Horned Mountain Dragons ~ Not 1 failure...but 3.

MY FIRST ~ An impulse buy at a pet store.  I had never seen one, and what attracted me to it was it's physical appearance.  It looked like a little brown walking stick!!!  How incredably ignorant I had been.  Which I discovered within hours of bringing him home.  If I had known then, what I know after 8 years of living with lizards, I might have been able to do something.  He died within 36 hours of bringing him home.

My second and third came together, purchased through a reptile expo, and captive bred.  I lost the first within 24 hours.  Setting up a vivarium for them I got frustrated with a small pump and the only spare I had.  I gave up.  I left the water in a smaller 3 gallon tank but left nothing inside of it to enable them to climb out and the one drowned that first night.  Let that one be a lesson to you and think before you leave something half done.

My third ~ Little Joe.  Joe was here for 2.5 years....but he never thrived here.  I adjusted his living conditions a number of times, attempting to get it right for him.  Through that entire time, Joe was handfed.  He was given electrolites weekly it seemed.  He was always anorexic and I know it was stress related.  He would not have survived 2 years if it were internal parasites.  I never found a place in the house that he felt comfortable and every time I attempted to he would spiral downward.  He didn't cope well with even the smallest of changes in his environment.    It was a rock and a hard place and I never found the solution.

He was gentle.  He was shy.  He was inactive and I almost never saw him move from his selected hiding spot.  He was adorable too.  I might have had a better chance if I had found FroggyB's. 

 MOUNTAIN HORNED DRAGON: 

 Click here: Mountain Horned Dragon (Acanthosaura species)

Click here: Herptiles.net - Mountain Horned Dragon Caresheet

http://www.faunaimportuk.com/caresheets/csmountainhorned.htm 

Joey, did not enjoy a cohabitation setting....this would have caused such stress for him I would have lost him within a few days.