Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Heylas all--
Well, with all the talk of beards and such...I've been wondering for a while now about beardie's colour changes. My previous dragons never changed as much as the one I have now does!
But, I'm having a difficult time figuring out what her "good" colouring is. As in, when she's not stressed, etc. I would hope it is the colour that she maintains most of the time, and I figured that was true, since when stressful things happen (me having to reach in and swoop her up so she wouldn't hurt herself on a broken piece of pottery) she turns yellowish. Most of the time she is a darker shade. But I've noticed when I come home late and see her sleeping, she's also much more colourful- more yellow and orange and such, than she seems to be in the day.
And I guess my thinking is that at night when she's sleeping, she'd be her "natural" colour, which worries me cuz she's rarely that colour during the day. Yet then I thought, maybe the night time temps are off, and she's stressed out cuz it's too cold or something.
Any thoughts?
(this pic is after bath time)

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0.2 cats (Pandora & Journey)
0.1 bearded dragon (Kleio)
0.0.1 green tree frog (Squishy)
0.0.3 fishes (namoli, Asana, Adagio)

Beardie's change color. Some more than others. They get dark when cool in order to absorb more heat and lighten when warm to reflect heat. Usually when they sleep regardless of temp. they are a light color. Seems they choose to darken just as the choose to flatten out to absorb heat.

I think if she's consistantly darker during the day that the basking spot temperature may be too low. I would check that, use a digital thermometer with a seperate probe sitting right on the basking spot. It should read about 105.

Yes they do change colors. I agree. Temps should be 100-115 hot side. Cool side 80-85. If she is dark and your temps are not any where near that, then that could be your issue! Good luck!

Temps should be closer to 75 on the cool side.

That's at night time and temps can drop anywhere up to as low as 65 degrees!

LOOK
I've gone through and read about 10 care sheets. some say 85 and some say 75. It shouldn't be an argument. Its whatever you find to be comfortable for your dragon. Mine doesn't like it over 75 on the cool side. Someone else's may like 85 over there.
its an opinion thing. So instead of saying It should be 85 on the cool side. Say In my opinion and what works best for my dragon is that the cool side is 85.

arguing is not cool
that is not what we're here for.