Weird leg movement

[Spikeshuman]

In the past few days I have noticed Spikes legs doing a sort of twitching thing. She is fine when sitting still.. but then she lifts a limb to move it and its very shaky. She started scratching at her hammock just now and every time she picked up her arm to scratch it was all shaky and twitchy. I picked her up and placed her on the flat surface of her house and she walked just fine back up to her hammock. Does anyone know what this is about? Do I need to be worried?

I recently switched to liquid calcium in spray form because the calcium dust would not stick to roaches like it does to crickets. Dunno if that has anything to do with it.

I also recently switched from a Powersun MVB to a reptisun 10.0 almost a week ago.

 

[drpayne1990]

Don't get alarmed straight away because this could not be the case, but that is one of the first signs of Metabolic Bone Disease (MBD).

How long has this been happening?
Is the reptisun a tube or compact globe?
How often do you dust your food with calcium powder if any?
Does the calcium powder contain vitamin D?
What are your tempretures? basking spot, cool side ect.
What salads do you feed?

It does seem like something has happened with the calcium intake once you switched to the spray. I strongly suggest going back to the powder, I use the brand Rep-Cal which seems to work well. If you are having trouble getting the powder on the crickets I will share with you what I do with mine.

I have one of these to store my crickets in;

I re-locate the crickets into a duster that I made out of a takeway container like this;

The container has a hole in it at the top the same size as the tubes from the cricket pen so it is easy to put in. Finally I stuck paper around a majority of the container so my beardies would not attack the plastic, but enough for me to see how many are in there.

Hope you see this soon, because if it is early stages of MBD then it needs to be addressed straight away.
Paul

 

[Spikeshuman]

Ok.. shaking.. only the last few days. The bulb.. I switched from the powersun 100w to a reptisun 10.0 tube.

Used to dust crickets everyday.. dusted roaches every day as well but it doesnt stick well.. so I switched to spray. The MVB I only had for a few months.. before that I had a reptisun 10.0 screw in bulb. The powder had vitamin D.. spray does not.

Temps.. basking spot 108, cool side 75.

Salad - collard greens plus celery tops for flavor.. mostly collards. I often throw other things in there to try.. but she only ever eats collards.. and only when she feels like it. Seems like on week on.. one week off as far as the veggies go.

As for help with crickets.. they were no problem whatsoever.. I shook them in a cup with cal powder and it was great. I did the same with roaches and it does not stick. Today I actually sprayed roaches AND dusted.. and that stuck better.. but not great. Why not just feed her calcium dusted crickets?? Because she absolutely refuses to eat crickets ever since I gave her her first roach. I tried again yesterday and she looked at the crickets.. looked at me.. then back at the crickets.. then back at me.. then turned around and flopped down to pout.


ALSO.. prior to the mvb I had the screw in bulb.. which I suppose is essentially a coil. She had that from baby till about 5 months old and she ate and grew like crazy (15 inches by 4 months). She had the MVB since november. She has not shed or grown since late october. I had read somewhere that the 100w powersun mvb had poor uv output which is why i switched last week to the 10.0 tube. Could all this be from that powersun mvb?

ALSO.. one last thing.. before it got cold she had out door time every day.. anywhere from 15 min to 45 min.. as long as I could stand the heat. It got cold somewhere in mid to late november.

 

[drpayne1990]

I realise you are currently online, so I have privet messaged you my skype details. It will be quicker to solve things that way.

And now you are offline lol. Anyways....

I should have asked before how old your beardie is. Judging from your images in the other post I am guessing around 7months.

From the little bit of research I have done on calcium spray, it appears that it is very watered down and not as effective as powder. Many people have problems with coating roaches with powder well, but even a light coating would be better than nothing. What brand of powder is it?

Basking temp looks spot on, cool side seems a bit low but should be fine with a good gradient.

The salads are good. The aim is to stay away from a staple with high amounts of oxalates which is what you have done.

It is quite possible that the MVB could have contributed to this. It does take some time for MBD to actually kick in, and your new globe could only start working and taking effect.
The type of coil globe I was talking about was something like this:

They put out a dangerous amount of UV and loose effect quickly (about 1 month)

Ofcourse it is hard to speculate but this is what it sounds like to me. Whilst it was hot your beardie was getting natural sun light keeping vitamin D up, and your globe could not have been doing the correct job. Now that you can not take him out this could be part of the problem. It could also be possible that the globe you switched to could be faulty. This is obviously hard to tell unless you actually test the uv yourself.

I strongly suggest trying to use the powder, even if it is only a little bit on the roaches. The new reptisun globe could take a bit of time to kick in, but you need to make sure there is enough calcium provided. It is not to late to reverse this, but I honestly feel like this is the starting stages of MBD. We could speculate on why this could be happening, but I think it is better to be safe than sorry. To much calcium can be just as harmful though, so try not to dust food every single day. Depending on age it varies but generally 5x calcium powder once a day, and 2x multivitamin once a day.

 

[Spikeshuman]

I was doing calcium 6 days a week.. first feeding.. then multi vit on sunday for the first feeding. I always only dusted the first feeding. Now she only eats once a day.. possibly because of winter.. possibly because of poor lighting. I had originally switched to the mvb in november because of her lack of natural sunlight.. seems that may have been a bad idea.

I have never used a coil like the one you posted. The reptisun bulb is sort of a mini tube rather than a coil.. but now she has the 18 inch reptisun tube.

Will go back to powder only tomorrow.. and hope that helps. I feel horrible. I hope she isnt in any pain.

This is the only pic I could find with a size comparison.. just so you can see how big she is now.

She was 15 inches back in October.. she is close to 17 inches now.. but has not shed since October which I find weird. I attributed her growth and eating slowing down to winter.. but maybe its just the lack of sunlight she was getting every day.

 

[drpayne1990]

How old is she?
They slow down shedding around 10months.

I would love for someone elses opinion on this issue if anyone is reading.

 

[Spikeshuman]

She just turned 7 months old. She was hatched in late June.. that is what petco told me.. they may not be entirely accurate. I bought her in late July.. they said she just came in a few days before and that she was 4 weeks.

 

[drpayne1990]

Good luck with it all, and update me with how you are going.

 

[Spikeshuman]

Will do thanks... seems like I had already fixed the problems.. without knowing she had a problem to begin with... with the lights and such. I will use only powder from now on and hope that fixes the rest.

 

[drpayne1990]

When you get a chance, do some independent research on MBD. My oldest had the starting stages just like yours when I just got him because the globe I had was faulty. It will be okay.