Best live plants for bearded dragon tanks and how to secure them?

Bearded dragon owners can also add plants to the habitat, but take care when adding real plants. If a live plant is in the habitat, the bearded dragon might decide to use it as a snack. If the plant is toxic to bearded dragons, your pet could end up very sick, or dead. Artificial plants are the best option since they are easy to clean, never need water, and are very naturalistic. Most pet stores carry a wide variety of artificial plants to choose from. If you decide to use live plants, junipers are one of the most recommended plants to use. Junipers are slow-growing and do not require much water.

Pothos or philodendron can be used in your vivarium. Be sure to avoid using any potting soil or soil with fertilizer. Artificial plants are also an option since they will survive any "frog stomping".

Since lettuce is mostly water it is not nutritious for bearded dragons. Because of this it is best to avoid feeding your bearded dragon lettuce or any greens with the word "lettuce" in the name. Spinach is also another food to avoid. While spinach is healthy, calcium binds easily to it which can make it hard for your bearded dragon to digest. Do not feed your bearded dragons avocados. They are toxic, but their toxicity levels are unknown so it's best to avoid them. Your Bearded Dragon's diet should replicate what she would eat in the wild. It should include insects, vegetables, fruit and greens. Insects: Crickets Mealworms Kingworms Waxworms Earthworms Cockroaches Locusts Fruits: Figs Kiwi Melon Apples Mango Papaya Dates Peaches Apricots Plums Strawberries Vegetable list: Broccoli Ocra Peas Green beans Butternut squash Sweet potato Bell pepper Greens: Kale Collards Parsley Clover Dandelion greens Turnip greens Mustard greens Endive Here are some items they can eat occasionally: sprouts, tomatoes, blueberries, pears, grated carrots, banana, grapes and cucumber. You will need to prepare some of fruit and veggies by taking the peel off and/or cutting it down into bite-sized pieces. This is a good article that has more information that may help you: http://www.thebeardeddragon.org/bearded-dragon-nutrition-data.php#fruit Hope this helps. Best wishes.

Some of it depends on the age of the beardie. If young, make sure any live food is small enough for it. Meal works, crickets or even pinkie mice Here's a good recipe for a reptile salad. Basic Salad Recipe 1/2 cup shredded raw green beans 1/2 cup shredded raw orange-fleshed squash (such as acorn, banana, kabocha, spaghetti, and pumpkin) - you can occasionally alternate with carrots 1 medium or 2 small raw shredded parsnips (in areas where these are seasonally hard to find, you can substitute with asparagus or cooked or canned lima, navy or kidney beans that have been well rinsed and minced or mashed. If you use beans, add extra calcium to offset their high phosphorus) * 1/4 cup mashed/minced fruit (strawberries, raspberries, mangos, papaya, figs, cantaloupe, cactus pear) Alfalfa ** Multivitamin and calcium supplements * If parsnips are a seasonal vegetable where you live, you can use 1/2 cup shredded asparagus, trading off with 1/2 cup drained, rinsed, and chopped canned cooked lima beans, plus additional calcium to make up for the lousy calcium:phosphorus ratio in beans. Cooked beans are acceptable for short term use only due to their phosphorous content and other chemicals that can impede the uptake of minerals and trace elements. Asparagus is comparable in protein to parsnip, but does contain oxalates, so should not be a long-term staple. ** The quantity of alfalfa you use will depend upon the alfalfa product you are using. You want to add about 15 grams of protein. That is about 1/2 cup of alfalfa rabbit pellets, or about 1/4 cup or less of alfalfa leaf tea or a tablespoon or so of alfalfa powder. The older the healthy iguana is, the less protein they need, so you may end up using only a couple of teaspoons for an adult iguana. Thoroughly mix all the Basic Salad Recipe ingredients together. Makes about 3.5-4 cups. Add in a multivitamin supplement (any multivitamin supplement for birds or reptiles is fine, but the best, actually, is powder from a crushed Centrum tablet) and a calcium supplement. You do not need to get a calcium supplement that has phosphorous or D3 in it, as the iguana is already getting considerably phosphorous from the plants and multivitamin, and their D3 is best manufactured in their bodies by regular exposure to direct sunlight or special UVB-producing fluorescents. And more good info on husbandry and feeding isnhere. If temperature is not correct they also may not eat. http://www.anapsid.org/bearded.html

This could possibly lead to toxicity causing gastrointestinal signs (vomiting/diarrhoea), depending on the amount ingested the severity of the signs can be different. I would recommend an immediate veterinary check up and close monitoring for the next 24 hours (especially appetite and possibly diarrhoea or constipation).

Choose the largest cage your space and budget will allow. At minimum, a 55 gallon enclosure should be considered. Acceptable substrates include slate, reptile carpet, decomposed granite or large gravel. Yes, setting up a bio-active environment for beardies is possible. It will take a bit of research and effort to get it right.

Thanks for your question about Smaug, and thanks for the photo as well! I think that you have a good start to your set up, and that we can tweak a few items. First, your lighting situation appears adequate - I see a UVB light (please change this bulb every 4-6 months), a basking light, and a ceramic heat bulb. I would ensure that your temperatures are appropriate for this species, and that you are monitoring them using digital thermometers (I think that you see both a digital and analog thermometers currently) at the level of Smaug. Analog thermometers are inaccurate, so I don't recommend using them (also, they are high up on the sides of the enclosure, so they wouldn't be giving an accurate temperature read for Smaug). For the cage furniture that you have, I like that you have places for Smaug to climb and hide. However, I would recommend having a hide on both the warm side of the enclosure and the cool side so that Smaug has choices. Same for the climbing structures. I may have missed a food and water dish in the enclosure - I would recommend that both of these be shallow, and be large enough for Smaug's entire body to fit within them. I cannot tell what type of shavings that you have on the bottom of the enclosure, but the only wood shavings that I recommend are aspen shavings. If they are pine, these can be irritating to the respiratory system. I hope that gives you a place to start, and thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach!