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dragonfry · **Site Admin** WRiT=7 ToaF= 16 SS=1

I saw some Eastern water dragons in a local petshop today, I am interested in keeping some but would like to learn a bit about them first.

I would like some information on what sort of tank setup and feeding requirements are needed.
Do I need a permit in South australia to keep them?

dragon · **Site Admin** WRiT=7 ToaF= 21

Care Sheet:
Eastern Water Dragon, Physignathus lesueurii lesueurii

I could simply refer you to our Links Section where there are many excellent Water Dragon sites,
http://feathersandfins.pro-forums.com/ftopic132.php
but you may as well get my personal slant on things.
Quote: Eastern Water Dragons are a pet for anyone who wants something different and large!! Males are said to reach 1 metre in length, and females up to 80cm in length. They can live in captivity for approx. 25 years.

Housing Hatchling Water Dragons can be done easily in an empty glass fish tank. We have raised two hatchlings in a tank 100 x 40 x 40cm. If I was to raise up to four hatchlings then I would recommend using a tank 120 x 45 x 45cm. A large water tray, bark on the floor, a flat rock under a heat lamp, and a UVB Reptile light above was pretty much the tank setup.
http://www.hothouseturtles.co.nz/waterdragons.htm

I thought I'd start with that before getting on to HOUSING, because, whatever you keep your Water Dragon baby in, a few years from now you will need to build a good sized outdoor enclosure, or house train it.

So, Step 1 - When you see that cute little, easy to look after, easy to turn into a household pet, dragon in the Pet Store, think of it as a cute, loveable baby Great Dane puppy.
It will grow.

HOUSING.
I keep my three dragons in a 120cm x 60cm x 45cm aquarium.
I am almost fanatical about having natural surroundings. Plastic plants make my skin crawl. A feed bowl needs to look like a rock, not a stainless steel monstrosity.
My tanks therefore have glass inserts to form ponds at the back whose sides can be disguised with stones and plants and bits of wood and bark.

Mistake.
It looks natural, at least the rocks I use now do. Earth, bark, plants all get bulldozed around the tank. These things can dig!
For my Angleheaded Dragons and Eastern Water Skinks this set up is ideal. It looks great. It provides humidity. It looks natural for lizards that only SIT in the water. With the Water Dragons it also smells natural!
Go with a bowl.
Water Dragons, like most lizards, are expert escape artists. My fish tanks have a glass reinforcing strip around the inside top, a few centimeters below the top edge of the glass. I made a wooden frame to sit on these strips to fit inside the tank top. If yours doesn't, you can either fashion your wooden top frame to wedge onto the glass or glue pieces of glass into the top corners of the tank to form a support.
Do not make the mistake of having a lid simply sit on top of the tank. Sooner or later it will be bumped or leant on or otherwise left slightly askew and your dragons will be roaming the house and beyond. They are FAST.

The top is divided into three sections. The front two have 8mm glass lids, the rear one is covered in the small square, mouseproof wire. I use this wire because it is small enough to keep most reptiles in - although the little house skinks seem to come and go as they please through it, but is large enough to allow quite good sized moths to enter providing food for most of the year for small dragons and skinks.
The rear part has to be built of wire because of the LIGHTING requirements.

Quote:Ultra Violet Light. Reptiles, like us, need to have exposure to U.V. light to enable us to process vitamin D in their bodies. Without a good source of U.V. your animal will suffer from problems with it’s skeleton and joints. Deformities are not uncommon in animals that are housed with no U.V. and this can also result in paralysis and death. A good flouro tube like a Repti-glo, Repti-star or Repti-sun is essential if your animal does not get regular exposure to natural sunlight. This exposure needs to be direct, not through glass. Glass cuts down the penetration of U.V. light dramatically.
http://www.reefandriver.com.au/water%20dragons.htm

UV light rays do not travel through glass, so the top beneath the light source needs to be wire, or you need to put your light source inside the aquarium below the glass top. Difficult and ugly.

I use two fluorescent lights. One normal to offset the purple colour of the second, one NECT10 Black Light. These are about $20 from a Hardware Store, for a 4' globe, compared to $60 for a specialist reptile light.

You must read:
http://www.uvguide.co.uk/uvinviv.htm

Look at the tests done:
http://www.uvguide.co.uk/fluorescenttuberesults.htm
(I can't reproduce the graphs etc here because of copyright.)

Most tubes are reasonably good when new provided the lizard sits about 2" below the light. After a few weeks most tubes need the lizard to be just about touching the globe. That's an exaggeration - but not much of one.
The Black light tubes are effective at putting out UVB light for 12 months or so over a distance of about 12".
(The times refer to continuous use, so, assuming they are on a timer for about 6 hours a day, you can expect them to remain effective four times as long as indicated above.)

If you care to put your UVB light on a seperate timer to your other lighting so that it is only on for an hour or so a day, you can greatly extend its life.
We don't know how much UVB light a reptile needs.
A Bearded dragon lies out in the blistering hot Summer sun for hours. A gecko comes out briefly at dusk to absorb heavily shaded rays. Does one need more than the other to create Vitamin D3, or do both only require a minimal amount with the dragon's skin having evolved a protection against excessive exposure?

People rear perfectly healthy reptiles without artificial UV light simply by taking them outside and sitting under a shady tree with them for a while every so often.

Many people feed Vitamin D3 enriched calcium supplements and provide no UVB lighting.

I don't know.
I do what works for me, and the same applies to HEATING.

It isn't possible to write a Care Sheet without quoting Melissa Kaplan, so:
Temperature
Day time: 84-88 F with drop to 75-80 F at night. Must have a basking area going up to 90 F during day at one side of tank. Use thermometers! No hot rocks - use overhead basking lights and an under-tank heat pad or one under the indoor/outdoor carpeting substrate.
http://www.reptilekeeper.co.uk/waterdragoncaresheets/kaplancaresheet.php

The Water Dragon is native here (and most other East Coast areas). They live in my dams. Why would they need heating?

My reptile aquariums are located next to the window where they get morning sun - useless for UVB because of the glass, but great for warming rays.
If I used a heat lamp for a few hours a day, the lizard would bask, raise its body temperature, eat etc and go to sleep when the light is turned off because it thinks it's night time.
What's wrong with that picture. Nothing if it has a warm spot to retire to.
In the wild it has dug itself a burrow perfectly insulated by the surrounding earth or a spot tucked away in a hollow warmed by rotting vegetation.
It needs to retain a lot of its warmth if its body is to digest the food it has eaten that day.
A heat lamp, followed an hour or so later by the cold of an aquarium with minimal shelter is, in my view, a recipe for a gut ache or worse.

Hot rocks are dangerous, I agree. Their temperature is not thermostatically controlled and they get hotter until they do burn the reptile.
Those who oppose their use claim that a lizard can not sense heat from underneath and can only absorb heat from above. That I don't accept, but the general risks described I do agree are real.
Still, I use something similar for heating.

I use a 25w heat chord.
They are cheap to buy and cheap to run.
Mine are on 24 hours a day and never get hot enough to be uncomfortable against your skin.
I glue the chord in a zig zag pattern between two ceramic tiles using silicon or Liquid Nails, whichever happens to be cheaper at the time.
Coat the top of the tile with Liquid Nails and cover with sand, bits of flat rock shale or pebbles for a natural look.
Set the slate up on two rocks, so it slopes up to the glass back or side. The protected area underneath gets quite comfortably warm. The top has the cold edge taken off so that lizards enjoy spreading themselves out on it.

As you're thinking about buying a hatchling, REPRODUCTION will not concern you for a couple of years. When it does, there are websites to visit such as:
http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/reptiles/dragon-reproduction.html

http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/reptiles/dragon-taxonomy.html#waterdragons

Almost forgot to feed them.
I can get away with that here because there are so many insects attracted to the light on their aquarium at night that they would probably survive.
Mostly I feed insects that I get from round the light on the deck at night - grasshoppers, cicadas, mantids, large moths. Rhinoceros beetles are fun because they have a real struggle subduing them.
Having said that, I should also mention:
Quote: Many people write to me asking if it is okay to feed their dragons insects that they have found in their yard. My answer is always "No". These insects may be contaminated by pesticides and or herbicides used in the area. Please do not risk your dragons life by feeding him wild caught crickets or other insects. :( Even if you don't use pesticides, someone in your neighbourhood might, and therefore the insects will likely be affected. There have been a number of studies done to see just how far chemical contaminants can travel, and it has been shown that almost every place in the world has been touched by chemical contaminants of some kind or another.
http://www.triciaswaterdragon.com/diet.htm#food%20items

Tricia's Water Dragons is an outstanding site and one you must read.

Check out this Feed Index:
How often to feed your dragon
Food Items to offer:
Insects
Earthworms
Whole prey
Why you should NOT feed live Rodent prey to your reptiles
Fruit and veggies
Content of some common food items
A healthy Diet Combination- Ratio's
Are you supplementing the dragons diet with calcium and vitamins?
Commercial Diets- NOT
How much to feed
A word about METABOLIC BONE DISEASE (calcium deficiency)
General Rules about Feeding
An example of what mine eat
Feeding is only one of many topics covered in this sort of detail.
http://www.triciaswaterdragon.com/diet.htm

Mine are given the vegetable mix I make for the Bluetongue skinks, but usually ignore it.
Worm sized strips of Fritz (called Devon here in Queensland, and not the really nice butcher's Fritz you get in South Australia) is a favourite food, but is probably fattening.
In Winter, when livefood is more scarce I give Roaches and Mealworms as a treat and tinned dogfood as a staple.
I've read warnings about not feeding Mealworms as the worm is supposed to be able to eat its way out of the lizard's gut. Seems like nonsense to me. They might be too fattening though.
I'm not a fan of crickets since I lost a brumating Bearded Dragon to what I believe was an attack by left over crickets in its aquarium. I can't see a cricket giving a Water Dragon a hard time though.
I've seen my Eastern Water skinks back off when given a Bird Eating spider, but young Water Dragons may not subdue a Tarantula on the first lunge, but they always win out in the end.

They are a fun lizard to feed, particularly because the food they want most is the piece the other one has in its jaws.

Do I recommend that you buy the one in your Pet Store? Actually, no.
I suggest you spend an extra $20 and buy a Southern AngleHeaded Dragon, Hypsilurus spinipes, instead and avoid the size problem and the need for heating.

http://www.kingsnake.com/australia/fdcare.htm

dragonfry · **Site Admin** WRiT=7 ToaF= 16 SS=1

Exellent write up , thanks dragon. I wonder how many people see these in petshops unaware of what they are in for as far as their eventual size.
Think I may research your other suggestion Hypsilurus spinipes instead.
Thankyou

BambooZoo

Agreed, Excellent write up. Wish I had those kinds of skills....which is why I go find them and hope I can pilfer them! Can I link to this page Dragon under a picture of my eastern water dragon. who deserves much better than I can currently give him.

Pat

dragon · **Site Admin** WRiT=7 ToaF= 21

Help yourself, Pat.
It's quite flattering for someone to link to me for a change.

BambooZoo

Smiles:: I'll be back to do it again!

Thanx

Pat