First time beardie mom needs help!!!

[Stephanie Jo]

My 15 month old female beardie Gromit refuses to eat her veggies! This has been building up for roughly 5 months. Let me start at the beginning...

Shortly after Christmas I moved her from a 40 gallon terrarium to an approximately 70 gallon cage that my husband built for her out of plexiglass. About a month after that, I was worried that it wasn't getting warm enough for her as her basking temp wasn't hitting 95-100 so I switched out some lighting and changed her UVB to Mercury Vapor. She now has a 100W daytime basking light, a ceramic heater that is on all the time, and a Mercury Vapor bulb. Both the basking light and the MV bulb are on for about 10-12 hours a day and are on opposite ends of the tank. Her basking area now reaches about 100 degrees, so I am happy with that. I am a first-time reptile owner, so I am learning as I go. I started her out on crickets as her protein, but found storing them in larger quantities unpleasant as her demand increased. I switched to superworms and started giving her 5 worms every day. She has never been a good pooper and I usually have to bath her to get her to poop. I do this once a week and she's always seemed fine. She's always seemed active and happy and she's plump.

However, I'd began to notice that she'd stopped eating her veggies and was only eating her daily worms. I've been feeding superworms as her only protein source for probably 6-7 months since they were so much easier to keep, with some crickets thrown in as an occasional treat. For the last 2-3 weeks, I've stopped with the daily feeding of the worms, hoping that she would be hungry enough to eat her salad. I cut back to only 3 worms, 3 times a week. I have even began taking some veggies and fruits and putting them in a blender and trying to feed them to her with a syringe, but she will not take them that way either. I am getting very worried since she will not eat anything other than the few worms that I am feeding her. Please help!!

 

[PatsyB]

Do you have a picture of the setup? Sometimes a visual helps us see things that need to be changed.

A 75 gallon tank with one MVB bulb doesn't sound like she is getting enough UVB since the bulb is only concentrating the light into a small area of the tank.

I have a 3 1/2 year old girl that won't eat her greens either. I've tried lots of things, she just won't touch them. I make sure that her feeders eat her greens and I make sure that all her food is dusted with a supplement. I use a multivitamin with her more than I use just calcium.

 

[mxw0rld]

My 15 month old female beardie Gromit refuses to eat her veggies! This has been building up for roughly 5 months. Let me start at the beginning...

Shortly after Christmas I moved her from a 40 gallon terrarium to an approximately 70 gallon cage that my husband built for her out of plexiglass. About a month after that, I was worried that it wasn't getting warm enough for her as her basking temp wasn't hitting 95-100 so I switched out some lighting and changed her UVB to Mercury Vapor. She now has a 100W daytime basking light, a ceramic heater that is on all the time, and a Mercury Vapor bulb. Both the basking light and the MV bulb are on for about 10-12 hours a day and are on opposite ends of the tank. Her basking area now reaches about 100 degrees, so I am happy with that. I am a first-time reptile owner, so I am learning as I go. I started her out on crickets as her protein, but found storing them in larger quantities unpleasant as her demand increased. I switched to superworms and started giving her 5 worms every day. She has never been a good pooper and I usually have to bath her to get her to poop. I do this once a week and she's always seemed fine. She's always seemed active and happy and she's plump.

However, I'd began to notice that she'd stopped eating her veggies and was only eating her daily worms. I've been feeding superworms as her only protein source for probably 6-7 months since they were so much easier to keep, with some crickets thrown in as an occasional treat. For the last 2-3 weeks, I've stopped with the daily feeding of the worms, hoping that she would be hungry enough to eat her salad. I cut back to only 3 worms, 3 times a week. I have even began taking some veggies and fruits and putting them in a blender and trying to feed them to her with a syringe, but she will not take them that way either. I am getting very worried since she will not eat anything other than the few worms that I am feeding her. Please help!!

I'm new to beardie's but could she be backed up? I know mine poops every day if not 2 times a day. But mine is a baby (6 weeks). I do the bath too as mine won't poop on his own most of the time. I use plastic spoons to scoop out the poop and throw them away. Also crickets are high in fat. You could try dubia roaches, they are one of the best feeders. And like PatsyB said feed your feeders the greens, I've been doing that as I ran out of oranges for the roaches and needed something to feed them in a pinch. Lol
Also you said the CHE is on all the time, they need a cool down period at night. No heat unless your cage gets below 65F I would turn off all heat. Does she have a cooler side in the cage during the day? She needs a cooler side and a warm side.


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[Stephanie Jo]

She is usually sitting on the right hand side of the cage, on the upper branch under the MV bulb, so my guess would be is that the UVB lighting she is getting is enough. However, a good friend of mine that has beardies of her own and knows a lot about them is not impressed at all with MV bulbs and wants me to change to a long light fixture with a Reptisun 10.0 UVB light. I have to admit when I changed the lighting is really about when the problems began to get noticeably worse, but that is also around the time that we switched tanks, so I didn't know what may have caused what...

As far as her pooping issue, she has always been a bad pooper. Even when she was a baby, she didn't poop regularly. I have always had to give her a soak to get her to poop, so I guess I thought that maybe that was just her. I'm not sure about impaction, since she does poop when in the bath and she doesn't seem to be in pain or strain too hard when she does poop. Even when she was small and on all crickets as her protein, she still was not regular.

Again, I am grateful for any help anyone would be able to give me!

 

[mxw0rld]

She is usually sitting on the right hand side of the cage, on the upper branch under the MV bulb, so my guess would be is that the UVB lighting she is getting is enough. However, a good friend of mine that has beardies of her own and knows a lot about them is not impressed at all with MV bulbs and wants me to change to a long light fixture with a Reptisun 10.0 UVB light. I have to admit when I changed the lighting is really about when the problems began to get noticeably worse, but that is also around the time that we switched tanks, so I didn't know what may have caused what...

As far as her pooping issue, she has always been a bad pooper. Even when she was a baby, she didn't poop regularly. I have always had to give her a soak to get her to poop, so I guess I thought that maybe that was just her. I'm not sure about impaction, since she does poop when in the bath and she doesn't seem to be in pain or strain too hard when she does poop. Even when she was small and on all crickets as her protein, she still was not regular.

Again, I am grateful for any help anyone would be able to give me!

She is beautiful!!! Like I said I'm a newbie at this but I think you're friend is right with the repti sun 10.0 UVB long light. I would try that first. The other thing and again this is just my opinion is that beardie's are creatures of habit and if you change things up she could be going through a bit of stress / relocation anxiety. It takes them a week or two to get acclimated to their new environment. Hopefully with the new light and after a few weeks she will get back to normal. Please keep us updated!


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[PatsyB]

She is usually sitting on the right hand side of the cage, on the upper branch under the MV bulb, so my guess would be is that the UVB lighting she is getting is enough. However, a good friend of mine that has beardies of her own and knows a lot about them is not impressed at all with MV bulbs and wants me to change to a long light fixture with a Reptisun 10.0 UVB light. I have to admit when I changed the lighting is really about when the problems began to get noticeably worse, but that is also around the time that we switched tanks, so I didn't know what may have caused what...

As far as her pooping issue, she has always been a bad pooper. Even when she was a baby, she didn't poop regularly. I have always had to give her a soak to get her to poop, so I guess I thought that maybe that was just her. I'm not sure about impaction, since she does poop when in the bath and she doesn't seem to be in pain or strain too hard when she does poop. Even when she was small and on all crickets as her protein, she still was not regular.

Again, I am grateful for any help anyone would be able to give me!

I agree with your friend. I would get a tube bulb. I don't know much about MVB bulbs. I read once that they are okay for babies but older dragons benefit more from a tube bulb. I would go with a ReptiSun T5 10.0 bulb and proper fixture, you can rest it over the top of the tank and the UVB still penetrates the top of the tank pretty good. PetMountain usually has good sales on them.

My girl only poops in a bath too. Which is nice to keep her tank clean. I give her a bath once a week to let her go. Some people do baths more often.