Plumping Up

The past few days or so we have been having problems with Norbert. When I came home after my couple days out of town for classes, Husband pointed out that Norbert looked skinny. I agreed, he had a feeding frenzy the weekend prior when my parents came down to visit, but the following Thursday when I came back he was very thin. We tried and tried to get him to eat, we gave him baths, I researched why he may not be eating and found it was likely a heating/lighting issue. He was still pooping regularly, but they were watery. Based on my research, watery poop can be do to stress, bad food, over-hydrated, or parasites. I kept a close eye on him, but he wasn't showing any signs of parasites besides the watery poop and the lack of appetite because he was still very active, running around, basking, etc, so I figured it was the temperature.

We decided to put slate tile down in his terrarium since the sand is not recommended but it can take weeks for the silicone curing fumes to dissipate completely and I didn't want Norbert in his temporary tupperware for a couple weeks. This was just all adding to his stress. Good thing with deciding to tile the terrarium though is we got rid of all the crickets that had still been in there hiding.  Since Husband wants to breed the feeder roaches we feed Norbert (Dubia roaches) the adults he had were housed in a 10 gallon terrarium. He wanted to transfer them to a 30 gallon plastic storage container like roach breeders used anyway (like the GIANT plastic containers to put Halloween or Christmas decorations) so we ran to our Dollar General and picked up two tubs. We cleaned out the terrarium (which Husband had a stick-on heating pad underneath) and I made a better temporary home for Norbert with all his things while his 20 gallon dried/cured. We just put newspaper around it (I used the crossword and sudoku puzzles for him to read while he is basking) and newspaper and paper towels on the bottom. The heating pad will help Norbert stay warm, plus since it's a smaller tank the two lamps should heat it up better. Husband gave him 4 small roaches last night and a couple baby crickets. We didn't see him eat anything though and he just went in his cave to go to bed.

This morning when I got up I noticed there weren't any crickets in sight (but they could have been hiding in the cave or under the paper towels) but even better was there were no more roaches in his food dish (they can't escape from it). Norbert still looked very skinny though but was active and basking all day.

When Husband came home from work (since I don't want to touch the bugs, ick) I had him put 5 Dubia roaches in the dish and we placed it in Norbert's terrarium. Norbert attacked the dish and ate all 5 in less than 30 seconds! Hallelujah!! I couldn't tell you how happy that made me. We put 6 more roaches in the dish and walked away to let him eat in peace while we went to get pizza. When we came home about 15 minutes later, there were only 4 roaches left, so Norbert ate a total of 7 roaches tonight. That's the most we have ever see him eat in one sitting. I'm a happy dragon mommy haha. We removed the uneaten roaches and put them back, now Norbert is just basking up on his stick, digesting his dinner.

I took a picture of Norbert basking this morning and one of him just a few minutes ago after he ate. I'm so happy his belly looks full now

Norbert before and after he finally ate, he was unhealthy and skinny, glad to see his belly bigger!