Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just moved my two frilleds into a new 90 gallon aquarium. They are about 1.5 years old. The male is about 24 inches long and the female is about 14 inches. Since the tranfer the female has eaten very little. She snags a cricket or two here and there but nothing as substantial as she usually eats. I've tried mealworms, crickets (the staple for as long as I've had them.), pinkies and also a moistened commercial diet. No luck at all. The cage has one side with sandblasted grapevine and hollow cork sections along with a couple of pieces of shale. The other side (also with a lower temp gradient)has a large cat litter box about 25% full of fresh water. I'm using a reptile carpet substrate. I switched away from bark and dirt because I was noticing some impaction issues approx. 2 months ago. I have 2 UV flourescent coil style lamps for uv purposes. For heating I am using a 100 watt basking lamp and a 100 watt peralco infrared heat emitter. The heat emitter stays on 24/7. The male eats like a horse. Any advice would be good. It's been about 12 days since I put them in the new cage. Is it normal to take this long to acclimate?

Your female's main problem is that you shouldn't have her housed with a 24" male when she's only 14". I'm sure at his size, he's trying to breed her and is intimidating her (which would cause a lot of stress & loss of appetite). That's a huge difference in size and you should get her out of that cage ASAP. Even if you haven't seen him being aggressive, it probably happens when you're not around.

She shouldn't be in the same cage as the male until she's full grown (around 21" ). Even then, if he's overly aggressive they should only be together to breed. She's pretty small for her age and that slow growth is probably the result of being raised with a larger male.

I wouldn't use mealworms as part of their staple diet. They may have caused part of your impaction problems since their exoskeletons aren't digestible. Occasional mealworms are ok... but not as a "staple".

Yeah, I suppose I didn't provide enough details. The female I have has had a stubtail since I bought her. The two dragons are from the same clutch. If she had her entire tail she'd be closer to 18 inches in length. Body wise she's relatively similar to him, just a bit smaller. I will tranfer her to a 55 I have temporarily and see if that does the trick. I read that it might be a good idea, just wasn't sure if 2 cage swaps in three weeks was such a great idea if she still hasn't gotten over the first. I tried to force feed her a mixture of chicken baby food and pedialite this morning, but she wasn't interested. Their dietary staple has been crickets, I was just trying the mealworms to see if it would stimulate any sort of reaction. The funny thing is with the pinkies. Before I moved last month I'd feed the live pinkies once a week. They went nuts over them. The town I live in now has four pet retailers and none that sell live pinkies. The male will eat thawed mice, but the little girl will have none of it. I'll try any thing at this point and am continuing to provide commercial food every other day just out of deperation. Thanks for the good advice and if you have anything else after reading this posting, let me know.

I'm extremely new at having a Frilled, but we also have three bearded dragons. Our little frill is not eating either, one thing we read that helped right away was covering his cage, so our girls wouldn't scare him and we wouldn't by walking by, etc. His head is up now and he hopes all around all day. His eating is still low, we force feed with a blend of Rep-Cal Juv pellets and elctordize. Good luck