Need to start accumulating information

[Jay_Bunny]

As far as keeping one dragon to an enclosure, when we had dragons way back when we had two in a 75g tank. I have also seen other people's enclosures with more than one dragon in the tank. I'm not shooting the one per enclosure down but I would like some information on why this is needed. My co-worker had her two dragons in a large custom built enclosure and they were fine together.

[Beardedragon]

dominance is a huge factor with beardies, they will fight for the best heating spot and if you ever see one laying on top of another, its not them being friends, its showing dominance. The result can be deadly.Its almost the same as BPs. Ive been on BD.org, b-d.com and a beutifuldragons forum for a few years now and have heard some horrible storys with houseing beardies together, some people have come home to blood baths before, and have you ever seen a beardie without a tail or a arm? That is why, cage mates.

Male and male will fight

Female and male will result in the male over breeding the female, and if they are to young she can become egg binded. If she is a adult the male will bully her all the time and she can becomes stressed and stop basking or eating, and die.

Female and female, its been done, but you want to watch out for dominance. I would not recommend it but I do not see a problem with it as long as no fighting or dominance happens, you just have to keep very close eye on them.

You will also need a GIANT tank, beardies need a 4-6 square feet enclosure when they are adults, meaning you will need at least a 10 sq foot tank. If not, the reasons ive stated above will happen.

[icygirl]

Yup, agreed... it's best to have one beardie per tank, especially as they are growing. Sometimes babies are housed together by breeders or pet stores, but you never know how they will act towards each other once they get older and their sex hormones start kicking in. In addition, sometimes beardies will mistake other beardies' toes for food, and well... then you get a beardie with missing toes. Also note that they do NOT need companions to be happy... one bearded dragon in a tank, well taken care of by a human owner, will be very happy and healthy alone.

One other thing I wanted to point out, in addition to everything Beardedragon said: Never house adults and juvies/babies together, as sometimes the adults will try to eat the babies...

[Dracosdad]

On substrate: We have two adults and recently switched to tile from the sand/bark combinations we had used for years. Boy, was this overdue. Tile looks good, is cheaper than anything except possibly newspaper and the lizards have adjusted to it just fine. In fact, I suspect they prefer it because their prey is easier to see and they don't get sand in their mouths or noses.

Best of all, tile is a cinch to clean. You can disinfect a 40-gallon tank in 15-20 minutes, which you'll need to do less often anyway because you can pull out and perfectly disinfect any tile they poop on -- we even keep an extra replacement tile next to the cage if we're on the run and don't have time to clean. No more sand in the water, sand in the salad, bark on the carpet, worms burrowing, dust making the thermometer hard to read or cement-heavy bags of new or used sand. I find it even less of a hassle than newspapers or paper towells -- both of which I've used --because you can clean with less intrusion and lizard stress. We have good-sized driftwood that I'd rather not lift out every time.

Surprisingly, it actually looks better than sand, at least a week after you've replaced the sand and the lizards have kicked it around everywhere. The cystal-clear water dish by itself is a huge improvement (Sydney used to liked to sit it his, apparently to get the sand off his feet).

All you need is something with a textured surface to keep the lizards from slip sliding away (people are always recommending slate but we prefer some Italian terracotta-looking stuff). Loew's and I'm sure many other places literally have tons of it ranging from $2 to $6 per 6" square. Of course, you can get other sizes and score and fracture as needed. We actually use it in combination with repti-carpet to enhance heat gradients and aesthetics, but tile by itself should work out just fine. The only downside I can think of is that the cold end after a cool night might take some time to heat up, but that's another topic.

[Jay_Bunny]

Well i think my mother has dropped the idea of getting a dragon, at least for now. So I probably won't end up getting a bearded dragon this year unless she gets one and decides to not take care of it.