Bearded Dragon Care Checklist: UVB, Heat, Humidity and Calcium

Central bearded dragon resting on a rock
Central bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps). Photo by Cliff from Arlington, Virginia, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Used without modification.

Updated September 22, 2026. Every figure on this page was read that day from the sources listed at the bottom. Each one is given with its unit, and with the species it was actually published for.

A care checklist is worth exactly what its numbers are worth. "Provide UVB" is not a checklist item, because there is no way to fail it and know you failed it. "10 percent UVB tube, sited so the dragon's back sits about a foot beneath it, with the replacement date written on the tube in marker" is a checklist item. The four familiar headings below have been turned into measurements: what to read, what the reading is standing guard over, and how often it has to be read again. Almost every beginner problem in the first two months is one of these numbers drifting quietly while the tank still looks fine.

What each reading is actually guarding

ReadingPublished figureSourceThe silent failure it catches
Air band across the tank (preferred optimal temperature zone)25-32 °C (77-90 °F) for Pogona vitticepsMerck Veterinary ManualA tank that is uniformly warm-ish. The animal cannot choose a temperature, so digestion and appetite slide.
Basking surfaceAbout 5 °C (9 °F) above the band; night temperatures fall by about 5 °CMerck Veterinary ManualUndigested food. The keeper changes feeders instead of changing the lamp.
Relative humidity20-30 percentMerck Veterinary ManualRetained shed on toes and tail tip, or respiratory trouble at the wet end.
UVB geometry and age290-300 nm; fluorescent under 30 cm (12 in) from the animal, replaced every 9-12 months; mercury vapour effective to 1 m or more, replaced every 12 monthsMerck Veterinary ManualA lamp that still lights but no longer does anything. Invisible for months.
Photoperiod12 hours per day for general maintenanceMerck Veterinary ManualErratic appetite and activity blamed on temperament.
Calcium to phosphorus in the dietAt least 1:1, with 2:1 preferredMerck Veterinary ManualBone disease that is well advanced before posture changes.

One thermometer is not a measurement

The 77-90 °F figure is a band stretched across the enclosure, not a setting. The whole point is that the two ends differ, so the dragon can walk between them. A single dial stuck halfway up a side wall reports neither end, and it reports air rather than the surface the animal is lying on. Two readings are the minimum: cool-end air, and the basking surface itself taken with an infrared reading pointed at the rock or slate rather than at the air above it.

Here is the failure in its usual form. A first tank is set up with one bulb over the middle, and a probe on the far wall reads 88 °F, which is inside the published band, so the owner marks heat as done. There is no surface anywhere reaching the basking figure of roughly 9 °F above the top of the band, and there is no cool end either, because 88 °F is the whole tank. Six weeks later the dragon is eating half of what it did, is passing food slowly, and spends the day flat against the glass. The checklist said heat was fine. It was fine as an average and wrong as a gradient. Fixing it costs nothing but a repositioned lamp and a second reading. Diagnosing it after two months of feeder experiments costs a lot more.

Night is the other half. Merck gives a drop of about 5 °C after dark, which is a permission rather than a chore: in most heated homes the room does this by itself once the lamps go off, and adding a coloured night bulb to keep the tank warm undoes it.

Twenty inches on the box, twelve inches in the manual

This is the number that most often sends beginners in circles, because two reputable sources give different distances and both of them are right about something. Zoo Med's specification page for the T8 ReptiSun 10.0 states 10 percent UVB and 30 percent UVA output, and says the lamp "emits UVB a full 20 in/51 cm from the surface of the lamp". The Merck Veterinary Manual says that suitable fluorescent lights "must be placed relatively close to the reptile (< 30 cm [12 inches])" and replaced every 9-12 months.

They are not measuring the same thing. The manufacturer is reporting how far usable output travels from its own lamp under its own test geometry. The veterinary reference is writing one conservative rule that has to survive every fixture, every reflector, every mesh lid and every species that walks into a clinic. Neither figure has been measured through your screen top, which sits in the path and is the variable nobody publishes.

Rather than pick a winner, decide which direction is cheaper to be wrong in. Too far is the common failure, it produces no visible symptom for months, and by the time it shows up as soft jaw or tremor it has already done structural damage. Too close is mainly a concern with high-output and compact lamps rather than a linear T8, and it announces itself quickly through squinting and basking avoidance. So for a first linear 10 percent tube over a screen lid, treat the twelve-inch end as the target and the twenty-inch figure as an outer ceiling, and watch the animal for a week. Note also that Zoo Med markets this particular lamp as suitable above screen covers, which is a hint about where the manufacturer expects the loss to happen.

The replacement interval is not a judgement call at all, and it is the single most common lapse on an otherwise good checklist. The tube keeps producing visible light long after UVB output has fallen away, so the tank looks identical on month fourteen. Write the install date on the tube itself with a marker and put the 9-12 month replacement into a phone calendar. If you use a mercury vapour lamp instead, the clock is 12 months and the working distance stretches to a metre or more, but heat and UVB now come from one point, so a single failure takes both away at once. A tube plus a separate heat source is more parts and a shorter clock; a mercury vapour lamp is one part and a longer reach with a worse failure mode. Pick the failure you would rather have.

Tip: The basking figure is a surface temperature, so an air probe cannot report it. A handheld infrared thermometer aimed at the basking rock takes about two seconds and settles the question that most first-tank threads are actually about. (These are Amazon Associate links - we may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.)

Calcium, worked out on one week of food

Dusting is the part of the checklist everyone performs and few people size. The Merck manual's reptile nutrition chapter gives the numbers needed to do the arithmetic: reptiles should be fed 1-4 percent of body weight daily on a dry-matter basis; the calcium to phosphorus ratio of most food items is inadequate and should be at least 1:1 with 2:1 preferred; insects should be given a mineral supplement containing at least 8-10 percent calcium in their feed for 72 hours before they are fed out; no more than 50 percent of the diet should be fresh greens, fruits and vegetables, and fruit should be no more than 5 percent. The herbivore reference column it prints alongside runs 1.4-2.0 percent calcium, 0.8-1.0 percent phosphorus, 18-22 percent crude protein, 20-35 percent crude fibre and 500-1,000 IU/kg of vitamin D3.

Applied to one adult dragon of 380 g, taking the middle of the intake range:

QuantityPublished ruleWhat it means for a 380 g adult
Daily dry matter1-4 percent of body weight3.8 g at the low end, 15.2 g at the high end
Weekly dry matter at 2.5 percentmidpoint of the range9.5 g per day, so about 66.5 g per week
Fruit ceilingno more than 5 percent of the dietabout 3.3 g of dry matter per week, total
Fresh greens, fruit and vegetablesno more than 50 percent of the dietabout 33 g of dry matter per week
Gut-loading window72 hours on a feed with 8-10 percent calciuminsects move onto the calcium feed on Friday for a Monday feeding, not the same morning

The fruit line is the one that surprises people. Dry matter is not plate weight, but even so, a daily handful of berries is not a treat at the margin of the diet; on this arithmetic it is most of the weekly allowance by itself. The 72-hour line is the other. Dusting an insect that was shipped in a tub of bran three hours ago is mostly a coating on a poor carrier, and it is why two keepers with identical supplement tubs can get different outcomes.

Be honest about what that percentage column is: Merck prints those crude protein and fibre bands for herbivorous reptiles, and an adult Pogona vitticeps is an omnivore that shifts toward plants with age rather than a true herbivore. Treat the bands as a direction of travel for an adult, not a prescription, and keep the ratio and the gut-loading rules, which are not species-specific, at full strength. If you are going to miss, miss toward more calcium relative to phosphorus and fewer insects in an adult, because the reverse error is the one that produces bone disease.

The part of the checklist that is about the people in the room

The CDC's guidance for reptile and amphibian keepers names children under 5, adults over 65 and people with weakened immune systems as more likely to get sick, and credits the federal rule on small turtles with preventing an estimated 100,000 Salmonella infections among children every year. That number is not about turtles specifically so much as about how much of this risk is handling routine. The concrete rules are short: never clean the enclosure or its equipment in a food preparation area, use a laundry sink, a bathtub or outdoors instead; pour tank water down the toilet rather than a sink; keep the animal and its gear out of the kitchen and anywhere food is prepared, stored, served or eaten; and wash hands with soap and running water after feeding, after handling waste or equipment, after cleaning, and before eating. Our longer piece on bearded dragons and Salmonella goes through the outbreak data behind this.

The checklist, with the intervals attached

  • Every day: basking surface reading; cool-end air reading; humidity; fresh water; waste removed; hands washed after.
  • Every week: weigh the animal and write the number down; full surface clean; look at the date written on the UVB tube; wipe dust off the screen lid, which sits between the lamp and the animal.
  • Every 9-12 months: replace the fluorescent UVB tube whether or not it still lights. Mercury vapour lamps go on a 12-month clock.
  • On arrival, and for any new reptile joining the household: quarantine for 3-6 months, housed and handled separately.

Where the first money should go

If the budget this month covers one thing, it is measurement rather than decoration. A surface-reading thermometer and a hygrometer settle three of the six rows in the first table; a third hide settles none of them. Our view is that a new keeper should own two temperature readings and a humidity reading before owning a second decorative item, and should own a dated UVB tube before owning anything that is bought for how the tank looks in a photograph. Everything else on the shopping lists that circulate - backgrounds, bioactive builds, live plants - is real but can wait sixty days without costing the animal anything. The lamp cannot.

The honest cost of doing it this way is that the tank looks plain for the first two months and the shopping is boring. The cost of the other order is a bill at a specialist clinic and an animal that arrived healthy.

More from this site

A useful adjacent purchase when you are auditing a setup is a plain digital terrarium thermometer and hygrometer, and a spare reptile UVB bulb kept in the cupboard so the replacement date is never postponed for a shipping delay.

Where these figures came from, read on September 22, 2026

No retailer price or star rating is quoted anywhere on this page. This article is general husbandry information and is not veterinary advice for an individual animal; if a dragon is losing weight, shaking, or not passing food, book a reptile-experienced veterinarian rather than adjusting the checklist again.

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