weare considering purchasing a turtle heater to warm her water, because right now it is getting very cold...but the odd thing is she spends more time in there now than ever before...we have been putting her in the shower daily (we have no tub) and that seems to be the only time she goes to the bathroom...i'm concerned about her eating habits also...she is about a year and a half old and was eating great for the first year...now we are lucky if she will eat 10 worms a week...she refuses anything else...her temps are good we haven't recently changed anything...she is in a mesh enclosure and we cover her at night when the room gets cooler...can they see infrared heat lights? because we need something warmer than the moonlight bulb since that only goes up to 75 watts... i'm just concerned that she is spending tooo much time in her cold water...she never layed in it at all until the past month and now we rarely see her out of it. she's evern sleeping in there all night.
What is the temperature of the water? If the water is warmer than the air she might be in there to warm up. You said that the temperatures are good...but what do you consider good? Perhaps its not humid enough in the cage since its screen/mesh? I have always kept mine in glass tanks to help keep the humidity up. Water dragons will often spend extra time in the water when getting ready to shed. She's a little young (females don't usually mature until they are about 2 1/2 or 3) but females will often soak when gravid....and they don't have to have been mated to produce eggs. Does she have a place to dig to lay the eggs in her cage? Does she do any scratching while she is in there? If so, maybe she has an external parasite? You said you were concerned about her eating habits too....does she eat any greens, veggies, fruits in addition to the insects? Do you gutload the insects? Supplement/dust them too? Does she have UVB light that does not pass through glass or plastic?
no parasites we check her over every day....she only eats veggies when we put worms on them and then only what she accidentally takes in...she has been in the mesh enclosure for about 5 months and no problems until recently...in her last home she was not eating for about 2 weeks...until we realized she was just too cold...she is not scratching that we have seen...and i have felt her belly and there appears to be nothing there...
I would make sure your dragon is not sleeping in the water. It is possible that it could drown. What are you using as night time heat? What are your temps?
You can use an aquarium heater to heat the water. I used a 2-5 gallon heater from Wal-mart when I had a small tank, but now that I have a six gallon pool, I use a 50 watt heater. I also switched to a wood and glass tank. It's hard to keep up the humidity and heat in a mesh enclosure. FYI, a heater in the pool will help with humidity as it heats the water. I noticed one of my dragons goes potty in the pool often. The other one goes potty when I soak him in warm water. I bought a very small cat litter pan from Wal-mart for like $3 and I use that to soak them in warm water every so often, it helps to make sure they are not impacted because warm water makes them go potty.
