Bearded Dragon Care Guide!
Welcome to the ultimate bearded dragon care guide, where we take you from beginner to advanced! Our hope is that this resource can be used by all to build a successful and fulfilling experience keeping bearded dragons.
How We Approach Bearded Dragon Care
We recognise that the internet is full of blogs, videos and forums where bearded dragon care information contradicts each other. To the budding new bearded dragon keeper this can be daunting to say the least. Our mission is to dispel myths you may have read online and put you on the right path to success! Our approach is an evidence-led approach to care, meaning that we look towards real data and peer reviewed science to guide our care principles.
What is a Bearded Dragon?
Our Bearded dragons are known as the central bearded dragons or more scientifically Pogona vitticeps, this translates to “bearded ribbon head”. These are agamid lizards that inhabit central Australia in habitats that range from grassland, scrub, semi-arid woods to full sand dunes. These environments often experience hot days but cold nights.
Figure 1: Known distribution of the central bearded dragon (Authors Own, 2024).
Figure 2: A bearded dragon basking whilst overlooking its habitat (BeardieVet, 2023).
Bearded dragons are active during the day and sleep at night, this is otherwise known as being diurnal. They are cold blooded or for more appropriately terminology, ectotherms. Bearded dragons rely upon the sun to maintain their body temperature, sitting in the hot Australian sun is the perfect way to warm up their core body temperature. Bearded dragons are often seen basking in elevated positions like fallen logs, trees, rocks and even fence posts.
Figure 3: Bearded dragon basking on a rock (BeardieVet, 2020).
They are excellent all-terrain vehicles and use all dimensions of their habitat! They are classed as terrestrial and semi-arboreal, running on the ground but also climbing to the tops of trees. Burrows are also key to the lifestyle of bearded dragons, sheltering them from the elements in the winter, or providing safe hiding places from predators.
Figure 4: Bearded dragon sheltering in burrow under some logs (BeardieVet, 2018).
Bearded dragons are omnivores, meaning they eat both vegetation and animal prey. Most of their diet consists of herbaceous vegetation and invertebrates with the rare lizard appearing in the diet.
Figure 5: Plant matter found in the mouth of a bearded dragon (BeardieVet, 2018).
Why Bearded Dragons In The Wild?
The reason we must begin with the wild is simple, these animals have evolved and adapted to live in their wild environment, and therefore their biology has been shaped to a set of specific conditions. Whether that be their diet, the sun or how they run, climb or dig. Although bearded dragons have been kept and bred under human care for decades now, they are still very much wild animals and their biology is not removed from wild requirements, so we must look towards them to guide our bearded dragon setups.
A Year In The Life of a Bearded Dragon
The following is what we could expect a year in the life of a bearded dragon, temperatures or times are rough approximations for the sake of this story to give you a mental picture. We will go into how to implement care later on in this care guide.
Spring
As the spring sun rises, bearded dragons wait for the air temperatures of the day to start warming their bodies up. Then they will begin to actively bask in the sunshine, whilst still hidden until their bodies hit around 26°C/78.8°F at roughly 9:30-10AM. After reaching this point, they emerge to sit in the bright sun and use their back like a solar panel to absorb as much of the sun's energy as possible by facing away from the sun, they turn darker to do this as effectively as possible. Often the brightest patches of sun are the most energy rich and are most desirable at this time.
They need to bask in the sun to warm up and get their core up to an optimal temperature. This gets their immune system switched on and firing. During this process the ultraviolet light hitting them is causing cholesterol in their skin to be converted into the vitamin D3 cycle. Allowing calcium in their diet to be absorbed by the gut.
Once they do this they will then move out of the bright sunny patch and start eating, or males might look for good vantage points to display to any onlooking females whilst positioning their bodies to reduce the amount of sunshine hitting their bodies. Males that get too hot, jump down and press their bellies into the cool sand to expel a lot of unwanted heat.
The spring rains and increasing day lengths have stimulated a lot of fresh growth in herbaceous vegetation and flowers bloom. Insect populations boom too. This is the perfect feeding time for bearded dragons. Mineral rich vegetation give the bearded dragon's much needed calcium. Once the air temperatures in the middle of the day get to the point where the bearded dragons do not need to keep basking to maintain their optimal body temperatures, they then move to shaded positions.
After the peak of midday, when bearded dragons might have fed or air temperatures begin to drop, bearded dragons will come out and bask in the sun for a second time to help them digest and keep some warmth throughout the cold night ahead. This is called biphasic basking where bearded dragons basking in two phases in a day. By the end of the night all bearded dragons have returned to their shallow spring time burrows before night time temperatures drop to as low as freezing on some nights.
Summer
It's now summertime and air temperatures are warmer than ever before and the 27°C/80.6°F hot night from the day before is felt this morning, the bearded dragons only briefly need to bask for 10-20 minutes or so if they get lucky with a meal.
Nearby on an unexpecting bush, camouflaged juvenile bearded dragons cling vertically to the branches allowing the sun to warm them through dappled light. When an unexpecting insect wanders too close, the juveniles drop to the ground to eat before returning to their hiding positions.
The sun's rays are intense and air temperatures are at an all time high. Reliable amounts of food are scarce and plant matter has all but disappeared. The bearded dragons are sheltering from the sun, staying cool and avoiding basking for the most part. They don't want to raise their metabolism to need food they won't find. Most days will be spent like this unless the occasional storm rolls in and cools the environment briefly. This also triggers the emergence of termites.
As night drops there's not a male to be seen, but females remain out, pressing their stomachs into the rocks and roads that are still warm from the day's sun. Their bellies are full of termites that need digesting and some girls are full of eggs. Bearded dragons prepare to sleep on top of bushes and in trees, where the now active nocturnal snake populations will have more trouble sneaking up on them.
Winter
At the end of autumn, day hours are shortening, temperatures are dropping and winter is looming, bearded dragons begin to dig deep brumation burrows into the red sands that are several feet deep. Others shelter under fallen logs. These burrows remain at stable temperatures around 15°C/59°F whilst the surface experiences the cold.
The bearded dragons sleep through this time in a hibernation-like state, but on the occasional sunny spell in the winter, the bearded dragons will wake and bask at the mouth of their burrows to absorb as much warmth as they can before going back to sleep. Until the air temperatures of spring rouse them and the active season starts all over again.
I hope that gives you an idea of what bearded dragons might experience in the wild. And the clues that can guide us on how best to care for them in our homes. Lets go.
Bearded Dragon Care for Beginners
Bearded Dragon Enclosure size
We are going to split this between minimum and recommended with the following definitions:
Minimum - The lowest acceptable size before its unsuitable for the animal’s welfare.
Recommended - The desirable size that good animal welfare can be achieved in.
The Reptiles and Research minimum space required of an enclosure for an adult bearded dragon is a 4’x2’x2’ft enclosure or 48”x24”x24”in. Bearded dragons hold territories of hundreds of meters in the wild so when we think of our pet dragons, providing them 4ft of leg room doesn't seem unreasonable. Bearded dragons get quite big so anything less than that really restricts how much they can move.
The Reptiles and Research recommended space is a 6’x2’x3’ft. This could also be altered to a 7’x2’x2’ft as the space to run up and down is just as important as climbing space, so it would be acceptable to swap it.
Other Minimum Requirements for Bearded Dragon Enclosures
The Federation of British Herpetologists (FBH) minimum enclosure guidelines state that 6 x 3 x 3 times the snout to vent length of a bearded dragon is the minimum.
Figure 6: Example illustration of snout to vent length measure points on a lizard (Federation of British Herpetologists, 2022).
“An adult bearded dragon with a snout to vent length of 20cm (8”), total length 40cm (16”), would have a minimum enclosure size of 120 x 60 x 60cm. Bearded dragons will utilise height and climbing space, but would generally be
considered terrestrial and benefit from a long enclosure. There are many enclosures available that are 120 x 60 x 60cm (4’ x 2’ x 2’) which could be used for a bearded dragon of this size.”
For a large adult male bearded dragon with a snout to vent length of 25cm, that would be a enclosure measuring 5’ x 2.5’ x 2.5’ft.
Or if we look at the Swiss regional group of the German Society for Herpetology and Terrarium Science (DGHT) they state the minimum requirement for a bearded dragon is 3L x 2W x 4H times the total length of the bearded dragon. Bearded dragons can reach 60cm in total length so that would a 180cm x 120cm x 240cm or 6’ x 4’ x 8’. Thats 8 feet high!
Figure 7: Example size of 180cm x 120cm x 240cm or 6’ x 4’ x 8’ front facing bearded dragon enclosure next to a 6ft tall male (Authors own, 2024).
Minimum Size for Baby Bearded Dragons?
It is possible to raise baby bearded dragons in smaller starter enclosures such as 40 gallon tanks. However, it is not financially advisable as a bearded dragon will quickly outgrow this size tank and owners will be reaching into their wallets once again to buy an upgrade. So our advice is to use a 4’x2’x2’ft from the get go.
Yes, babies can go straight into that size, you don't have to worry about them getting lost in there, the space they use in the wild is far bigger. I have worked in reptile stores for years and always sold babies straight into a 4’x2’x2’ft vivarium with great success.
This means its front opening rather than top opening like a small 40g breeder tank, and we can work with our baby bearded dragons in a way that doesn't scare them by coming in over the top like a predator.
It makes sense to learn how to use this size from the get go.
Where to get a Enclosure?
We advise going for a enclosure that will have the strength to withstand the weight of rocks and substrate you will want to put in it. The Evolution 4 PVC Enclosure (48 L x 24 W x 24 H) by Custom Reptile Habitats can hold a lot of weight (roughly 200lbs). The mesh blocks very little light, as low as 23% blockage, perfect for lighting! This is ideal for a naturalistic bearded dragon setup.
Figure 8: Evolution 4 PVC Enclosure 2.0 - 48 L x 24 W x 24 H (Custom Reptile Habitats, 2024).
Bearded Dragon Heating and Lighting
You will have noticed the importance of the sun and basking for bearded dragons. We need to provide the sun by providing the bearded dragons with special lamps.
Heat Lamps
To provide that sun's warmth you want a halogen or incandescent heat lamp, this provides the infrared energy that most of us associate with heat. If your tank is screen top you can screw your heat lamp into a dome fitting, if it's inside you can screw it into a mountable E27/E26 fitting. This heat bulb will penetrate deep into the bearded dragon and raise its core temperature just like the sun.
The wattages to use can be situational, but often a 100w bulb is recommended without any contextual explanation as to why. The entire area in the enclosure under and near the heat lamp’s rays is what we call the basking spot. This is where the bearded dragon will sit to warm up.
These bulbs are recommended:
Figure 9,10,11,12: Zoo Med Repti Basking Spot Lamp and Exo Terra Intense Basking Spot accompanied by power density iso irradiance charts by Thomas Griffiths (Exo Terra, 2024; Zoo Med, 2024; Tomaskas Ltd, 2022).
Basking Surface Temperature
You want the surface temperature of the basking spot to be around the ballpark of 38-42°C (100-107°F). However, this is not as important as the temperature of your bearded dragons back when it is basking under the lamp, again around the ballpark of 38-42°C. It really needs to be this hot to get through and heat your dragon to its core body temperature 36.3°C/97.34°F. To measure this, you will need a temperature gun, you point and shoot this at a surface and this gives you a reading of the temperature of a given surface.
When found basking in the wild, these temperatures were most commonly observed.
Figure 13: Basking data from wild bearded dragons (BeardieVet, 2020).
If your bearded dragon is basking and it's not reaching those back surface temperatures at all, then you can up the wattage of the heat bulb. If the bearded dragon is avoiding the spot and the temperatures are too high you can decrease the wattage of the bulb.
They shouldn't bask all day as this indicates that they can’t get their core temperature up. If it's hot enough you should see them bask for a bit in the morning and then go about their day in the rest of the enclosure and then pop back for second bask just to top up their temperature. It's not normal for a dragon to sit there all day long.
Thermostats
I would strongly recommend a dimming thermostat to control the heat bulb. This protects you from overheating the enclosure. Thermostats plug into the mains and then you plug the wire from the dome into the thermostat. It then has a probe that you place into the enclosure to measure the temperatures. Based on the temperature you set on your thermostat, it either increases or decreases power to the heat bulb until it rests at the temperature you set.
You want to have this thermostat probe on the shaded end so the lights aren't warming it up instead of it just reading how warm the air is. So midway up on the shaded end and not touching any objects is fine.
Air Temperature
The air temperature in the enclosure can be anywhere from 20C-35°C/68-95°F during the day. I'd set the thermostat to the max air temperature we are comfortable with, for example 35°C/95°F. Just like the thermostat probe, to measure the air temperature you will need a digital thermometer placed in the shaded end so that you aren't raising its reading by having lights warming it above ambient and giving you a false reading.
Light and Shade
Remember how the bearded dragons would move into the shade in the wild? We need to make sure they have shade in our bearded dragon setup. You want to place the heat bulb at one end of the enclosure, so one end is bright and hot and the other end is cool and shaded. Just like in nature.
Bearded Dragon UVB
Bearded dragons need UVB to survive. They do not have the bile acids to digest vitamin D3 through their diet so must get it through making it in their skin under UVB light. They need to be able to make enough vitamin D for proper calcium absorption. This is why it's essential. Without it your bearded dragon can get sick and suffer from metabolic bone disease or even die.
The wavelengths of ultra violet light (UVB) that makes vitamin D is expressed as the ultra violet index, or UVI for short. The stronger the radiance, the higher up the indices we get. The UVI can be measured using a solarmeter 6.5.
Figure 14: UVI Basking data from wild bearded dragons (BeardieVet, 2020).
Luckily BeardieVet studied bearded dragons in the wild. And out of 112 bearded dragons found the average UVI the dragons were found to bask at was 4.
So we need something to give our bearded dragons UVB at a UVI of 4. Luckily there are special UVB lamps that can be placed over our enclosures to do just that. What you want is the linear tubes, not the spiral or coil bulbs; they are too weak for your bearded dragon. Different bulbs have differing strengths, and are often marked at different percentages.
So how does percentage link to UVI? The higher the percentage, the higher the UVI is at an equal distance to the basking spot than a lower percentage bulb.
Figure 15: Illustrative demonstration of how a low percentage on bulbs is linked to UVI (Authors own, 2024).
So our bearded dragon needs a UVI of 4. A lower percentage bulb would need to be at a much shorter distance from the basking spot to achieve a UVI of 4. But a higher percentage bulb would need to be at a greater distance away to achieve a UVI of 4 at the same spot.
Figure 16: Illustrative demonstration of how a lower percentage bulb would need to be closer to the basking spot to achieve a UVI of 4 than what a high % bulb would be (Authors own, 2024).
So for an Arcadia bulb you’d need a 12% at 30 cm away or a 14% at 45cm away. Remember this isn't the distance from the top of the vivarium to the bottom, but the distance from the bulb to the basking spot and where the bearded dragon will actually be basking. For ZooMed 10.0 you'd get a UVI of 4 at 30cm away. Or a reptile systems zone 3 lamp with a reflector at 30cm away is a UVI of 4. This is for lights inside the enclosure, when on top of mesh this can be reduced by 30% in a lot of meshes, apart from Custom Reptile Habitats with 23% blockage. So factor this into your choice.
Use each brands guidance on how each of their own bulbs performs at different distances. Or better yet use a solarmeter 6.5 to know exactly!
UVB Bulb Positioning & Maitenance
So you want to position your bulb alongside your heat lamp so that both are clustered on one end so that you get a patch of sun and an area of shade so your bearded dragon can move in and out just like nature. You want your bulb to be no more than one third to half of the enclosure. We must maintain shade in the other half of the enclosure.
Figure 17: Lighting only covering half of the bearded dragons 7’ x 2’ x 2’ enclosure (Authors own, 2024).
So you need to replace the UVB bulb routinely as per that brand's guidance because the UVB output fades as the bulb ages and at some point will produce no UVB at all even though the light is still on and producing visible light. For some brands it's once a year but double check.
Brightness and Visible Light
Remember how we mentioned that bearded dragons select the brightest spots to bask at. So we should make sure that our patch of sunlight is nice and bright. We can do this by adding a LED light directed at the basking spot. You can use LED spot lights from amazon such as the SANSI lamps that you can screw right into a dome or E27/E26 fitting. Or you can use long LED bars and place them one third or half the enclosure. Either way you want to place this near the basking spot again. See figure 17 for LED spot light angled to create intense patch of light.
Once these three types are clustered at the basking zone we've got our nice patch of “sunlight” for the bearded dragon to bask in. Have the lights on for 12 hours and then off for the other 12 hours. For example, 8am to 8pm.
Bearded Dragon Lights At Night
At night you can turn all the heat and lights off. They need the dark to go to sleep just like us but the drop in temperature at night is good for their immune systems. Temperatures can get really low in nature in Australia. It can get very cold at night in Australia during spring so letting your night time temperatures drop down to the low 20’s/60’s is not a problem. In fact, one of the main reasons they might not bask during the day is if they had too hot of a night temperature.
So turn it off at night unless you are keeping the tank somewhere freezing then you'll want to provide them with some non-light emitting heat. But for most of us it won't be that cold so you can just turn everything off at night. Just use a timer plug.
Bearded Dragon Humidity
Humidity in the wild is cyclical and rises at night and drops during the mid-day. During the middle of the day the humidity can be as low as 10% but at night it can be as high as 65% and in burrows it can be up to 80%. The dragons are fine with humidity only when it's wet and cold that it's an issue. So in our homes anything from 20-50% during the day is fine, and at night if it rises it's fine. It's a natural cycle. I see lots of beginners panicking on forums like “it's risen to 70% humidity at night. What should I do?!” Because they've been told about having low humidity without a full understanding. Unless your enclosure is constantly WET and cold you will be fine. People breed them outside all year round in Florida and they do fine with humidity. There's a difference between humid and physical wetness.
Bearded Dragon Substrate and Decorations
Figure 18: Wild bearded dragon on top of wild sand (BeardieVet, 2019).
Like in the life of the bearded dragon story, bearded dragons evolved in environments of sands and soils.
Substrate is important for bearded dragons because it provides cushioning for their joints so they aren't on hard floors all the time, but it also lets them dig, which they really value. Don't use reptile carpets or tile, they get their claws caught on carpet and can't dig, and tiles are quite hard on their joints. withholding loose substrate can result in a loss in muscle mass and can cause stress on the joints.
You can use a 2:1 mixture of topsoil to play sand or even mix in some Zoo Med Excavator Clay to compact the surface of the substrate.
You can use straight sand for bearded dragons too, play sand alone can be an easy to clean, easy to use substrate. However, it does lack that bit of consistency for digging thats going to provide resistance and exercise the dragon’s muscles as they dig.
The very best substrate to use is the very substrate from the wild itself, luckily you can use exactly that! Jurassic Natural Australian Desert Dragon Habitat Substrate is quite literally wild substrate that’s been bagged up and exported to the pet trade. It literally does not get better!
Figure 19: Wild male bearded dragon sitting upon a fallen log (BeardieVet, 2019).
Bearded dragons like to shelter under fallen logs or dig burrows at certain times of year. So provide them with logs and branches, hides and hollows that they can get in, under, on or behind. See figure 21 for setup example.
Figure 20: Bearded dragon in a tree (BeardieVet, 2019).
In the summer they sleep in trees and bushes and generally climb at all active times of year so make sure they can do that. Especially males, they want that vantage point to look out from. This is why the Swiss requirements say four times the length of the dragon in height as a minimum.
Figure 21: Example of how dry logs can be used in a bearded dragon setup, notice the transition from bright to shade towards the back (Authors own, 2024).
Bearded Dragon Hydration
Bearded dragons hydrate through the water it gets from its food. Vegetation provides bearded dragons with a lot of moisture content. It does rain in the wild so bearded dragons would be able to drink from puddles when they felt the need. Bearded dragons will drink the water that runs down their heads and to their mouths if they are out in the rain.
So you should give them a water bowl to drink from if they choose to, you can also drip water on their nose to drink from periodically. Don’t be surprised if you rarely ever see a bearded dragon drink. I work from home right next to my bearded dragon and she might drink once monthly if that. The point is its there IF they want it, this year as my bearded dragon came out of hibernation she walked up to her water bowl, plunged her face into the water and began guzzling water down for several minutes. I’ve seen her do that once again in the 6 months after that. But she was clearly in need of water in that moment and im glad the water bowl was there.
We do not know the hydration status of our dragons at every point in time so it would be silly to not provide a water bowl, only they know as and when they need it so we should make sure waters available and allow them to self regulate that.
Bathing Bearded Dragons
There is a strange sub-culture of bearded dragon owners that do not provide their bearded dragon a water bowl because “they do not need it” but then try to bathe their bearded dragon once a week in order to get it to drink and hydrate. It is painfully ironic.
JUST GIVE THEM THE WATER BOWL!
The other reasoning for providing a bath is to encourage a bearded dragon to defecate. However, a healthy bearded dragon will defecate when it is ready. Bearded dragons will eat, digest and then faecal matter will sit in the colon of the bearded dragon where all the moisture and last minute nutrition is extracted and absorbed into the bearded dragon. This is the arid adaptation that allows them to get so much hydration from food. Finally, a mucosal layer is layered around the faeces before it is excreted. If you bath a bearded dragon in warm water it can encourage the dragon to defecate before it is done absorbing water and nutrients so its not a great idea.
The other reason is a long held myth that bearded dragons suck up water through their vent/cloaca to hydrate. They do not. Dr Jonothon Howard put this to test on video, water soluble radio-opaque contrast solution called Omnipaque (iohexol) was used to bath the bearded dragon. If any liquid was sucked up into the cloaca it would show up on an X-ray. He then bathed the dragon for 1 hour then took an X-ray. No Omnipaque was found. It’s as simple as that to disprove the myth.
The only time that we would recommend bathing a bearded dragon is if they crawled through their faeces or something and you want to clean them off.
What Do Bearded Dragons Eat?
Bearded dragons get overfed in captivity and causes them a lot of problems. It should take them 2 years to grow to full size, not a couple months like some owners are managing. If people are feeding them too much protein it can lead to gout and other health problems. Also, people overfeeding youngsters can cause liver failure. Grow them slowly, it's better for their health and you'll get to enjoy the baby phase for much longer!
You only want to feed babies 5-6 protein items a day that are the size between their eyes. Provide them with fresh vegetation every day. Once they get to about 30 grams you can start feeding this every second day with a gap between. Keep them lean, if they're starting to look fat around the midsection, you can move it to every 3rd day just to slow them down. It's all about portion control.
You only need to feed adult bearded dragons 4-5 dubia roach sized insects twice a week. And a bowl of greens about the size of the adult bearded dragon's head 3 times a week. Then increase or decrease based upon their body condition. When you realize how little they need you soon realize why they're so fat in our homes.
I recommend rotating the insects you feed so your bearded dragon gets a varied balanced diet. So many people end up just feeding the same thing to them over and over again. But we know better than that.
Figure 22: Commercially bred feeder inspect species by staple or occassional (Authors own, 2024).
Bearded Dragon Greens
There are a lot of greens to feed your bearded dragon. What I recommend is a varied diet. Here are a few (see figure 23).
Figure 23: Vegetation seperated by staple and occasional (Authors own, 2024).
Bearded Dragon Fruit
DO NOT feed fruit because it causes bloating issues and dental disease, they don't need it. It's not in the wild so they don't need it at home.
Bearded Dragon Calcium & Other Supplements
In terms of supplements calcium is the main one people think of. Calcium is needed for healthy bone growth, for neurons and muscle fibers to contract and much more.
Most vertebrates need twice as much calcium in their blood as there is phosphorus to be healthy. Otherwise the body needs to pull calcium from the bone to bump the amount in the blood up. Feeder insects don't have skeletons, they have exoskeletons so they don't store calcium. They contain next to nothing in calcium but they are high in phosphorus. So without adding calcium dusting to the bugs your bearded dragon would consume lots of phosphorus and have to pull calcium from their bones. Over long periods of time this may lead to bone fractures and MBD. That's why we need to provide them with calcium on their bugs, to make sure there's twice as much calcium going in than phosphorus.
Now you might think, well who's dusting their bugs in the wild? Well in the wild they are eating plants that have 20 times as much calcium to phosphorus and that's why they don't get MBD. But in our homes we use calcium powders.
In terms of other vitamins and minerals your bearded dragon should get what it needs if you're feeding a good varied and balanced diet of differing feeder insects and veg type. So we just want to use a multivitamin powder just to come through after and fill in any gaps and top some areas off. Multivitamin powders are quite strong so there is the risk of overdosing on fat soluble vitamins etc, but if you dust some food in the say way you dust with calcium and do that once every 2 weeks you'll be grand.
Bearded Dragon Brumation & Aestivation
Like I said before, in the wild in the summer months, there's little food so bearded dragons bask very little and are often sitting in the shade. This is because if they bask and get really hot and ramp their metabolism up they need food to maintain that, that isn't there. So in the summer they become more inactive in our homes and often just sit and chill in the cool end. This is called aestivation. Its the opposite of brumation. Many people confuse this with brumation but they do not brumate in the summer. If they are just lying there but still are awake and looking at you that's not brumation.
Brumation is when they go into a deep hibernation like sleep. Bearded dragons hibernate in the winter as it gets quite cold in Australia. They dig deep burrows into the sand or under logs. It stays about 15°C/59°F in the burrows the entire winter.
Figure 24: Wild bearded dragon emerging to bask in the sun from its burrow (BeardieVet, 2018).
They might come out in the warmer days of the winter and just bask at their burrow entrances and then return when done. And then they come out of brumation fully in the spring. So in captivity what you can do is still provide the same temperature, UV etc. But just for shorter times. So what I'd recommend is stop feeding around October and then give them some time to digest at warmer temperatures. Then reduce the day length more to into winter and then reverse it in the spring whilst not letting temps go below 15°C/59°F.
Advanced Bearded Dragon Care!
This section covers the same as the beginner section but just at a much greater depth and introduces some advanced concepts that may be overwhelming to beginners.
Advanced Bearded Dragon Lighting
Lets revisit the basking spot. Yes much of the principles remain the same, however understanding what we truly want to be doing with our lamps is very different in terms of looking at the electromagnetic spectrum of light.
Sunlight is broken up into varying different wavelengths, all across a spectrum measured in nanometers. For this purpose we will focus on what is terrestrially available and biologically relevant.
So we are looking at a spectrum of light from the sun in nanometres.
Figure 25: The electromagnetic spectrum of light broken down into relavent sections, previously presented on the Reptiles and Research YouTube channel by Thomas Griffiths (Authors own, 2024).
From around 290 to 320nm is UVB.
From around 320nm to 350nm is a portion of UVA that is involved with UVB in the regulation of vitamin D3.
From around 350 - 400 nm is the portion of UVA that's associated with reptile vision. This is where bearded dragons see colours that we cannot.
From around 400 to around 700nm is the visible light spectrum. Everything that we see, as in the colours of the rainbow.
From around 700 to 1400nm (the chart ends at 900) is infrared A, the part we generally associate with basking heat.
So what we want to do is try our best to make sure that our sunny basking spots in our bearded dragon enclosures at least have each part represented to replicate the spectrum of sunlight as much as possible.
Figure 26: The electromagnetic spectrum of light broken by only using a T5 UVB and a incandescent heat lamp, this gap shows how keepers should view providing dedicated visible light even if some does come from both the T5 and the basking lamp. Previously presented by Thomas Griffiths on the Reptiles and Research YouTube channel (Authors own, 2024).
So if we take a look at the basic setup of a UVB lamp and then a heat lamp in figure 26, we have either end of the spectrum there because that's the bare minimum to keep bearded dragons alive but it is by definition. Entirely unnatural.
The good to note is that the linear UVB tubes from the likes of Zoo Med, Reptile Systems and Arcadia represent the UVB wavelengths of sunlight very well. So getting that right is as simple as turning the bulb on and getting the right UVI. It does also provide a little bit of visible light but not enough to fully represent that category.
Look at infrared A, now this is where our heat lamps come in. This represents the infrared portion of sunlight effectively.
But we have this huge gap of visible light barely uncatered to, this is where a LED light comes in, it provides some of the colours that the animals need to see as well as contributes to warming the dragons up. LED bars are great for adding background ambient light and colours.
Figure 27: The electromagnetic spectrum of light represented except for UVA1, adaptation of graph presented by Thomas Griffiths on the Reptiles and Research YouTube channel (Authors own, 2024).
By now i hope the reader sees how each lamp fills in each part of sunlight to get our dragons even closer to experiencing “sunshine”.
However, you will notice something is missing!
What is left is the portion of UVA that affords bearded dragons the rest of their vision. This can be provided by adding a metal halide to the mix, this fills this missing spot nicely. You could also add this instead of the LED spotlight because it's just as bright and the LED is still offering the rest of the visible light.
Figure 28: The electromagnetic spectrum of light represented fully. Adaptation of graph presented by Thomas Griffiths on the Reptiles and Research YouTube channel (Authors own, 2024).
However, this is still so dim compared to sunlight! Here is an example, using a LUX reader outside on a cloudy day in the middle of the UK winter at 2:30pm it is 40,000 lux. See figure 29.
Figure 29: The LUX on a winters day in the UK (Authors Own, 2024).
By comparison all of these lights such as a T5 UVB tube, a LED bar and a incandescent heat bulb in the vivarium are so dim that they only come to 11,000 lux in figure 30. Just because are pupils adjust and it looks bright, it doesn’t mean it actually is.
Figure 30: LUX available in a bearded dragons vivarium with only a T5 UVB tube, a LED bar and a incandescent heat bulb (Authors own, 2024).
By adding an LED spotlight (seen in figure 17), I increased the LUX to only just surpass that of a UK winters day. This is why we need to add intensity of visible light in our basking spots. These bearded dragons are from bright Australian arid lands and they are being kept so dark in captivity. The alertness and activity levels of bearded dragons when we increase the brightness of their basking spots increases significantly.
Fugure 31: LUX of the basking site after adding the LED spot to elevate the intensity of visible light (Authors own, 2024).
So that's 4 - 5 lamps depending on the configuration. Lets talk on how to set this spot up. Just like the beginner part of this video, you want it all clustered to one end. So we do afford the dragon shade to the other end of the enclosure.
I've angled it to be beneath the LED Bar and UVB bulb, I've done that so at the ground all of the light blends nicely. On the other side I have my LED spot lamp angled beneath as well. If you have a screen top enclosure, then it will be a little bit trickier to angle bulbs unless you rig up some form of wooden structure or you use something like the Arcadia Thermal Zoo Pro that angles everything in a chassis for you. There's a full review and configuration guide of the Thermal Zoo Pro on the YouTube channel.
Measuring the Basking Spot
Now let's talk how to measure the output and intensity of these bulbs so that we get the basking spot just right.
UVB
UVB is the simple one to start with, you are aiming for a UVI of 4 for the bearded dragon to bask at, so select for the right % bulb that achieves that at the distance you are working with to where the dragon will sit. You can fine tune and track the degradation of the bulb using a solarmeter 6.5. This will ensure you have control.
Infrared
Now let's talk infrared, just like UVI is the unit of measurement for UVB, infrared also has its own unit of measurement. Which is watts per meter squared, otherwise known as power density. Now this is a recent revelation for the reptile industry and lots of the data gathered prior to this was before we knew. So there's lots of data using surface temperatures, but that isn't truly correct. It can be a good proxy to getting in the ball park, but as advanced keepers we are doing it properly.
Unfortunately, we don't have any data on the power density of infrared that bearded dragons basked at in the wild, like we do UVI. But we can make an educated estimate. A very sunny hot day with intense infrared might be around 300w/m2, and that would be a good ballpark to shoot for.
Figure 32: ISM 400 power meter being used to fine tune a bearded dragons basking spot (authors own, 2024).
To measure this we need another tool, a power meter.
The way that incandescent bulbs typically work is that a piece of tungsten filament is heated so that it gets hot to the point it reaches irradiance. If we dim the bulb we reduce energy to the bulb, and unlike other lighting methods the output does not reduce in a linear fashion with dimming. Once you dim a heat bulb more than 80% the power density plummets. This is why we need to run our bulbs as close to full power as possible.
So we should change wattages of bulbs and the distance to the basking spot to manipulate the power density rather than dimming because that ruins it. So if a 75w lamp only reaches say 180w/m2 then you'd switch up to a 100w heat lamp and adjust.
Surface Temperature is WRONG
Now I know what you are thinking, in the beginner section you said to use surface temperature, why are you now saying its wrong?
Well the concept of power density and its application to reptile husbandry is relatively new and conventional advise the industry has established has largely been based around surface temperatures as a rough approximation of the strength of a bulbs output for lack of a better way to measure it. But its so established that beginners will find it confusing to delve into power density and watts per meter squared when a temperature is easier to understand and they will find power density rarely mentioned elsewhere if at all. Its easier to put down a correct but complicated care guide for a simpler one elsewhere due to the fact its the path of least resistance in terms of wrapping your ahead around it.
The reason that surface temperatures are not accurate is because they are incredibly variable with the object they are on. For example, imagine you have two identical heat lamps at 100w each, one is over some black slate and the other is over some grass. The surface temperature of the slate is going to be much higher than the grass even though both bulbs were giving off the exact same power density. This is because different objects have different thermal masses.
Figure 33: A temperature gun being used to measure the surface temperature of the substrate beneath the lights (Authors own, 2024).
Surface temperatures are still important to check to make sure things are within comfortable boundaries and not dangerously hot with a temperature gun. You could have exactly 300w/m2 but over a thin piece of slate and it rockets up to 55°C/131°F. But be absolutely fine at 40°C/104°F over wood. So it's useful but it's not a measurement of the output of the lamp but merely just telling you how hot things are getting. Its useful for instances of using heat mats for snakes because surface temperature is a direct output of that method, just not for measuring radiation.
Visible Light
The other LED’s are much easier and it's a case of just turning them on and then measuring with a LUX reader, you cant really overexpose them unless they are right under a lamp. 120,000 LUX is mid-day sun levels so anything under that will be fine. Just make sure there’s at least 30cm gap from the lamp to the dragon so you aren’t blasting them in the eye from the side with bright light.
Air Temperatures
Like I said, you don't want to dim the incandescent, but all these lamps will generate a lot of heat. So how do we control the ambient air temperatures in the enclosure? Well we need to manipulate the air temperatures.
You may have heard people recommend cool end air temperatures and then mid air temperatures and then hot end temperatures. All of that is wrong, this isn’t how physics works.
Imagine yourself standing in a field with a single tree, it's a hot sunny day and you want to cool down So you go into the shade of the tree. Now what happened was you moved from radiation upon you to out of radiation. The air temperature did not change. Only where radiation can reach changed.
Thats exactly what happens in a reptile tank, the air temperature doesn’t change every couple of inches down the enclosure. But some of the enclosure has radiation upon it, and the other does not.
So when people are reading different temperatures across the enclosure, they are actually reading how much they can heat up their thermometer under radiation.
I did an experiment with a cheap lightbox and this digital thermometer. Simply by having LED’s on the thermometer, the thermometer warmed and got an elevated reading. This is what keepers are doing and they are tricking themselves.
Figure 34: Thermometer lightbox experiment, the starting ambient temperature was 17.9°C, as time went on (15 minutes) the LED’s had heated the thermometer to 20.3°C. This is the impact that radiation, however small can have on raising the reading of a thermometer above what the actual air temperature is (Authors own, 2024).
The only gradient in air temperatures is top to bottom because heat rises. So when we want to measure air temperature, place a thermometer in the enclosure in the shaded end away from the influence of lights and make sure nothing is touching it that can warm it and that will be the true air temperature. So to control the air temperatures in the enclosure we want to use a thermostat like normal but put the probe in the shaded end so that its reading the air temperature. Then we set that thermostat to the highest air temperature we want it to reach before the thermostat turns the heat off as a safety measure.
We can also use fans to control air temperatures, having fans blow into the enclosure from low or sucking the air out of the enclosure high, draws excess hot air out and pulls cooler air in at a greater rate than simple ventilation placement. You can even hook these fans up to a thermostat using the same method.
What Should Air Temperatures Be?
I have taken a lot of climate data and merged three different weather stations across their range, one south, one midway and one north. Take a look at this temperature data, I've collected it in both C and F and flipped the data for the northern hemisphere.
Figure 35: Merged temperature data from central bearded dragon habitat (Authors Own, 2024).
What you will notice is that on average air temperatures are cooler than most imagine, remember that bearded dragons are very good at using the sun to elevate their body temperature higher than that of their surrounding environment. So when bearded dragons can get hot in the sun but then also get those cold nights, that's what allows them to switch off and switch on and ramp up that immune system.
One thing to take into account, these are broad averages across many years, the daily rise and fall also happens. For example, just because the average in march was 16°C it doesn't mean that its consistently that low, on several days in March mid-day temps could rise to 27°C. So this data is not a strict rule set to abide by, but rather to give you an overall understanding.
Shooting for ambient air temperatures anywhere between 20-35°C would be fine, then allowing them to drop as we cool into winter and brumation and warm coming out of them. We will tackle that in more detail later.
Figure 36: Lowest night time temperatures from merged weather data from bearded dragon habitat (Authors own, 2024).
This is the lowest recorded night temperature each month for the last 5 years. Do you see how cold it gets at night in the winter? Next to freezing. Some individual months before it was averaged out went down to -4°C. So those burrows really are crucial in the winter to keep them at a stable 15°C despite the bitter cold.
We will find that we will get an ambient temperature in our enclosures that are generated as a byproduct of our basking spots and we can use ventilation and fans to regulate it. Most of us will never get our dragons that cold in our homes, but if you have your tank in a garage or outhouse where temperatures will drop below 15°C then we can fit a ceramic heat emitter into the enclosure on a thermostat set to 15°C to make sure this is maintained.
Figure 37: Monthly humidity from merged weather data from bearded dragon habitat (Authors own, 2024).
You'll notice that humidity on average rises in the winter but drops in the summer. The ebb and flow of humidity is entirely normal.
Figure 38: Monthly rainfall from merged weather data from bearded dragon habitat (Authors own, 2024).
If you look at rainfall over the year, the summer gets the most storms and rain but because the temperatures are so high during the day the humidity gets burnt off quickly.
So what I do is spray the enclosure down more frequently in the summer to simulate this rain. You need to make sure that the ventilation is suitable enough that the humidity gets pulled out and the enclosure has spikes in humidity when it “rains” but also dries out. Using fans to help with humidity makes a difference. Trying to replicate this seasonal rainfall by spraying isn't a requirement and many bearded dragons do fine with hydration from veg and a water bowl, but it does add that complexity and variability to an animal’s life that is ultimately very enriching.
Figure 39: Average day length from merged weather data from bearded dragon habitat (Authors own, 2024).
Speaking of seasonal cycling, here is the average day length per month. You will notice that it peaks in the summer months and drops in the winter. The difference of 4 hours makes a difference over the course of a year.
Bearded Dragon Brumation
Like I mentioned previously they will hibernate in burrows that stabilize around 15°C all winter and on sunny days where air temperature are a little warmer they will come out and bask.
Methods I’ve previously used are just turning everything off and leaving them in darkness for 4 months. However, this isn't very natural and removes an element of choice and agency. I recommend just manipulating day lengths and temperatures with the season so they can rouse and bask on warm winter days. So we want to keep our basking spots the same, but rather just change our day lengths. And naturally this will change the air temps because less hour’s heating means cooler days and colder nights.
Somewhere around mid October I halt feeding and give them some time to digest. Early November I adjust the timer so I reduce the day length from say 12 to 8 hours, this reduction of heating begins the overall cooler air temps. Mid November reduces it to 6 hours of heat. Now you will notice that this is different from the 10 hours of winter days they experience in the wild. This is because we are using time the basking spot is on to control the air temperatures in situations where our houses are warmer than 15°C. So we are doubling down on the day length as a trigger because most of us cant double down and get our bedrooms and living rooms cooler.
Plus in the wild most days they are underground asleep, but if they do wake up some days there are still 6 hours of heat to bask in. If you wanted to just stop at 8 hours reduction you could as from 12 to 8 is exactly a 4 hour reduction like in the wild. I might experiment with this next year.
Around mid February I increase it to 8 hours again. Then at early march back up to 12 hours again.
Bearded Dragon Diet
Bearded dragons in the wild take 2 years to reach maturity from babies to adults. So naturally they are growing far slower than most captive bearded dragons. And our captive bearded dragons have less space, are less active and have a reduced energy output. Leading to a lower caloric need.
Bearded dragons have higher calcium requirements than say us. Most animals need twice as much calcium in their blood than phosphorus to maintain homeostasis of bodily functions. Calcium is important for muscle fibres to even contract, for neurons to send electrical signals down axons, for bone health and much more.
So a ratio of 2:1 is needed. If that isn't achieved the body will withdraw calcium from the bones storage and be released into the blood serum to bump up the levels and maintain this 2:1 ratio. This is a survival mechanism that works great over the short term, because once calcium is eaten again, its then laid down in the bone storage again and all is normal.
The problem is when calcium never returns in the long term until the dragon needs to constantly withdraw, withdraw and withdraw until the storage and strength of the bone is depleted and fractures begin occurring and deformity of the bone occurs. This manifestation is otherwise known as metabolic bone disease.
A growing bearded dragon whose skeleton is constantly building might have an increased requirement of 5:1. The bugs we feed such as mealworms and crickets do not store calcium as they have no skeleton but rather an exoskeleton. It just so happens that this is high in phosphorus.
So when people are ploughing bucket loads of bugs into their bearded dragons as babies, like as much as they can eat in 15 minutes, they are driving the calcium requirements up to crazy numbers like 15:1. Which can be very difficult to get that much calcium into them.
Not to mention the huge amounts of protein that is being put into them stimulating rapid growth at rates faster than their skeletons can normally grow. Aka, they need to be grown much slower hence the 5 bugs every day.
Foraging For Wild Weeds
With the greens it's important that they get a variety like previously mentioned as differing types have different micro and macro nutrient profiles. Foraging for natural greens outside is a really great way to create a well rounded diet.
Now the caveats to this are, knowing your area. Where and when pesticides have been sprayed and other chemical usage. I use the app called PictureThis, you can take a picture of a plant and the app identifies it. Then I like to use another app to see if that plant is safe to feed to my dragon. This app is called the Tortoise Table. It uses a traffic light system of green, amber and red. Green is feed away, amber is in moderation and red is not fed.
But read the descriptions closely to make sound decisions.
I will go on a walk and pick a variety of weeds and come back and wash them off under water before feeding them to my dragon. In the wild bearded dragons are eating greens that have 20:1 ratios, this is where the calcium comes from in wild bearded dragons.
Feeder Insect Nutrition & Gut Loading
I am mainly going to concentrate on crickets as that's what is most commonly used. Crickets have good amounts of amino acids and other nutrients, but are low in calcium, vitamin A, D, E, and have an inverse omega 6:omega 3 ratio in captivity compared to other wild insects. This is why we gut load our crickets to try and fill in the gaps and improve their nutritional quality before feeding them to our bearded dragons.
In the 80’s and 90’s gut loading commonly referred to feeding high calcium diets so the crickets calcium value was 1:1 or greater. But now it broadly describes feeding them for delivering other nutrients too.
In studies it was found that a cricket would not reach 1:1 if kept at less than 26°C and the gut loading food was no less than 7% calcium. Crickets also ate more if the food was in hiding places that made them feel secure. It took 48 hours for this 1:1 ratio to be achieved and dropped below after 72 hours. This result was repeated in multiple studies.
The kicker is you can't feed high calcium diets to crickets long term as it kills them. So only for the insects you are looking to feed off in 48 hours time. And feeding other things like produce veg would distract the crickets because it tasted nicer and caused them to not eat as much as the commercial gut loader diet.
So what I recommend is maintaining a maintenance diet for a group of crickets but then separating what you intend to feed off 48 hours in advance and switch them to a gut loading diet.
For vitamin A, commercial gut loading diets were good at delivering it. Now precursors to vitamin A such as beta carotene were shown to assimilate and build up in the flesh of the crickets over time. The same was found for vitamin E, So things like carrots, bell peppers, pumpkin and squash should be included in the maintenance diet as it build up over time. Luckily the bearded dragons make their own vitamin D under UVB so that’s not a worry. Now you can improve the omega 6:omega 3 ratio by including flaxseed oil in the gut loading diet.
The diets that achieved good results in studies are:
Zeigler Monster Cricket Diet
T-Rex Cricket Diet Dust
Wombaroo insect booster
This is important because some other brands' diets in studies failed to produce a 1:1 ratio.
Bearded Dragon Supplements
As I have previously mentioned, we need to dust our insects with calcium to ensure they meet a 2:1 ratio when eaten by the bearded dragon. As long as you dust each time you feed a bug with a calcium carbonate supplement you should achieve it.
Be aware that crickets were found to clean off 50% of powder within 2 minutes, so consider how quickly they are eaten by the dragon. This is why gut loading helps when releasing bugs for the bearded dragon to hunt in its enclosure. It takes far longer for a cricket to eliminate its gut content than it does to clean.
The nutritional needs of reptiles are less understood and many values in studies are basing things off the national research council's recommendations for lab rats which is less than ideal.
Multivitamin powders are very potent and often far exceed the NCR recommendations. However, they are only meant to be used infrequently. We are using these as our safety nets to come through after and fill in any nutritional gaps we may have been missing. Dust your feeder insects with multivitamins once every 2 weeks to once every month.
Bearded Dragon Weights
Figure 39: Weight data from wild bearded dragons (BeardieVet, 2020).
The average wild female dragon was 254g and the average male was 372g, the average overall weight was 341g. You don't want them anymore than 10-15% heavier than the wild weights. So ideally that’s a female no more than around 290g and a male no more than 430g using 15%.
Figure 40: Female bearded dragon body condition that BeardieVet described as perfect (Authors own, 2024).
Use my bearded dragon as a guide for what BeardieVet described as near on perfect alongside using the weights and that's your north star. So what you should do is weigh your bearded dragon weekly and track their weight.
Shopping List
Here is a collected shopping list for your convenience! Remember, if we wouldn’t use it ourselves it would not be here!
Enclosure
Evolution 4 PVC Enclosure 2.0 - 48 L x 24 W x 24 H
Heating and Lighting
Incandescent Heat Lamps
Zoo Med Repti Basking Spot Lamp
Exo Terra Intense Basking Spot
UVB T5 bulbs
Zoo Med ReptiSun T5 HO Terrarium Hood, 30"
Zoo Med ReptiSun T5 HO Terrarium Hood, 24"
Zoo Med ReptiSun T5 HO 10.0 Bulb 24”
LED Visible Light
Zoo Med ReptiSun LED & UVB Combi Hood
Measurement Equipment
Inkbird Wireless Thermometer Humidity and Temperature Monitor
Substrate and Decor
Jurassic Natural Australian Desert Dragon Habitat 10lb
Humidity
Cleaning Equipment
F10 SC Ready to Use Veterinary Disinfectant
Supplements
Calcium Powder (pure calcium carbonate)
Conclusion
Please do not stop here, please continue to research beyond this care guide, although we went very deep in this care guide there is way more to learn about bearded dragons and I hope you enjoy jumping down that rabbit hole.
