Chinese water dragon (phsignathus concincinus)

Question
Hello

Whats the difference between uva and uvb?

I am getting my fist gree water dragon within a few weeks and will be getting more a month after I get the first one my question is do they need to be kept seperete when I first get them? even if they look healthy? What would be better to have males/females/males and females? How do you tell male from female in young ones?

Answer
Hi,
I'm sorry, I forgot part of your question. Yes, it is a very good idea to seperate new animals for about a month even if they look perfectly healthy. The quarantine cage doesn't need to be very elaborate and big, it just needs to fulfill the basic requirements in humidity, temperature and hiding places. It's a good idea to make the setup easy to clean in case of parasites. Take the new animal to a vet specialized in reptiles, let him examine it and have a excrement sample be analysed for parasites. If everything is okay, you should still quarantine the animal for the rest of the time because possible illnesses might show themselves in that time. After a month, you can be fairly sure that the animal is really as healthy as it looks and you can introduce your pair.
I strongly recommend getting captivity bred animals since they are healthier in general, used to humans, not stressed out by weeks of transport (and this means being shoved into a box with a hundred other dragons and not being fed or watered for any amount of time) and the wild population won't be affected by your hobby.
Good luck with your dragon, I hope everything goes well
Jennifer