trying to eat calcium/carpet?

[bigred121]

Since yesterday and today Nigel has been trying to eat the calcium powder off of the carpet in his tank. When i feed him, he'll ignore his food and go straight to where the calcium dropped from the insects and really trys his best to eat the carpet. and even earlier i tried giving him some more dubia and he licked them untill all the calcium was off, what should i do?

-Lacey

 

[Drache613]

Hello,

What type & brand of UVB are you using? A fluorescent tube bulb or a compact/coil light?
How often do you give calcium to him? How old is he?
This could be a calcium issue if he is trying to get extra calcium through licking all of the powder or other sources.


Tracie

 

[bigred121]

It's r zilla 15 w, it's a tube.
I give him calcium mon-fri, should I bump it up to every day??
He's about 4 months now

 

[Drache613]

Hello,

The RZilla tube bulb is not a very good bulb, I hate to say. Your dragon most likely is not getting enough UVB exposure & is not absorbing his calcium very well.
How close is he to the light? How long has he been acting this way?
I recommend changing out his UVB tube bulb to either a Reptisun 10 or an Arcadia D3 12% tube bulb, to replace the Zilla light.
You can get them at www.lightyourreptiles.com

Or you can get the Reptisun 10 at www.petmountain.com

Tracie

 

[bigred121]

He only started doing this like two days ago, my local pet store should have those, I'll go get one right now. He's about 9 inches away from it when he's on his lowest hide, when he's on his hammock or drift wood he can get really close if he wanted to.
Thanks so much for your help. How long do you think it would take for him to be back to normal?

 

[bigred121]

When I bought the rzilla light it came with the Rzilla light fixture (I'm not sure if that's exactly what it's called), should I buy a whole new tube and fixture, are they both bad?

 

[babyelvissocute]

Are you talking about the hood it came with? If so then its fine. I made the same mistake as you, before I joined this site, and had the zilla bulb and fixture. But I kept and still use the fixture, with the reptisun in it.

 

[bigred121]

Yes that's what I was talking about. Thank y'all so much, I just got the new tube it's all set up now!