Bearded dragons

[aquatic lover]

I would love to post pics of mine and my bro's dragons but the camera is lost! So I will describe them! I have had mine for a while, mines a female and my bro's is a male. They are captive bred babies(they don't have salmonela, how ever you spell it, because they are captive bred)they live in the same tank, I will be getting pfd(which is money that alaska gives to the residents, they get the money from selling their profits like oil and things), and once I get that I will buy the tank. They are funny as heck! Especialy when they eat, they make a loud smacking sound. The fun part is handeling them, you have to handel them everyday. Once I find the camera, I will post pics. I was planning on getting on a long time ago, but I was waiting for the right time. I got her about two months ago. my bro's and mine get along just fine.

[VoidParadigm]

You better find your camera! How old are they? How big? I hope they're still small! I love baby dragons. =]

[aquatic lover]

Mines about two-three months old. My bro's is about three months old. They are still babies. Im in the process of finding the camera, hope I find it soon!

[aquatic lover]

I just got my tank. It's a 40gal tank. I got drift wood,I got the sand(which needs to be a special sand called"calcium sand")I got the heat lamp and everything else that I would need. Once mine and my bro's beardies get older and they sexualy mature we will try and breed them.

[VoidParadigm]

Good luck!

[OUFanatic]

i saw these and fell in love, but was then told how aggressive they are so i had to pass.

[aquatic lover]

i saw these and fell in love, but was then told how aggressive they are so i had to pass.If you don't train them to like people when they are young by handeling them everyday, they could be agressive when they grow up. Thats why it's good to get a baby, even better to get a captive bred baby. If you buy them when they are adults you don't know how they are taken care of when they were little, so they could be agressive at adulthood. Thats why it's better to get a baby. They aren't agressive during their juvie and you will get know their personalities a lot easier.

[thornedemtns]

i saw these and fell in love, but was then told how aggressive they are so i had to pass.


They're not aggressive at all if they're handled constantly. There are cases where people have nasty dragons but thats because of how they were brought up.


As for your dragons not having salmonella because they're captive bred.. that has nothing to do with it. Any reptile can spread salmonella (though chances are small) because its carried out through the feces. And since all reptiles have feces.. all reptiles can potentially spread it. Just want to clear that up because that doesnt mean you should lower your guard. Wash after every handling!

[aquatic lover]

I have been gone for a while, but now I have come back with some pics of my beardie. The link leads to pics of my beardie pancake. We have three bearded dragons(of course I will post pics of all three)right now. http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/fishpictures/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=21591

[annageckos]

Bearded dragons are great. But it is not a good idea to keep a male and female together all the time. Only for breeding. The male will try to breed her and could cause damage or even kill her. If she is bred too young it can be damaging or even fatal. It will also be stressful one the submissive animal. It may work out for a while but you shouldn't wait for something to happen before looking into separating them. I wouldn't recommend calcium sand either. You can use playsand for adult dragons. CS has killed reptiles by impaction. And so you know all bearded are captive bred. Australia has a ban on exporting any native animal. But just because an animal is cb does not mean it does not have salmonella. It is always a good idea to wash your hands before and after handling an animal. I know you didn't ask about these things but I just wanted to share some of what I know. A great site for all things beardies is http://www.beareddragon.org

[aquatic lover]

I also found out last year that my beardie was a male(Petstore checked him, said he was a male)so we have three males. The bearded dragons are not adults yet, so i'm enjoying the fact that the three can be together without fighting. Tomorrow I'll get some pics of pancakes tank.

[SunSchein89]

Yeah I agree with annageckos entirely on her comments. Beardies do alright together up to a point, but they grow up fast and will soon stress each other out. Also, a 40 gallon cage is normally a minimum most people recommend just for one beardie. A lot of places I've heard from say to go 55+ when they reach adulthood. In the wild these animals do not roam around in packs together so it really is best to keep them separate until it's breeding season and they're both of appropriate breeding weights, even then you only keep them together for a relatively short span of time until you know the female is most likely gravid. Calcium sand is known to cause impaction, less so than some others, but the risk is definitely still there. Just because it has calcium does not mean it is good to ingest either. Play sand works pretty good for adult beardies, but for youngsters like you have, I'd definitely go with either paper towels or cut slate from home depot or any other hardware store. The slate will also help keep the nails trim naturally. Most people think beardies are desert animals and therefore live on sand, but this is false, most of them live on compacted clay like earth. Also, check out lizard-landscapes.com (http://www.lizard-landscapes.com) if you want to learn how to make your own custom rock pieces. I did this for my beardie and I also used this technique to make up his ground since it is entirely safe. Here's a picture of it...

http://i607.photobucket.com/albums/tt160/sunschein89/Gir/IMG_3487.jpg

Keep researching your beardies, most definitely if you're planning on breeding, there's a whole lot to learn about them. Diet, temperatures for different ages, and housing requirements are the major ones you should look into. For instance a juvenile's diet is made up of about 80% insects and 20% greens that need to be offered fresh daily. Also when young, they need to eat at least twice to three times a day. When a beardie gets older those percentages swap and they will eat mostly greens. Make sure you find out which greens you should be feeding as well because some are not nutritional or bad for your pet. Younger beardies also require hotter basking temps than adults do. Those are some major points that most people aren't really aware of. Hope I could help out some even though you didn't ask for it, just lookin out for your pets' health. Nice looking beardies though! They're always cute when they're young.

Edit: Just saw your post about them all being males. You most definitely want to separate them soon. Males will be very aggressive and territorial towards each other and you'll end up with a dead one in no time.

[VoidParadigm]

I also found out last year that my beardie was a male(Petstore checked him, said he was a male)so we have three males.

Unless I'm missing something, they're all male. Don't forget to read all of the updated posts.

Edit: Saw that you saw and edited. Just making sure. :shrug:

[aquatic lover]

Thanks for the tips guys, I will surely keep them in mind. Im a little confused on the sand, people have told me that it's not good to use playsand because if it gets wet it clays up. other people say to use calcisand and a mix of regular sand because it doesn't clay up much and that it's better? I know impaction is serious and a lot people say just to monitor your beardie. So far I have not seen my beardie eating sand and I feed him outside of the tank. Newspaper is good but people say that sand is better than newspaper, but newspaper is easier to clean up. I'll definately do some more research on the sand thing.

[SunSchein89]

As far as newspaper goes I personally don't feel comfortable with all of that ink, especially if it gets wet, but people have been using the stuff for awhile and I haven't heard any actual problems with it myself. I haven't really looked for it either. With that being said, any sand whatsoever has a risk of impaction. Play sand is not toxic at all and, from what I hear, has the least risk of impaction. All beardies also have a tendency to lick things to explore their environment, especially when they're young, so this is a good reason not to use sand at a younger age. Feeding outside of the cage is definitely a good idea and you should keep that up since that is the easiest way for them to ingest any loose substrate at all. Honestly, slate pieces are just as easy to clean up with a paper towel as it is to take out newspaper that is defecated on. As long as you periodically sanitize the slate you're set. Not to mention it's much more cost effective and safe to buy a few pieces of slate and a bunch of paper towels than constantly buying sand; the slate itself is surprisingly cheap.There's really a good amount of things out there that are non-toxic and you can use as substrate. The hard part is just finding something that is also aesthetically pleasing at the same time. If you put your mind to it they can be found, though. Look around on the internet for images of beardie setups and you can find some nice looking ones that use slate or other non-loose substrate, but still look natural and pleasing.

Just so you can see first hand what impaction looks like here's a pretty extreme example of someone who used play sand topped with a layer of calci-sand

http://images.beardeddragon.org/images/articles/impaction01.jpg

All of those brighter white parts of the x-ray are entirely ingested sand. Here is the article I got it from too which goes into a good deal about impaction and actually offers another article which goes into even further detail about it... Impaction (http://www.beardeddragon.org/articles/impaction/?page=1). I'd recommend at least reading the first one it only takes a couple minutes.

Luckily this beardie survived after his trip to the vet.

[aquatic lover]

As far as newspaper goes I personally don't feel comfortable with all of that ink, especially if it gets wet, but people have been using the stuff for awhile and I haven't heard any actual problems with it myself. I haven't really looked for it either. With that being said, any sand whatsoever has a risk of impaction. Play sand is not toxic at all and, from what I hear, has the least risk of impaction. All beardies also have a tendency to lick things to explore their environment, especially when they're young, so this is a good reason not to use sand at a younger age. Feeding outside of the cage is definitely a good idea and you should keep that up since that is the easiest way for them to ingest any loose substrate at all. Honestly, slate pieces are just as easy to clean up with a paper towel as it is to take out newspaper that is defecated on. As long as you periodically sanitize the slate you're set. Not to mention it's much more cost effective and safe to buy a few pieces of slate and a bunch of paper towels than constantly buying sand; the slate itself is surprisingly cheap.There's really a good amount of things out there that are non-toxic and you can use as substrate. The hard part is just finding something that is also aesthetically pleasing at the same time. If you put your mind to it they can be found, though. Look around on the internet for images of beardie setups and you can find some nice looking ones that use slate or other non-loose substrate, but still look natural and pleasing.

Just so you can see first hand what impaction looks like here's a pretty extreme example of someone who used play sand topped with a layer of calci-sand

http://images.beardeddragon.org/images/articles/impaction01.jpg

All of those brighter white parts of the x-ray are entirely ingested sand. Here is the article I got it from too which goes into a good deal about impaction and actually offers another article which goes into even further detail about it... Impaction (http://www.beardeddragon.org/articles/impaction/?page=1). I'd recommend at least reading the first one it only takes a couple minutes.

Luckily this beardie survived after his trip to the vet.that pic looks pretty bad!:ssuprised: In the article it says that they will eat sand thinking they need more calcium in their body. Me and my brother have this bearded dragon calcium dust that we put on their food about everyday and one of our
beardies came to us with sleight MBD and he gets liquid calcium everyday. We try to give them as much calcium as they need. Will they be less likely to ingest sand because of this? We haven't seen them eating sand at all and our beardies are doing pretty good.

[EmmanuelJB]

It looks great!! I have never kept anything like that! I think it would be pretty cool! Good luck with it!

[SunSchein89]

that pic looks pretty bad!:ssuprised: In the article it says that they will eat sand thinking they need more calcium in their body. Me and my brother have this bearded dragon calcium dust that we put on their food about everyday and one of our
beardies came to us with sleight MBD and he gets liquid calcium everyday. We try to give them as much calcium as they need. Will they be less likely to ingest sand because of this? We haven't seen them eating sand at all and our beardies are doing pretty good.

In the article when it's talking about them eating sand, they're talking specifically about the calci-sand. Since this has calcium in it, if the beardies know they're not taking in enough calcium they will ingest it to try to counter-act this which is a kind of catch 22 because it is actually harmful for them no matter what the packaging says. A calcium deficiency is not the only reason a beardie would ingest sand, though, there are many possibilities. There is also such a thing as too much calcium; you don't want to dust every meal of every day when you feed them. I'm not sure of the exact requirements of a beardie with a history of MBD, so if you've ever consulted a herp vet about any of them, I would go with whatever he/she recommends. With my beardie I would dust one of his meals every other day. Some people also recommend adding an extra vitamin dusting once a week, but not everyone does it.

Some beardies can grow up their entire lives without ever having a problem with sand, but the risk is always there and the more you can minimize it, the better.

[aquatic lover]

In the article when it's talking about them eating sand, they're talking specifically about the calci-sand. Since this has calcium in it, if the beardies know they're not taking in enough calcium they will ingest it to try to counter-act this which is a kind of catch 22 because it is actually harmful for them no matter what the packaging says. A calcium deficiency is not the only reason a beardie would ingest sand, though, there are many possibilities. There is also such a thing as too much calcium; you don't want to dust every meal of every day when you feed them. I'm not sure of the exact requirements of a beardie with a history of MBD, so if you've ever consulted a herp vet about any of them, I would go with whatever he/she recommends. With my beardie I would dust one of his meals every other day. Some people also recommend adding an extra vitamin dusting once a week, but not everyone does it.

Some beardies can grow up their entire lives without ever having a problem with sand, but the risk is always there and the more you can minimize it, the better.
Ok, thanks for the tips. By the way I found out that I actually have reptilite sand(not that it really matters).

[SunSchein89]

Any time :ssmile: . Unfortunately, my beardie died awhile back from what I think was parasites so I'll do what I can do to help a fellow owner. I rescued him from a petco that was holding him for adoption. Some young kid had him previously, decided he didn't want him anymore, and threw him outside. The mom found him a week later severely dehydrated and skinny as a rail. Once I got a hold of him he slowly got back to a normal weight and was growing rather nicely then one day he got sick, threw up, and died within 24 hours; didn't even get a chance to take him to the vet the next day. His stools were always kind of runny towards the end which is what led me towards thinking parasites along with the fact that he was outside for a long period of time. Everything else checked out with his feeding and husbandry. Anyway, enough of my ranting, hope your dragon fares better than mine did. They're definitely really fun pets to have if you have the time and money for them.

[aquatic lover]

Any time :ssmile: . Unfortunately, my beardie died awhile back from what I think was parasites so I'll do what I can do to help a fellow owner. I rescued him from a petco that was holding him for adoption. Some young kid had him previously, decided he didn't want him anymore, and threw him outside. The mom found him a week later severely dehydrated and skinny as a rail. Once I got a hold of him he slowly got back to a normal weight and was growing rather nicely then one day he got sick, threw up, and died within 24 hours; didn't even get a chance to take him to the vet the next day. His stools were always kind of runny towards the end which is what led me towards thinking parasites along with the fact that he was outside for a long period of time. Everything else checked out with his feeding and husbandry. Anyway, enough of my ranting, hope your dragon fares better than mine did. They're definitely really fun pets to have if you have the time and money for them.
Sorry to here about that. I agree, they truly are great pets.