Hello! My 3 month old dragon is having some funky poops. Earlier this week my bearded dragon Griffin was lethargic and not eating much, I replaced his heat lamp figuring it wasn't putting off enough heat, and that was that. Today he is /full/ of energy he's ate a bit of his salad, 3 mealworms, and 3 or so crickets. The only change I've made in his diet, if I began sprinkling his crickets with some calcium powder. The days before he was just having some runny poops, I figured because he was drinking and not eating. Now today his poops are stil a bit runny, can't seem to get them off his rock or mat with my scoop (I'll have to scrub them when I clean his cage Saturday.) I came back from the store today and found a straight poo with less than a dime size liquid around it, a perfectly fine urate and a brownish-red thing that's between the poo and the urate, it's quite small, it doesn't really look like blood. Any ideas on what this could be? Seeing it's the holidays it's not really in my budget for a vet check-up but I was wondering if anyone knows what this is and if I should be worried. He's acting completely fine in my opinion.
Size of tank: 20g
Salad: collard greens and acorn squash
Protein: crickets and mealworms
Heat lamp: 100w zoo-Ned
UBV: coil atm, I've got a 10 inch stick one in the mail after learning these aren't the greatest
Poops: very regularly, AtLeast once a day.
Anything you know that could help would be great!
100 watt in a 20 gallon seems a bit much. Are you checking temperatures on cool end and basking spot ? You should be dusting your feeders with calcium powder 6 days a week and a multivitamin such as reptivite 2 times a week. Stop feeding mealworms because they can impact your dragon.
100 watt in a 20 gallon seems a bit much. Are you checking temperatures on cool end and basking spot ? You should be dusting your feeders with calcium powder 6 days a week and a multivitamin such as reptivite 2 times a week. Stop feeding mealworms because they can impact your dragon.
Alright, i'll give the mealworms a no-go. Yeah, it's pretty strange, with the 100W my cage is only at about 92-95ish right now (though it is gradually increasing), I'm not quite sure why this is. I just began dusting recently, so far he's only been on this for about 2 days. Never heard of multivitamins, can i just get them at the pet store? Any ideas on his poop?
The brownish red thing in the poo could have been undigested food. You can get reptivite from Petsmart or Petco. You probably need to take a fecal sample to the vet for him to check for parasites. Runny poos can be a sign of parasites.
I would turn the coil off until the tube comes in (assuming it's coming in soon)
How are you measuring your temps? I have a 90 watt halogen in a 40 gallon dimmed to about 80% and that gets me to 110. I can't see how a 100 watt only gets you to 95 in a 20 gallon. It is likely making the entire tank too hot (no temp gradient)
If you are using a dial thermometer they undermeasure temps by quite a big (I've heard up to 20 below). You'd want to get a thermometer that has probes you can place on the basking spot or a temperature gun