Suddenly Lethargic

[Hoppy819]

Hello! I am a new bearded dragon owner and I have been having some troubles. I have a six month old bearded dragon named Griffin, earlier today he was acting fine, he had pooped, it's not runny, normal sized, although it doesn't have much urate. He was very energetic and ate around 12 crickets a day (he also poops daily). I hadn't had time to put in any fresh veggies recently due to school and today I put some in, acorn squash, bell peppers, a few snap peas, and some kale, I put one meal worm on top to get him interested in the veggies and sprinkled it with some calcium powder. He ate a little of it an the meal worm as well as around 7 crickets today. I left to complete some homework and then came up to check on him and his head was down on his rock and he was resting it on his rock that is under his heating lamp. He picked it up and sat up a bit when I walked in and watched me move around the room although I did notice almost like a ripple with his beard when I was watching him, it kind of looked like maybe a burp or something, when I left to do some more homework then checked to see if anything had changed his head was back on his rock, picking it up when i entered. He had this issue around Christmas time and I removed the veggies and replaced his heat lamp and UBV tube and it all cleared up. I'm wondering if anyone has any clues to what this could be/ mean, i'm very confused and don't know what to do. Please help! Thank you!
Cage size: 20g, upgrading soon
Heat lamp: 100w
UBV: Tube, Zilla 50 UBV
Heat rock/ pad? No.
Veggies: Acorn Squash, Kale (Ran out of collar greens).
Treats (maybe once - twice a week): Bell pepper, sugar snap pea
Cricket size: Medium, had a larger one yesterday but he's pooped since them.
Hot side of tank: 90ishF (I don't have a temp gun, so it's probably not right seeing as i'm reading it off the wall of his tank.)
Cool side: 80F
Substrate: Reptile carpet
Shedding? Yup, his legs are just getting ready to shed
Nose or eye goo? Nope.
I can answer more if you have any, these are just the ones off the top of my head.

Thank you!

 

[Hoppy819]

WOAH, UPDATE. A few seconds ago i was wandering around and he sat up quite a bit and I look over and he's puffing and unpuffing his beard, He did this about 3 times before smacking his lips and going back to an un-puffed beard, he's done it twice so far in about 3 minutes, what the heck is up? I'm freaking out.

 

[PatsyB]

Beard puffing is normal. Mine do it every morning like a morning stretch and when they are getting ready to shed they do it more though out the day.

Sounds like he's eating and pooping okay. I have a feeling your lighting is the problem. You say the hot side is 90 but is that the basking spot? The basking spot should be around 105 for a beardie his age. Get a temp gun, you can order one off of Amazon for like $13 or sometimes a home improvement store has them. The UVB light you are using is not a very good one. If you are resting the UVB light on mesh, the mesh blocks a ton of the UVB and if the light is only putting out 50 micro watts, the with the mesh it's only putting out half of that. I use ReptiSun bulbs and I have a UVB tester. When my bulbs get to 50 micro watts, I start getting ready to change them out. The ReptiSun 10.0 or Arcadia bulbs are the better bulbs to use.

 

[Hdrydr31]

I totally agree with Patsy your basking needs to go up so he can digest better and the UVB to absorb properly. It could be colder than that as those only measure the wall. I got an IR meter at home depot that is very accurate (link is in the general info in our signature lines) and it was under $10.