I knew Schizo was small but this was unexpected.

[DibDip]

Okay, allow me to give you a little background information here... Schizo is my aussie I got at the Portland Reptile Expo in 2003, currently he's about a year and a half old. Schizo is very hardy, a good swimmer, eats a lot (he tends to get bloated often), eats a variety of food (crickets, mealworms, giant mealworns, waxworms, the caccoon stages of mealworms and giant mealworms, smooshed up mango, smooshed up strawberries, on rare occasion tiny feeder guppies, and once banana but after reading the warning against it here I'm stopping that...), he's VERY energetic and fast, seems quite happy, and loves to dig all kind of tunnels underneath his stuff and to make holes in random places.

Schizo used to only be in a 20 gallon aquarium sadly but is currently in a 65 galloen reptarium with... How to describe it... Sorry, sometimes I'm not great at wording things... Anyway, wood is all around the bottom to hold in his sand and such. Now I'll get to the point, Schizo is only 10.5 inches (26.67 cm) long, and only 3.25 (8.255 cm) of that is his body and head. I e-mailed the guy who runs Agama International about this because it didn't seem right to me considering how large the greens I've seen are at this age, and according to him my Schizo is only the size of ones that are 2 or 3 months old over there.

I don't suppose any of you guys know what could be wrong. >_> (Sadly I can't supply pictures, the only decent digital camera this family has ever had was broken when my brother took it to some concert...)

[Hydra]

Seems like you're feeding him a nice variety of food. I've read that stress can lead to stunting of growth, as well as enclosures that are too large (doesn't seem to be a problem here).
10.5 inches isn't long for a 1.5 year old at all - another member at repticzone.com says his is 2.5 feet long at that age but it doesn't look like it in the picture and seems hard to believe. Either way, I'd say the average for that age is maybe 18 - 20". My little dragon Claw is 1 month old and is around 6.5 inches long and growing well - and is therefore only 4 inches smaller than Schizo.

I don't think it would be entirely accurate compared Chinese Water Dragon sizes to Easterns because the former are smaller. (the largest variety of the Eastern was around 1.2m long - 4'.)
One possible reason of the slow growth may be that you're not feeding him calcium and vitamins? Are you?

Slow growth is not an easy condition to rectify - you can only hope that it gets better by providing optimum living conditions and feeding him the best you can and keeping him healthy.
Do you know how long he was when you bought him?
Perhaps others have better ideas than I do. Good luck with it, though.

[DibDip]

When I first bought him he was only about 5 or 6 inches long (pretty sure it was 6), and yeah I feed him gut loaded insects that are coated in calcium powder about a third or half the time, at one point I did it daily though. I guess I can try dusting them daily again.

[dragosmom]

Parasites can keep them from thriving. My smallest dragon appears to have that problem and is under going treatment. have you had your's to the vet or had a fecal check done? use VERY fresh dragon poo-put it in the fridge if you can't get it there immediately. Treatment is pretty easy. I'm hoping it's not too late for my little lady to recover some of her growth. (19 inches, 130 grams 22 months)

[DibDip]

Well the nearest vet that deals with reptiles seems to mainly know green water dragons, turtles, snakes, and iguanas, but yeah after reading your post on your's having parasites I've been trying to find their number again, people around here aren't very great at keeping the phone book in one place. >_O And that vet is about a 40 minute or so drive away in the summer so I want to call and see if they'd be able to do a check up on an aussie too before actually going over there.

Hopefully I won't have to go to a Portland vet or something because it takes hours to get there on the interstate. @_@ Last time I was there was when I got him/her.

[dragosmom]

Any herp vet shuld be qualified to do the fecal. Drago had "Strongyloide" worms, but no protozoans or amoebas (which is what I expected). She still isn't eating worth a darn, but I gave them all the second round of worm medicine yesterday. Worming them won't hurt them, but you can only get one of the medications (Panacur) without prescription. Fortunately that was what I needed to use. the medication for flagyllates is flagyl and it is precription medication.

[DibDip]

Well taht took A LOT longer than I wanted but Schizo's finally got an appointment at the vet for tomorrow... They're going to check him out normally and check for parasites assuming I can get ahold of some of his dook, now only if he'd go to the bathroom somewhere other than his water dish. >_O It keeps breaking apart when I try to get it out... (Thank god for plastic gloves...)

[dragosmom]

I use a tiny fish net to clean debris from my pool and I collected the poo specimens with that. I was only able to get 2 out of the 3 specimens, but as my vet said "we'll treat the whole herd". LOL Good luck.

[spike]

Good luck with the vet tomorrow, i hope everything is ok with schizo.
My dragons 'dook' everywhere

[DibDip]

spike said:

Good luck with the vet tomorrow, i hope everything is ok with schizo.
My dragons 'dook' everywhere

Lucky. >_O Now that I want Schizo and the basilisk to go to the bathroom they're keeping their cages spotless! All I've gotten so far is a little bit of really lightly colored stuff from Schizo, I think he/she may have been eating too much mango lately so I'll have to cut back on that...

[DibDip]

Well, just got back from the vet and according to her they're both parasite free, well colored, and quite plump. She didn't really know about how big aussies are supposed to be at certain ages but says Schizo seems very healthy anyway, and the same goes for the basilisk with the exception of the fact he's prone to damaging himself.

Well everybody, thanks for listening/replying to this but I think I'm going to just continue caring for Schizo as if nothing was different. Not like his size is effecting him in any bad way afterall.

[DibDip]

Huzzah! I doubt many (If any.) people still remember this thread, but it turns out our older digital camera had one of those card thingies and my mother checked it on my grandparents' computer, it still works and had a few pictures of Schizo on it, she got them along with some pictures of my sister at a batons (Butons? Buttons? Not sure how to spell it.) thing turned into normal photos at Wal Mart somehow and now I plan on getting a friend with a scanner to scan one of Schizo eating some baby food from his dish. (As a side note, he got his leg and face quite messy so afterward I had to clean him up so nothing would get spread in the tank and go bad. >_>)

I suppose that's not really big news, but hey it's the first time I've had pictures of him where he wasn;t just a brown-tan blur. And I'll end up posting the picture here if I can get it scanned. Now as actual news, at this point I've noticed two buldges at the cloaka like with most of the male lizards I've had so am pretty sure he's a he, but he still has no vibrant coloration.

[Pooka]

This is great news, I look forward to seeing the pics

[spike]

sounds like schizo is doing good

Can't wait to see the pics

[philliphall]

Just a note about the size of Aussies. I have very little experience of Aussies (one seven month old) but he is 20" long and does not eat half as well as yours by the sound of it. As regards the disputed lengh of the Aussie in the photo a 2.5' Aussie looks a lot smaller thatn a 2.5' Chinese as they are still slender and all tail. I only say so you can make a comparison and decide if anything is up. He sounds happy though.