Reptile & Amphibian Forums

within the past two weeks ive lost both my new dragons
the first one died two weeeks ago
he was lethargic and kinda twitched when he walked
one day i turned him on and he humped his back and looked like he was trying to puke. hours later he was dead
similar things happened with the second but much more quickly. they were only fed the right sixe crickets and ive had them for five months (they were very small babies when i got them)i would appericate any help on the subject for future knowledge. i have owned leopards for 7 years and would like to try dragons even though this was a bad bad expirence. plese help me want to try again

sounds like compaction or MBD. Were you dusting the crickets w/ vitamins and calcium? Did they have the proper lighting and heat? What was the temps in the cage? How frequently did they pooh? Need a little more info before we can help.

Sorry about your lose.

What substrate were they on? Did you dust their food, with what and how often? Did you have a UVB light, what kind and how close to them? What were your basking and cool temps and what kind of thermometer were you using to check with? What were you feeding and what size? I know, it's a lot of questions but necessary to give you a better answer.

Sean
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Heart Mountain Herps

they were on paper towel substrate. the were fed smaller crickets than pdrobbally nessecary. they had uv light and tempratures were upwards of 95 on the hot end and 80 on the cold end, slightly lower at night with the light off.
the crickets werent dusted but were gutloaded and hydrated with cricket quencher(fluker) 3-7 crickets daily

Wow, 3-7 crickets a day??? Is that all they would eat or all you were giving them? They should have been pounding down 10 times that much each easily. If that's all they would eat I'm guessing parasites.

Sean
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Heart Mountain Herps

they would eat more when they were really little. when they reached about 4-5 inches stv they slowed down about 50%. i figued because they were gettting bigger it was normal. they were highly active and alert, thought they were doing good. they would also take small amounts of canned food (zoo med juvinile and can o cricket.) that also dropped off about two weeks ago.

is that ambient (air) temperature or basking spot temperature? The basking spot temperature should measure at least 95F and as high as 115F for youngsters.

I am really sorry about your dragons. I am new to dragons, but when my daughter was looking at the dragons at the reptile show a young man said to get the biggest youngster you can afford. He said the smaller they are the more trouble you can get into. I guess this is true with any animal. Anyway, she choose a dragon that was around 2.5 months old and a very nice size about 4" snout to vent. this was about 2 months ago and now Sapphira is about 6" snout to vent. She is not big on crickets, but loves superworms, silkworms, giant mealworms, Kale, Endive, and of course butterworms. As you can see she is spoiled rotten. We use Minerall as our dusting vitamin. Also did you get both dragons from the same place. If so, I would not get them there again just to be on the safe side. It may not be the place itself, but the genetics of their dragons. Remember you should find a nice pile of poop every day.

test
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