Baby Beardie Stress Marks Question

Hello Everyone!

I was wondering you all might have advice on my baby beardie, Reptar's, stress marks. We recently got Reptar, last Thursday, 2/11. Reptar is about 5 inches long. Recently, we've noticed that whenever he is in his tank, he has stress marks. At the moment, he is in a 20 gallon long tank, but I'm looking to purchase a 75 gallon for him next month to put in the spare room until he gets older and bigger. Currently using a 10.0 reptisun UVB light with a 75 watt zoo med white basking light. We use no lights or ceramic heater at night since we keep our house around 70 degrees at night. During the day we have his temps at 110 degrees on the warm side, 85 degrees on the cool side, and the humidity at 30. We have the back side and two sides of the tank covered so he's not seeing his reflection. He also has one big hide on the warm side of his tank that has steps to a basking area, some basic slate pieces for him to sit on dispersed around his tank, and a reptile hammock and leaves on the cool side where he can relax or hide out if he needs his space. We are using reptile carpet for a substrate.

He's been eating about 50 small phoenix worms a day since Saturday (first two days he ate only about 15 a day) along with a serving of turnip and mustard green salad a day. He's goes to the bathroom once a day, and it looks normal, so we are pretty confused at why he always has the stress marks in the tank.

We have also noticed, that marks seem to go away almost instantly when we take him out to handle him. So far, every day, we've taken him out of his tank a few times a day for 10-15 minutes to handle him and have him get used to us. When we handle him, he doesn't get the marks, but shortly after putting him back in his tank, they come back.

He's basks normally, and seems pretty inquisitive, watching us all the time when we are just hanging out in the living watching tv or playing games.

Any advice would be great! We want to make sure that we can fix whatever may be bother him. He's a pretty cool little guy

It sounds like you have a lot of decorations in his setup? Most breeders have the bare minimum in their setups, most of the time that's nothing for hatchlings. He maybe overwhelmed by the size and decorations of his new enclosure. That being said, I had one dragon that always kept stress marks unless being held. Your husbandry sounds good, I would not move him to a bigger enclosure for a while. You could try taking everything out and introducing it a little at a time.

Thank you for the response I'm going to try removing some of the slate pieces and some of the leaves to see if that will help him. I am definitely holding off from putting him in a bigger tank as he is so tiny. I like being super prepared for everything when it comes to my pets. We have a large walk in closet that looks like the supply area of a pet store with all the extra supplies for our dogs and beardie, along with a spare bedroom that is my office and home to big pet stuff