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I don't know why I do this to myself I always seem to get angry after I leave the store. Here is what happened to me: Yesterday my girl friend & I were bored so we took a drive to a new pet store just to look. This pet store is not a large chain store like the other PET COmpanies mentioned in the past. We walked in the store & saw that they had 2 cages of baby bearded dragons. One was a different morph (beautiful little guy) & alone in separate cage. The other 6 were in a tall enclosure & from the same clutch. .
Before I had asked to hold the little guy I took a look around at the other reptile enclosures like I normally do. There was a lot of old dried up, white colored feces in almost every cage & all of them were way too cold for any reptile to be in. I then went over to the beardie enclosures & looked in the cage with the 6 babies in it & they were very lethargic & a little on the skinny side. The cage was just filthy the bark substrate smelled musky & there wasn't a heat lamp. I then asked the pet store employee if I could hold the one that was alone (it was on calci-sand). As I reached in to pick him up he was cold to the touch so looked in the enclosure the temp was 70-75 degrees(also without a heat lamp) the same as most of the other enclosures. When I picked him up he closed his eyes like he was enjoying the warmth from my hands. I started inform the pet store owner about the things I saw that were wrong about the setups. For example too cold, wrong substrate.... There was a big list. She proceeded to give me an excuse for everything like they normally do. As I was petting the little guy & telling the owner how you should not have babies on substrates that they can ingest and become impacted. She then told me the one that I was holding was on calci-sand has been on it since it was born & there is nothing wrong with it. As soon as she said that the little guy's back legs locked up & it start to twitch in my hands. She said “Oh it’s never done that before". I Put him back in the cage(he was still twitching), shook my head then left the place before I went off on her. I plan on coming back with a care sheet for every reptile in that place & a digital camera. I will revisit in a week to see if they correct these problems & then go from there.
Lance

was it a major uncontrolled muscle spasm? or was it more of a " tick" kind of muscle spasm? have you ever seen a reptile with metobolic bone disease?
i would bet that was the problem if there wasn't even a heatlamp on the poor thing. good idea with the digital camera and stuff. just make sure you snap the pictures before they notice. then hand them the care sheets.

Complain, complain, complain, be persistent and bug the crap out of them till they get some heat lamps on there BUT, you have to realize that there are no right ways to do things and plenty of beardeds have been raised fine on sand and you have to respect that you telling them that its bad is YOUR OPINION. You know?
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0.0.1 Corucia (Bubba)
1.0 Indonesian Blue Tongue Skink (Don)
1.1 Irian Jaya Blue Tongue Skink(Sammy) & (Sausage Girl)
0.0.1 Tanimbar Island Blue Tongue Skink ( Spunky Sebastian)
0.0.1 Ornate Uro (Spike)
1.0.1 Green Tree Pythons ( Male=Floyd, Baby= Verdi)
0.1 Western Hognose (Piggy)
0.0.1 Egyptian Tortiose(Tank)
0.0.1 Sonoran Gopher snake ( Toro)
0.1 Albino Leo gecko (Sasha)