Hi all. I recently brought home a Chinese water dragon, and set him up in a 55 gal tank. I am confident that his temp. and humidity is well regulated , but my question is, what to feed him? At the moment his diet is only crickets laced with calcium powder, but I want to find out what other items I can feed the little guy. He is fairly young and I want to give him the best start possible. Can I feed him worms yet? Or how about reptile food that comes in plastic containers in pet stores? What about fruits and veggies? I hope you can help. Thanks

Here's a link to our caresheet....that should help you a bit

Chinese Water Dragon Caresheet (Physignathus cocincinus) - Reptile Information - Caresheets Database

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Ken
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem." -- Ronald Reagan

yup, read the caresheet. it has a whole section on diet and husbandry. Get back to us with some specific questions, and tell us more about his set up if you might. Like your actual temps, humidity, water, etc...

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My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

Well at the moment I have an 18" 5.0 UV B tube lamp on one half and a dome light on the other half. I use a 150 watt bulb for heat during the day and a 75 watt infrared bulb for the nighttime. Temps in the enclosure range from 80 to about 90 degrees during the day and from 75 to 85 at night. I have the lights on at 12 hour shifts each from 7 to 7 day/night. The humidity is always around 80%. I have a mulch-like product that I bought at the pet store, drenched it with hot water and laid it down in the tank, I was told that this would help with humidity. Also I have a large waterbowl, which I clean everyday, and I have large container on one side of the tank where my dragon can take a swim. I am planning on turning this into his waterfall "lagoon" .
I also placed a large decorative branch for Mojo to climb, I placed it vertically above his curved tree bark. I also have a long artificial vine and other plastic foliage around the entire tank. Finally, a long thin moldable branch goes across the whole tank. This is by far his favorite branch and is about 3 to 5 inches away from the lights so he definitely has choices when it comes to taking in some rays! So this is Mojo's home, in a nutshell. If anyone has any opinions or suggestions, please share them.

I think you are on the right track. You are going to have to upgrade your light though. a 5.0 is not enough UVB. You will need a 10.0 OR a mercury vapor bulb. I would suggest one from Welcome To ReptileUV - Mega-Ray® UVB lamps for reptile lighting worldwide since they produce both UVB and heat. Yes these bulbs are more expensive than a tube, but you only have to replace it once a year instead of once every 6 months. Plus you don't need a separate heat lamp.

And be sure your screen top has holes no smaller than 1/4 inch openings. Any smaller and it seriously inhibits the amount of UVB that gets through.

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My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

Thanks for the advice! I really appreciate it! What I did was use one of those aquarium tops with the glass between the lamp and the animal and removed the glass so the UV B light gets straight to Mr. Mojo without filtering. On the other half I have a screen where the heat lamp sits on and is covered on the remaining area, I am thinking of using foil to cover this area. I have a plexiglass now but I need to cut it to the right size. Any suggestions?