Mad4You2

Tammy, thanks for the advice. I appreciate you posting it. I started my dragons on sand. Then after a lot of research and some flaming posts about using sand, keeping the dragons together, Etouffee dying, etc...I bought 40 gallon breeder tanks and separated them. I was using 10.0 Zoo Med bulbs and switched to Powersun MVB, then went with ReptileUV MBD with bright white additional spot lights. I currently have them on ceramic tile but I'm going to move to newspaper or papertowels this weekend. The tiles get nasty in between because they aren't grouted.

Temps range from the high 70's in the cave, 80s in the larger portion of the cage and 90 on one basking site to 103-105 on the basking site under the MVB. I usually turn lights on around 7:00 am, then I turn off the bright white light when I come home at lunch. In the evening I turn on the bright white light and turn off the MVB. Lights out completely when it gets dark outside. In the winter that can be around 6:00 pm and in the summer it can be as late as 9:00 pm.

I live in East Texas and the weather this winter and spring has really been messed up here...it's been hot one day and in the 40s the next for the last couple of months. Very wierd weather and lots of storms lately. The ambient temp in the reptile room is usually 75-78 degrees in the spring and early summer. It's a few degrees higher in the hotter parts of the summer, July, August, and into September. The highs here can run over 100 for several days or weeks in a row. The humidity is also high here...usually at least 80% outside. The dragons get natural daylight for photoperiods also..there is a big window in their room but they are on the same wall as the window so the light doesn't come through and shine directly on the cages.

When I had them together as juveniles, we thought there were two females and one male, that is what was listed on their picture when I bought them. Boo had all appearances of being male but turns out he was a she. So...I had three females together. There was a 160 MVB in my big enclosure with sand, petrified wood for caves and a big driftwood root (when through many suggested methods of sanatation prior to putting them in with it.) They loved it and were very active and moved around all the time and seem much happier than they did after I separated them. They had a lot of vertical space to climb in the big enclosure, it's equal to 175 gallons and is a corner unit, built as a fine piece of furniture by a cabinet maker. It's about 4 1/2 feet vertically and about 36 inches on all sides in a triangle shape to fit in corner. The top is screen and it has tempered glass on the door and the front sides. The rest of it is wood with the interior painted with epoxy sealant to keep the humidity from soaking into the wood. My Mountain Horned Dragon breeding colony lives in this display enclosure now.

I do have yellowish urates sometimes on both of the remaining dragons now. I will check with the vet and see what he needs to get the testing for the bacteria.

They eat greens (turnip, mustard, collard) with sweet potatoes, sprouts, different squashes, green beans, snow peas. I usually get something different each week at the grocery store and rotate it around. They have both lost interest in their salads. I've tried bits of fruit, grapes, apples, pears....but they will usually eat a bit and then they don't want anymore. I keep fresh water in their enclosure in a big reptile rock bowl they can soak in if they want. I don't mist anymore because they act like they hate it. I do soak them a couple of times a week in lukewarm water and I used to have a poo everytime I did that. I also feed superworms, crickets, ocassional mealworms as treats. I feed hornworms and silkworms and they seem to like those but the hornworm guy doesn't want to ship when it's hot and I usually want tiny babies for my Mountain Horned Dragons hatchlings so that causes problems because of the shipping time, they are too big for the babies when they get here so I usually grow them until they are really large and give them to the beardies.

I supplement feeders with Sticky Tongue Farms calcium with D3, MWFS and Herptivite T Th. I gutload crickets and keep the worms in Ronnie Buck's mealworm bedding. I feed stems to all the feeders for the liquid. I also give the crickets some of the salads. It have the Salad Topper from Ronnie Buck that I have tried on the salads for the dragons but they don't seem to care for it.

The more I think about the bacterial issue, I think that might be part of what is going on with them....relating it to how bacterial infections manifest in humans, which is the type of knowledge that I have from being in the medical field for the last 25 years. I'm definately going to check that out.

Truly guys, the information in this thread relating to husbandry issues has been the most helpful that I've seen in all the posts that I've read for the last 3 years. I appreciate it very much.