How Often Should You Change a Bearded Dragons Water?

As an owner, you will understand that water and its hygiene plays a very important part in the health and well being of your bearded dragon. 

For this reason, many owners ask how often should you change a bearded dragons water? 

This is a great question as running out of water or having dirty and contaminated water could pose a health problem that could be easily avoided.

In this post, we will take a look at exactly how often you should change your bearded dragon’s water bowl, what could happen if you don’t change the water bowl and how often you should be cleaning the bowl too.

So how often should you change your bearded dragon’s water? You should change your bearded dragon’s water once per day. You can change the water more than once per day if your bearded dragon has defecated in the bowl or it is contaminated in some other way. The aim is to provide your bearded dragon with fresh and clean water at all times.

Read On to Discover…

How Often Should I Change My Bearded Dragons Water? (More Info)

Even though bearded dragons are amazing reptiles that are great to own, they also come with a whole bunch of care requirements.

Even though care requirements such as the baking light UVB set up and diet are all vital to get right, it’s also important to not overlook seemingly less vital care requirements too.

One such care requirement is the water bowl and how often the water should be changed?

By neglecting this simple care requirement your beardie could suffer from dehydration and even become sick due to contaminated water.

We would always recommend changing your bearded dragon’s water once per day.

This will ensure your bearded dragon is always provided with fresh water that’s free from contamination.

It’s a good idea to build this into part of a routine so you do it at the same time every day and maybe along with another task such as feeding.

You can also change the water multiple times per day if you feel the water has become dirty or contaminated throughout the day.

The main goal is to always provide your dragon with fresh and clean water so if changing the water more than once per day is required then that’s fine.

Now let’s look at the reasons why it’s important to change your bearded dragon’s water every day…

Why Do I Need to Change My Bearded Dragons Water Daily?

Sometimes it can seem like a pointless task to change the water in your bearded dragon’s bowl each and every day even if they have plenty left in the bowl.

When you dig a little deeper though, you can see that it’s actually really important to the health of your beardie to keep the water fresh and free from potential contamination.

Let’s now take a look at the 3 main reasons why it’s important to change your bearded dragon’s water daily…

1. Urinating In The Water

It’s common for bearded dragons to lay in their water and this can happen for a few reasons.

In fact, we have written a great article that explains the 4 little known reasons why bearded dragons lay in their water bowl here…

When beardies do this, the water can stimulate their sensation to pee and therefore they will often end up peeing in the water bowl.

This means that any drink they have of the water after this time will be contaminated with their urine.

This obviously isn’t good for the health of your bearded dragon and is something you want to avoid.

2. Pooping In The Water

It’s also common for bearded dragons to get faecal matter in their water bowl.

This can happen in the same way as we mentioned above, where your beardie may lay in their bowl and poop directly in the water.

They also might poop in the tank then stand in the poop and walk it in the water bowl indirectly.

Either way, once the water is contaminated with their faecal matter it needs to be removed, cleaned and fresh water provided.

3. Substrate In The Water

Something that’s often overlooked is the fact that the substrate you use can actually end up in the water bowl and contaminate the water.

If you are using any loose particle substrates then this is especially a problem.

Sand is notably the substrate that has the most potential end up in your beardies water.

This, in turn, can cause problems with illness and even impaction is ingested.

We never recommend using loose particle substrates for a number of reasons.

You can see the substrates we highly recommend by heading over to our easy to follow substrate guide here…

If you are using any loose particle substrate it’s another reason why we recommend that you change your bearded dragon’s water every day.

Do I Need to Clean The Bowl Every Time I Change The Water?

Another question that often comes up is…”do I need to clean my bearded dragon’s bowl every time I change the water?”

We would always recommend disinfecting and cleaning the bowl daily when you change the water.

The fact that your beardie could have defecated or urinated in the bowl would make it a good idea to disinfect the bowl daily rather than just adding fresh water.

At least this way you can be sure that your dragon is drinking from a bowl that’s free from contamination.

The good thing is that when you clean the bowl daily then it literally takes no time at all but if you leave it a while it takes longer as it’s often full of lime-scale and other harmful bacteria.

Do Bearded Dragons Need Water Every Day?

Bearded dragons do need water every day in some form or another.

Water can be offered to your bearded dragon by:

  • A water bowl
  • Misting your beardie
  • Misting food
  • Moisture absorbed from food

Even though you can and should use a combination of these methods to ensure your bearded dragon is always hydrated, offering water in a bowl has the added benefit of allowing your beardie to drink whenever they want.

For this reason, we recommend you offer your bearded dragon water every day and use a water bowl as their main water source.

Some beardies either don’t like to or don’t know how to drink from water bowls.

If you find this to be a problem with your bearded dragon then head over to our post that shares 5 ways to train your bearded dragon including how to get your beardie to drink from a bowl…

Also if you want to know more about how to properly mist your bearded dragon then check out this post that offers a step by step guide and shares all you need to know about misting your beardie…

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