Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have 2 dragons that ive had for a while now. i used to keep them together but the male got too big for the smaller female so i separated them. that was about 6 months ago. i finally decided to put them together this week because the female grew a lot so i put the two of them together in a 55 gal tank. for the first time i decided to buy play sand instead of crushed walnut shells because the female always liked digging and the shells were not deep and too hard to dig. so today i discovered only the male dragon in the tank. there was also a mound of sand in one place. so i looked under a flat rock i keep in the tank. there she was perfectly fine under a rock with no air for who knows how long. why is she digging herself shut? is she afraid of the male? how can i prevent her from digging so much? any suggestions would be helpful.

thanks

i would make sure that they have hides that they dont have to dig to get into, the fake rock ones or half logs, etc. also, if you have rocks and other heavy stuff in there i would make sure that they are on the bottom of the cage so they cant dig under them, it happens a lot with uros, i dunno about beardies, but they will dig under a rock and it will fall on them and crush them. sorry this took so long
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1.0.0 bearded dragon
1.1.0 green iguana
0.0.1 black and gold tegu
1.0.0 knight anole
0.1.0 green anole
1.1.0 golden gecko
1.0.0 ball python
0.0.5 oriental firebellied toad
0.0.1 green treefrog
0.0.1 barking treefrog
0.0.1 cuban masked treefrog
0.0.1 gray treefrog
0.1.0 gulf hammock rat snake
0.1.0 eastern kingsnake
0.1.0 siberian husky

separate them. they shouldn't be housed together, especially in only a 55gal. the size difference you saw is dominance and aggression.
yes, some like to dig [like my feng] but unless it's sifted/washed playsand it can be very dangerous, harbor bacteria etc if not properly cleaned.
how old, big, etc are each of them?

She's probably trying to find a place to lay eggs. If you had a male and a female together, and she's digging her heart away, it's a high possible she's gravid. It only takes a second for a male and a female to mate.

khandof

Free your mind for a second and wrap it around this:

In the wild, bearded dragons will dig underneath objects because there is naturally more moisture underneath an object (such as a piece of wood, a log, or a rock) than in the hot, open air. This is due to the soil upon which they live (for the most part they do not live on sand). There could be more than one reason she closed off the entrance. For one, with sand, it naturally may have closed off. Or, the more likely scenario is that she did it because that's what she most likely would have done in the wild. If she goes through the trouble of finding a nice humid spot underneath something, do you think she's going to want to let the humidity out? Nope, so she'll close it off.

That's my understanding of it. desert reptiles need to find ways to conserve moisture, and that's one common way...digging underneath something. It's just the lizard's natural instincts. That's why I like to provide my bearded dragon and my uromastyx with soil to live on (and in ). Sadly, I think I missed the window of oppurtunity to get some topsoil for my beardie this summer, so I think he'll have to last through the winter on shelfliner until I can get him some good soil.

it seems to make sense but how can my bearded dragon breathe without an opening

Hmm...this is something I have not yet seen an answer to. I know that uromastyx will often bury themselves inside their burrows, usually over 4 feet below the surface, but I do not know how they do it without suffocating. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.