So. My lizard collection grows with my new baby frill. I know I'm new to posting here but I've been an avid reader for over a year since we started our herp collection with my baby iguana Jaden i may have had an account once but i've forgotten it. We also have 2 beardies, Karma (the big girl) and baby baby (the hyper active little one) and a water dragon we rescued from the pet store when we bought the frill. The water dragon had been thru 4 owners and had been returned all 4 times and has ground its top front lip and a couple teeth off on the edge of it's cages. and broken off several of it's front fingers from presumably the same reason. it seems to have limited vision and appears to hunt it's crickets almost entirely by sound. but for having it for 3 days its wounds are healing and he's very active and eats very well, we even gave it a couple pinkie mice (yes he's big enough) to help get some meat on his bones. he seems to be doing very well and i'm getting really off topic. On to the frill

So, with my research (and wife an i have done alot) and from testing with our now 5 lizards i've come across alot of knowledge that may help alot of people with their babies and could answer alot of questions i've seen asked in the last few days of posts that i've been reading.
First off UVB. My wife just came across a website a couple hours ago that says the compact UVB bulbs have been causing problems especially in young herps. A couple have died from them and others have been very lethargic and refuse to open their eyes. u can read for yourself at http://www.uvguide.co.uk/phototherapyphosphor.htm . it seems that only a couple of brands have caused this problem or it is from people that don't know and think they need to put the uvb closer to the basking spot to get more UVB and end up giving their herps radiation poisoning. Also when placed in aluminum reflectors it amplifies the UVB by 700%. SO. be careful, research, make sure you're not nuking your baby. Also herps can't see UVB light so make sure you place it next to another light source so they realize they're looking at light and don't burn their retinas. Though the two major brands that were causing the problem have pulled the bulbs most responsible and even paid the vet bills of some of the herps treated for this. also you may want to check into solar drops. we've been using them with the iguana and the beardies since they free roam most of the time and our condo, though we can see the atlantic, does not have a window that faces the sun so the only time they get sun light is when we take them for walks once a week. the solar drops claim to eliminate the need for uvb bulbs but just to be safe we try to get them out into the sun as much as possible just to make sure and even after a year of no UVB bulbs they're all 3 doing absolutely wonderful, very healthy and sturdy and friendly.

The second thing i've seen asked alot is substrate. I know sands look pretty and walnut shells are cheap and look like sand but when researching for our beardies, all the experts i came across say DO NOT use them. They cause impaction. I came across a site at one point that had an autopsy done on a beardie that the walnut shells had basically shredded its insides. they say they're digestable but can damage it before it's digested. it can also get in their eyes. even the calcium enriched sands have been shown to cause problems, we tried it for a bit and constantly had to wipe sand out of the beardies eye's and nose. so far.. i can't see any reason not to use newspaper other than the crickets can hide below it. it is easy to clean and readily available. also the reptile carpets i've always seen good reviews for. and tile is very easy to clean.

and finally. the glass or mesh question. the day after i got my frill i was rearranging my house and upgrading my other herps to bigger cages and stuff. I had put the frill in what i think is an 8 gallon tank to hold while i got a 10 gallon tank ready to hold it while i built it's actual home. in both glass tanks the frill spent the whole time it was in there trying to run thru the glass, only pausing when it noticed a cricket to consume. So i built her (i'm guessing "her" cus of frill size and lack of color but who knows) cage out of a radio cabinet with a glass front door and a black mesh screen i stapled on for the back side. I put a couple fake logs in and a dish for water. added 1 lizard and straight for the glass, *blam scratch scratch scratch*. so i took her out and she attached herself to my finger and stayed there quite content. that or running up my arm to sleep on my shoulder. i went to the store to look for something finger shaped for her to hang out on, not finding anything in my budget that wasn't god awful ugly i went home and looked around and decided one of my gargoyles looked like it might work. I put the gargoyle in the cage and she hasn't scratched since. she hangs out on the tip of the wing of the gargoyle in a 95 degree basking spot and loves it. so other than finding your herp something that it likes more than scratching like i managed to do, the only other advice i've ever ran across is get a couple inches of paper and tape it around the cage at floor level so that the herps can see where the edge is. glass doesn't exist to them and screens can definately act like a cheese grater on their front lips so the trick is finding what will convince your baby not to hurt itself. I'll post some pictures of the water dragon we rescued so that people can see how bad the damage can get if you don't do something to prevent it from bashing its teeth in. the water dragon we put in one of those nylon mesh cages that we washed with organic laundry detergent and then put thru the dryer on low heat for 10 min which really softened it up, instead of air drying. we then draped a towel over the front of it to keep it from seeing us. it's problem other than its limited vision seems to be that it thinks it's a lap dog and will try to plow thru the edge of the cage any time it notices us in the room, until we let it out of the cage to sit on us. the towel has helped alot and his wounds are already starting to improve even after only a couple days. hopefully some of his skin will grow back a bit but his front upper teeth are gone forever. so take care of your babies.

If i've said anything wrong or have given any bad advice please let me know. this is just my late night rambling and an attempt to make the lives better for as many lizards as possible. and as always, remember, lettuce is not a food.

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