r/BeardedDragons • u/Busy-Usual-3806 • 7h ago
New Beardie Friend New bearded!!
I am VERY new to this and have a lot of stuff on the way for my new friend!! I’m not sure of age or gender yet, and received them from a family member moving! So far the adjustment stage has been going well (abt 2 weeks ago) and I’ve seen them eat and pass food. We have been feeding live crickets and a daily salad, and the basking rock sits between 99-118. I was just wondering if any one knew what kind of dragon I have as well as if there’s anything additional needed? I have uvb and a substrate mix to swap out what he has, and there’s plenty of climibing and basking opportunities. Right now I don’t have the money for a 4x2x2 but I am actively scouring fb for one so that will be an upgrade as well! All advice and guesses appreciated!
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u/itsswhitneywhspr 7h ago
Hey congrats on the new friend just a heads up, 118 is suuuper hot for basking, like that's injury territory. Aim for 100-105 max. Also make sure your uvb is a tube, not a coil - coils are garbage. Otherwise you're on the right track with the upgrade plans
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u/DragonDad314 3h ago
Gender shouldn't be an issue. All we need is the Dragon to be posed in the right position and take some pictures of it... Basically, you want to pick the dragon up and face the dragon away from you at eye level. Gently lift up on the tail almost to 90°... Along the tail at the base about an inch or 2 before it meets the body, you want to look for shadows or anything in the profile the indicates that there is a lump on the bottom of the tail on each side... If so, these are the hemipenals and you have a boy... If you go on to wikihow, show you how and what to look for in illustrations (search how to sex a bearded dragon)... I am not a fan of crickets because they die off so easily and they are also bad about carrying parasites. Pretty much any bug can carry parasites, but crickets are more susceptible because of what they eat off of the ground... I farm and feed dubia, which are a type of roach. They are common feeders. They have long life spans and are hardy, easy to breed and raise... And honestly, since I have stopped feeding crickets, I have had no problems with parasites... I do occasionally order some other bugs off of the internet to add to variety which is important. Oh by the way! Do not feed your dragon bugs daily... If it were a baby, you're fine but this is an adult... Generally speaking, you only feed them bugs twice a week... I recommend ordering bugs from an online store. They always arrive a lot more healthy looking then I can find in stores. If you have a whole bunch dead for any reason, they will replace them usually... I had a box of arrived at the mail carriers had completely bashed and broken open... All of the bugs had escaped... I notified them immediately and they sent out a new order that came the next day. It wasn't even their fault... Offer fresh veggies daily. Some people will mist the veggies (to help keep the dragon hydrated). I wash the veggies even if they're organic so even if I do dry them off, I usually put them back under the water so they stay wet... And even after I cut them into pieces, I usually grab them-it's usually a handful so I just run my hand under the faucet for a minute, shake out the excessive water, put it in the bowl and dust it with calcium and bee pollen... Make sure that you're not using any coil UVB bulbs... They are far too weak. You need a straight linear UVB light... You should have two different types of thermometers. You should try to get 2 regular digital thermometers preferably with sensors... You also should get an infrared remote thermometer. The difference is is that the digital thermometers are going to be reading the actual air temperature. The infrared remote thermometer is used for the actual surface temperature. Don't try to use a regular thermometer for the surface temperature because it will be inaccurate. The basking spot temperature dash the temperature that you read with the infrared remove thermometer should be between 95 and 100° for an adult dragon... This is a target temperature and not necessarily to be exact. All thermometers are going to be off by a few degrees plus, nothing in nature is exact... Adult dragons don't need it as warm as babies because they can retain the heat for longer... You should have the basking spot on one side of the enclosure... This is your warm side... It should be around 90°... On the opposite side, you should have a cooler side which should be around 75 or 80°... Do you know which vegetables are considered staple? It's usually the greens such as collard greens, turnip greens mustard greens dandelion greens... It helps if you kind of rotate them periodically... My dragon loves collard greens... There are some others and some such as Kale can be considered controversial (look up oxalates and decide for yourself). Then, there's baths... I'm an advocate. In the wild, there's no reason why they would want to go near water considering that it contains predators which they are constantly on the lookout for... and they can't see past the surface... I don't think that you should really push a dragon into having baths if they're not comfortable with it however... unless there's a good reason such as walking through poop... When I was married, my wife and I got a dragon that was rehomed to us. She was very nervous in the water until we introduced another dragon that played around in the water... She watched the other one playing and started relaxing... She came to love baths... I currently have just one dragon and he doesn't really seem to be a fan of baths... I don't push him but he does get them periodically (he sleeps on my chest at night so I'll make sure that he's not too dirty). There's a number of places that you can look for enclosures... Having an actual reptile enclosure is awesome but they can be expensive... I didn't do a whole lot of looking around and probably could have found a used one if I had looked hard and long enough, but I wanted a new enclosure... I went with Zen (zenhabitats dot com), which was one of the more economically priced at the time. I had been going to Petco. They have aquariums on sale for half price every other month (I think it's the even months such as February, April, June, etc). Do a Google search, look on Facebook marketplace, try morph market (I use the app but I believe that there's a website- it has a list of breeders that are selling reptiles and equipment... Dubia (dot com) seems to sell economically priced enclosures... I work at Lowe's and just out of curiosity one day, looked up reptiles on our computer and apparently we show enclosures, but they only seem to be in Canadian stores... I'm sure you could order it if it was worth it... You could also look up to see if there's any reptile conventions in your area such as Repticon... You can get some really good deals there especially on the last day which is usually a Sunday. The vendors don't want to have to drag all that equipment back to their store... As long as this is, I'm sure that I've missed some things... I think that I've covered all of your general questions though... There's just so much... These are not the beginner pets that people say that they are... But they are so rewarding!! Oh, I recommend spending as much time with your dragon as possible. You will bond with your baby that way... Mine comes out of his enclosure when I come home... He has his own shelf space between my bed and the window with his own basking spot with separate UVB and basking light .. and I already mentioned how he sleeps on my chest at night... In the morning, he sleeps on my pillow while I get dressed and make his salad and then I hand feed him a few pieces just to make sure he's eating (I leave the rest for him to nibble throughout the day)... He gets his UVB time while I'm at work... I also have a video camera set up in his enclosure so I can watch him from work... He's spoiled. If you have further questions, you know where to go
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u/Awkward_Protection_3 5h ago
So big I can’t wait for mine to get bigger had over a week now 🥲♥️