Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is my 2 year old male bearded dragon. He looks good to me, until I see his mate. She is Huge. She makes him look anorexic. My male feeds fine. He gets pinkie on occasion, eats cricket, worms, greens. I was just wondering if he looks too small for a 2 year old. I do not have a scale, so I can not weigh him. What do you all think? I know it may be tough by the pictures. Oh, and he is shedding.

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------Misty-------

He is quite skinny, not dangerously so but you deffinitely want to offer him more food. Take a stool sample to a vet if you havent' done so recently to make sure he has no parasites. A high parasite count can account for a dragon not putting on much weight even if eating alot of food.

How big of a salad do you offer and how much of it does he eat? How many crickets does he eat? Do you offer crickets or other insects daily, or only a few times a week? (a few times a week for adult dragons is fine normally, but it also depends on how much he is eating).

I would recommend not breeding him to the female you have till he has his weight up. Often male dragons won't eat much while mating, and since he has very very little fat reserves, the vigors of mating could push him back health wise.
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PHLdyPayne

Neither of my dragons have gone through brumation at all. I will not breed him this year. I feed him greens every day(about a fist full), and crickets every three days or so. He gets as many as he can eat until he loses interest, usually in about 5 minutes. He also gets worms and an occasional pinkie. I have not taken either dragons to the vet yet. I wanted to see if the situation warranted it. I put calcium powder on crickets and greens every other time. The sand that he is on is Reptilite - supposed to be 100% digestable and made of calcium. The basking side of the tank is in the 90s and other end in 70s. There is a UVB lamp, although I do admit that he did not have one for the first year(I had him in sun during day, but did not know he needed a lamp on top of regular sunlight). He has had one for quite some time now. I will up the cricket intake and see if he improves. If not, I will take him in for some parasite tests.

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------Misty-------

The reptilite sand is not digestiable at all, despite it's claims. It doesn't disolve very well if at all in stomach acid, in fact if too much is ingested with food, it will actually start to neutralize stomach acids, making it less effective to break down food. The grains just don't have enough surface area to break down or be absorbed by the bloodstream so what winds up happening is it can clump and block the intestinal tract. Somebody here, I can't remember had access to a lab and ran his own experiments with various kinds of calcium based sands. He put a measured amount into hydrochloric acid, stronger than what is normally found in bearded dragon stomachs and after a day or so, drained the acid and measured the amount of the calcium sand left. He found no noticeable decrease in weight and the acidity of the acid had also decreased. I can't remember who it was but that certainly shows how undigestable the calcium based sand is.

Thinking about the experiment myself I can see where it really indicates the truth. Calcium is a base. The calcium based sand is much larger than calcium powder. A grain of the sand compared to a particle of the dust really shows a huge difference in surface area. The dust is so fine, it can be absorbed as is, whereas the grains of calcium sand are so big, it would take a very long time before a single grain can be broken down to be absorbed and used by the body. Just compare the difference in time between a single snow flake and a regular ice cube takes to melt under the same temperature. The snowflake will melt almost instantly, the icecube will sit there for 10 or more minutes to melt completely.

Giving the cost of reptilite compared to say, washed children's playsand (about 8$ for a 1kg bag vs $5 for a 35kg bag), why use it when sand does have a less risk of causing impaction?

Substrate aside, sunlight is all a dragon needs to fullfuill it's UVB requirements. As long as he is exposed to about 6 hours of direct sunlight a week, a UVB producing light is not required. Housing the dragon outside where he has access to sunlight whenever he wants it (also access to cooler shaded areas to get out of the sun of course) is much better than any UVB producing bulb on the market, even the Mergury vapour bulbs. The only advantage of the bulbs is you can give UVB to the dragons every day which is great when you live in areas where it gets too cold to bring the dragon outside regularly. I certainly can't do it here, though when I had a dragon I did bring her out for natural sunlight during the summer.

Taking a stool sample to the vet would be a good thing to do now. Most fecals don't cost that much $25 or less, depending on your local vet. Most don't require to see the dragon to get a fecal, if the results show parasites, then they may want to see the dragon so they can weigh it and subscribe the correct dossage for treatments. Call your reptile vet and ask if you can bring a fecal in for testing from y our dragon. The fecal should be as new as possible, the same day you bring it in would be perfect. If you are not sure you can get a fresh sample from the same day you bring it it, you can refrigerate a sample the day before bringing it in. (do not freeze it, just refrigerate, as freezing can destroy evidence of parasites etc.)

Instead of offering pinkies, which are not all that great to feed dragons, being rather high in fat and could contain parasites, try superworms, silkworms, butterworms or hornworms. Other than superworms, all are soft bodied worms with high levels of protein, calcium, water content and other nutrients. Superworms are not as soft bodied but do have alot of protein, more so than an equivant weight of mealworms. They do tend to be a little fatty but as an occaisonal meal, they are fine. The other three worms are fine as a complete substitute for crickets but a variety of insects is always good.

One good thing, in those pictures, your male is obvious in shed. The fact it's shedding indicates it is growing, or at least getting rid of old skin. Adults still shed skin even if they are no longer growing, to replace the old skin with new skin, though alot less often than when growing up as babies.
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PHLdyPayne

So, if I read this post right, you prefer childs play sand than reptile sands? I was using the reptile earth that comes in a brick and you get it wet to make it into dirt. I noticed that when it gets in the reptile's water, it turns it yellow and figured that can't be good. I can't seem to find a good substrate that isn't harmful in some way. Would it just be better to go with the reptile carpet? I know its not like a natural habitat, but it seems safer.
thanks
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------Misty-------
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