Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i just bought a wery small bearded about 5 weeks old. he is very small about 3-4 inches.i have never boght one this young before and i just have a question. i left crickets in the tank over night even though i know its suggested to take any out that are not eaten. i got up this morning and noticed three little balls of crickets that looked like they had been chewed but not eaten. i left a tank warmer on overnight and he has uvb and a sufficient basking area having alredy raised 2 other beardies in the tank. hee did poo last night and everything looked normal. like i said it looked more like little balls of chewed up crickets not like half digested crickets or poo. could he have puked them up and is it something i should be woried about.thank u for any sugg. or help

it's very unbeardie like like to let anything in it's mouth that doesn't go down its throat, at least temporarily. we got a two week old beardie over a year ago and though she never ate more than 3 or 4 tiny crickets at a time, she never puked. pretty much for the first couple months it went that way. only eating a few crickets a couple times a day. and if i remember right she didn't eat much at all the first couple days. just a couple crickets here and there. but if the crickets got chewed up, they probably got swallowed and puked back up even if it doesn't look like it. if it was in a cage with other beardies where you got it from, and it happened to be one of the ones that didn't always get enough to eat, it will try to eat as many as it can out of fear of not being able to get enough later and then puke up the extra cus there's no room in it's little belly. so try not to leave quite so many crickets in the cage, we usually left one or two crickets running around during the day just in case it needed a snack but we tried to never leave any in at night (unless they hid in the logs) but remember to hold it and let it sit on you as much as possible the first few days if you want to be able to handle it a lot later.

There is just no positive reason to leave crickets in a contained area looking for food with a beardie overnight. So I'd recommend you just never do it. I have a rescue missing one of her inner eye lids from crickets left in.