Need help with uromastyx rescue

[Mike Cavanaugh]

I have extensive experience with various lizards, but today I took in my first Uromastyx as a rescue.

She / he is approx 2 years old. She was kept by a kid who did not feed her on a regular basis, and the food it was being fed was sub par. The biggest problem was he was not providing it with the correct heat basking spot. The way they had it set up, the basking spot was reaching 95 degrees max... and probably stayed closer to 90 degrees.

This is how I have her set up now:

She is in a 30 gallon long critter keeper type tank.
Substrate: Washed Play Sand
Hides: Two animal plastics hides. One in middle of tank, one on cold end of tank.
UV Light. Reptisun 10 uv light approx 12 inches from substrate hung in middle of tank.
Heat Light. 90 watt normal spotlight type bulb shining directly on a tan colored basking rock. Hung on left side, or hot side of tank. Bulb is about 12 inches away from rock. Rock temp using RBI temp gun is about 115 degrees. Temp of uro while sitting on rock is about 125 degrees.
Food: Not sure yet, plan to buy and offer food tomorrow.
Water: They never gave it water, I will probably do the same unless told otherwise.

So here are my questions:
1.) do you see anything wrong with its new setup? Any suggestions?
2.) Her skin seems to be in pretty bad shape. Lots of stuck shed everywhere. I assume I will have to soak her on a regular basis until this clears up?
3.) As you can see by the pics below she appears to have a problem on her mouth. It looks like a lot of old stuck skin, but it also looks like it could be something much worse like some kind of mouth rot. I tried to get a picture of it but she kept moving. Apparently they took it to the local reptile vet for its mouth, and the vet recomended soaking it, and prescribed a lotion 1% silver sulfadizazine cream. Has anyone ever done this? I honestly don't have a lot of faith in the reptile vet she was brought to due to past experiences, and that is the only reptile vet around here.
4.) what is the best bet easy food diet that I should start her on?





Thanks for any help you can give!!!!!

[wilomn]

Your set up sounds good and the lizard doesn't look too bad.

The lip thing is not uncommon in Uros that are fed a lot of soft food that gets stuck in the gums and lizards who do not have the proper calcium.

Hers looks to be more food related. You could spray her with plain ol room temp water once or twice a day for the skin but I wouldn't bother to soak her for that. She'll most likely shed it all out on her next goround.

Looks like a Mali, they're really cool. Greens and seeds. deerfernfarms.com is good and has some excellent information. Unless it's changed, it's been a few months since I checked it out.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

Thanks Wes. I checked out that site and got a lot of good info.

I did end up soaking it twice and was able to remove a lot of the sore. It looked to be mostly old shed skin that was stuck. I say this because under it just looks like normal skin. It was also totally caked with sand so I ditched the sand completely and am now using wild bird seed for substrate instead like the site you pointed me to recomended.

Now I just have to figure out this maze of food. Seems like EVERYONE recomends different things. Other then seed it seems like nobody agrees on a proper diet.

What have you had the best luck with food wise Wes? Of course I LOVE easy things so if it were possable to just buy a bag of pre mixed frozen stuff I would.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

well just got back from grocery store. For now I am using what I was able to easily find there. Bought it fresh, but cut it up and put it in bags to freeze.

So as of now his diet is:

Wild bird seed
Collard greens
Turnip greens
Mustard greens
Calcium powder.

I plan to get some more vitamin / mineral powder that is more then just vitamin c. Anything wrong with anything listed? Is there anything else I really should add?