My husband and i bought a Chinese Water Dragon from a pet store the day before yesterday. It's about 4'' snout to vent. We have it in a 30 gallon aquarium right now (we know we will need a larger enclosure soon), with substrate and a water area in the bottom that takes up a little less than half the ground space, and a piece of tree branch leading up to the basking light. The basking temp. is 90 degrees, the aquarium temp. is 80 degrees, and the humidity fluctuates between 60 and 80 percent. I'm trying for 70 but it's hard to maintain. Malachite (our dragon) is eating crickets and meal worms, has had at least 2 bowel movements, and is bathing himself (we're assuming it's a boy until we find out for sure), but he has not basked at all yet. Should i be concerned about this, or is he just getting used to his new environment? He only climbed the tree branch to the top once so far, yesterday, and fell off. Before that he would only get on the bottom of the branch. I told my husband we may need to get a thicker branch for him to balance well. I had my husband shave all the bark off the branch so we could make sure no bugs were living in it, and i'm also wondering if he may have fallen or not be climbing the branch because it is too smooth? I read online we should have soaked the branch in a 10 percent bleach solution to kill mites. We did not do this. Should we? If we get a thicker branch will the bleach solution kill bug larvae that may be living under the bark so my husband won't have to shave off the bark again? I know i'm asking a lot of questions. Sorry. This is our first lizard. We have only had aquatic turtles before now. My turtles do not bask right away in a new enclosure, but i'm not sure if it is the same for water dragons or not. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Peace,
Cherry

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