Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I moved my dragons into the garage a week ago. Ever since the move Popeye has not been himself. At first he was constantly scratching on the glass and trying to find a way out. Now he is mostly just sleeping on the cold side of the tank and he rarely basks under his heat lamp anymore. I am concerned because he has not eaten much in the past week (2 superworms and some greens). I figure he is either trying to brumate (the night time temperatures have gone down a bit from about 68 degrees F to 64-62 degrees F) or is not doing well acclimating to his new environment. We also changed his cage set up when we moved him into the garage. He is going to the bathroom but not much is coming out as he is not eating. I am going to try taping newspaper around his cage so he can't see out in hopes it will help him acclimate. His basking temperature in his new set up is actually higher than that of his old one at about 110 degrees F. Has anyone had experience with this? Should I start force feeding him or give him more time? He had a clean fecal a couple of months ago. Any ideas or thoughts would be really helpful...I'm really starting to get concerned.

Peter

PS: He's about 8 months, 17 inches and was ~310 grams before the move.

It's possible that's it's just the stress of the move and if you give him time to adjust, he will pull out of it within a week or so.....it is also possible that the drop, even though fairly small in the nighttime temp may be sending him into a brumation. I would try to raise his night temp just a bit with an undertank heater or wrapping the tank at lights out and see if he perks up.....keep us posted.

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Julie Redmon
FSU!!!

Peter,

It's probably just the move. Even rearranging their enclosure can have this effect. I'm just getting over a similar experience with one of my males, Doyle. I had to move his enclosure to where he couldn't see the other BD's anymore and he went into a funk. Didn't eat for 2 weeks. When I moved my female juvie's, Atticus,
enclosure so that they could see each other he snapped right out of it.

I wouldn't begin to worry yet. Continue with the frequent handling as you have in the past, time in the garden etc. and he should pull through this. You may have to consider some arrangement of enclosures similar to how they were in the house. I really don't think it's that slight difference in nighttime temps.

BigT

Yeah, he's probably stressed out from the change. Maybe he doesn't like not seeing you around. One of my beardies seems to get stressed when she doesn't see people for a while. When I'm home on the weekends, she is always scratching to get out, and loves to bask in a windowsill and stare outside for hours. Sometimes if nobody is home to let her out and spend time with her, she seems to get stressed out. Sometimes I will come home from work and she will be curled up in the dark on the cool side of her tank, looking depressed. But she perks up and starts scratching to come out after I'm home for a couple of minutes.

Sometimes it seems to me that they need to have a sense of the passage of time, or they get stressed out. I think they need to be able to see outside (plants moving, changes in sunlight), or see people move around, or they get stressed. Your beardie probably doesn't have that in the garage. Then again, maybe I'm just reading into beardie behavior.

So I would try to maybe make yourself more available to your beardie. He probably doesn't see many people in the garage.