opening doors. Wire cover on top, vents across front below doors. I do wash their houses with antibacterial soap and then spray with alcohol a couple of times a week. Leonidas does NOT poop in his house, he goes everyday when we let him out. I use paper towels for the flooring for easy clean up. He has some basking logs- I want to get rid of the wood and replace it with something easier to clean- a small water bowl and his veggie food dish at all times. He gets fresh organic collard greens with assorted, approved and washed, veggies and fruit daily. The large water dish is only put in for his baths/soaks.
We keep his basking end in the high 90’s -100 with a 100 watt mercury vapor bulb- UVA UVB HEAT. It is 5 months old... and I had it tested about 3 weeks ago, and is about 11 inches from the basking log on the high end. On the other end I have a lower wattage UVA daylight bulb that I turn on only if it gets too hot in his house. The humidity is very high often... I need to mention that we live outside of Austin in Texas. It has been very hot and humid. Even our AC can only do so much. The humidity is the only thing that I feel I have not been able to keep spot on. It is sometimes 70% without any water inside. In the winter, I add red bulbs to heat their cages to about 70-75 F at night.
I mentioned that these two beardies are VERY different. Leonidas is a very skiddish guy and likes to cling to his people, unless he is trying to impress Roxy, then he sees nothing but her. She on the other hand is the chillest, spunkiest, silly girl beardie that I have ever known She will eat anything- I have to watch her- and is scared of nothing.
We love both of our beardies so much and I spend an unbelievable amount of time and money trying to take care of them. I want Leonidas to be his big healthy self again.

 

[RockyTurner]

I am also going to look for some acidophilus today. Soy yogurt will be my fall back plan. I have read many threads that suggest this during/after these harsh medicines. I am a little disappointed because I specifically asked my vet if I could get some probiotics. His vet tech giggled and said that I didn’t need any acidophilus because I was not giving him antibiotics. What are your thoughts on this?