Bearded Dragon Care Sheet

Introduction to Bearded Dragons

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. They typically max out at around 2 feet in length. Bearded dragons eat green vegetation and insects. They climb trees, dig burrows and perch up on a vantage point to bask.

Enclosure Size

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. As a bearded dragon may get to 2ft long, the minimum size allows your dragon to be fully out of the lights or fully under the lights, with some space to 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.

Heating and Lighting

We need to provide the sun by providing the bearded dragons with special 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.

Basking Surface Temperature

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. 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.

Ambient Air Temperature

The air temperature in the enclosure can be anywhere from 20C-35°C/68-95°F during the day. 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.

UVB Light

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. Bearded dragons need UVB at a UVI of 4. The UVI can be measured using a solarmeter 6.5.

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!

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. This is why a 4’x2’x2’ft enclosure is the minimum!

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.

LED Lights

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.

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.

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%. 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. As long as the enclosure is dry you will be fine.

Substrate

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!

Bearded dragon Diet

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.

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.

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

Introduction to Bearded Dragons

Enclosure Size

Heating and Lighting

Basking Surface Temperature

Ambient Air Temperature

UVB Light

LED Lights

Bearded Dragon Humidity

Substrate

Bearded dragon Diet

Supplements

Shopping List

Enclosure

Heating and Lighting

Incandescent Heat Lamps

UVB T5 bulbs

LED Visible Light

Measurement Equipment

Substrate and Decor

Humidity

Cleaning Equipment

Supplements