gender

Question
How do you tell if the green water dragon is male or female? The pet store said it is still very young, and it is about 12 to 18 inches long right now from nose to tail tip, but how big will it get?

Answer
Hi Angela,
Water Dragons(I am assuming you have a Chinese Water Dragon) will generally be about 3 feet total length for a male and  about 2 feet total length for a female. With both sexes, their tail is about 70% of their total length.
As to sexing them, they are one of the harder lizards to sex.  The males take on larger features..such as larger head.  Instead of trying to type out all the differences and when you should see these things, here is a great link that will take you through it all starting at a young age on them.  http://www.triciaswaterdragon.com/sex.htm  This way, you can bookmark the link are refer to it often.  There is also links to pictures there so you can compare yours to those in the pictures which can help out a lot.
That site (main WD care link: http://www.triciaswaterdragon.com/dragoncr.htm) is also a great site for tons of WD info.  I do want to add some important recent info on proper uvb..which your dragons need to survive. Without proper uvb, they will develop Metabolic Bone Disease.  They need the uvb to be able to process and use the calcium in the foods they eat.
LIGHTING:
There are tubes and bulbs that say ''full spectrum'' but they do not produce any uvb.
Supplying uvb can be done in a few ways. By special lights
that come in fluorescent tubes or special screw in bulbs
(mercury vapor)that are designed to produce uvb and heat.
The tubes do not produce heat. UVB is needed by the reptile
to be able to absorb the calcium in the foods they eat.
With out the uvb, they will develop metabolic bone disease.
With the tubes, they must say that they produce BOTH uvb and
uva. The uvb needs to be 5% or higher. Repti Sun 10.0 and the Repti Glo 8.0's are a great source for uvb. The old "favorites" are the repti sun 5.0 or the Iguana light..which are the same tube, just different package.
These need to be positioned 6-8 inches over the reptile for the 5% and 8% and 8-10 inches for the 10% so that they get the uvb that is needed. The tubes need to be replaced every 6-9
months as that they stop producing UVB long before they stop producing light.
******There has been new studies that have proven that compact uvb lights, both the spiral/coil type and the ones that look like long "U's" laying on their side and a few other brands are causing what basically amounts to snow blindness in reptiles.  To read more on this, you can go to
http://www.uvguide.co.uk/index.htm ********
On the mercury vapor , they also produce heat. They also
produce the uvb and uva. The best on the market now are the
Mega Rays.(http://www.megaray.com) The distance from these are greater
than the uvb tubes and the directions must be followed that
are listed for the light. When using the mercury vapor
lights, you don't need to have one light for uvb and one for
heat. The Mercury vapor lights provide both. Small tanks generally are not suitable for the mercury vapor lights due to distance.