Beardie not basking or eating

[stark525]

Hello,

I have a 7-8 month old female dragon. For the past 2-3 weeks she has been eating significantly less. She is also spending more time on the cool side of the tank or in her hide. She poops about every other day (used to once or twice a day).

She used to eat a lot! She loved dubias, but would also eat crickets without a problem. Loved her greens. Now she will only eat some wax worms and maybe a superworm or two. I rarely fed waxworms in the past, but was desperate for her to eat something.

She has also been getting stress marks on and off while in the tank, they disappear once she's out. These have gone down a bit though.

She has a reptisun 10.0 in her tank covering 2/3 and a basking light. It was 100w but the vet just instructed me to lower it to a 75w to see if that would help, so now the basking spot is about 92 degrees (it was about 105-110 about 2 days ago with the 100w). Lowering the temp has not seemed to help.

I saw the vet last Friday and he said she is completely healthy! He did a fecal test and said that was negative. So I am completely baffled.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[stark525]

Thanks for the reply. It’s a t8. The folks here helped me with my set up

 

[stark525]

folks here helped me with my set up----------????????????? So is the T 8 8-10 inches from basking decor w/ NO cover over the bulb -- it needs to be exposed!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, i removed the plastic and it’s 8 inches away from basking.

 

[LJZONUM]

I have an 8 month old. In January he started eating less. By February he was barely eating at all, had pretty much stopped pooping, was spending a lot of time in his hide, and was going into “stoner mode” (Not really sleeping, but not really awake either). I was freaking out. This is my first beardie, and everything I read while learning about them said they don’t brumate until 1-1.5 years old, so I assumed it wasn’t brumation and kept taking him from his hide to put back under the heat/basking bulb and shoving food in his face hoping he’ll eat. It’s now end of March, and after some brumation specific research I realize my young guy is trying desperately to brumate! I’ll admit that I’m having a hard time just letting him be. After a few days I’ll take him out of his hide, bath and hydrate him (he’ll usually drink his bath water) and see if he’ll poop. It took close to three weeks last time before he finally did his ‘business’. I’ll always put him to bask after his baths and he’ll stay there anywhere from 1 hour to the rest of the day till lights out. The most important thing right now for me to do, IMO, is to keep tracking his weight. He’s about 16” and is over 500 grams. This weight hasn’t hardly fluctuated at all in the time I’ve been tracking it, so I’m confident he’s ok. But it’s still disconcerting to go from an eating machine that seems to be in constant shed mode, to what I have now.
All this is to say, maybe your beardie is trying to brumate too. Do more research about it, and buy a scale if you don’t already have one (mine is a digital kitchen/food scale. You put a container on it, push a button to zero it out with that container, and then put your girl in the container to see what she weighs).