Its a dominance issue, housing them together you will always have one that's bigger than the rest, it will eat the most food, hog the basking spot etc.
Bearded dragons really should be kept in separate enclosures or at a stretch, 1 male and 1 female though that doesn't always work.
As for...
Been listening to Wu bai and china blue mostly. When im not listening to mandarin rock or HK pop I love oldies such as 40's and 50's jazz, mowtown and soul.
Cheers-
Hate to throw links out there but check out http://www.australianbeardies.net/
Great info on husbandry, enclosures, lighting, substrate, breeding, illnesses etc.
Its purely defensive, having something try and pull him out is like a predator trying to grab him.
Once they get wound up nothing you do can calm them down, id just put him back in his enclosure and let him chill out under his heat lamp.
Any dark enclosed spot in the room will most likely...
I do agree with your statement that there is a great deal of bad information around these days, do your research and make decisions based on what you've found but at the end of the day we all do things differently.
Believe what you will regarding sand, i call it paranoia but whatever, bottom...
That was only regarding a couple of brands, exo terra compact UVB's are completely safe, give great levels of uvb, last up to a year and are cheap. Tubes and mercury vapor bulbs are far too expensive.
Have you been to Australia? seen the habitat of this species with your own eyes? well i have lived here all my life and have seen the entire range of their distribution. They do not live on clay at all but in their arid habitat its either vast open plains covered in red dirt or desserts...
Keep the two dishes but bin the rest of the stuff in their. By a bag of play sand or pool filter sand and then go out in to the forests or your back yard etc and collect a bunch of rocks of all shapes and sizes, put the sand in, plonk the rocks in, put your dishes back in and your good to go...
Sands to get - beach sand, play sand, dessert sand.
Sands to avoid- colored sand, calci sand, excavator sand.
I would recommend either a natural dessert sand or sand mixed with coco fiber which are both natural to bearded dragons as its what they live on in the wild as they come from arid to...
Get a bowel and a spoon or better yet, mortar and pestle, mix and grind some crickets or woodies, water, calcium powder and multivitamin and mineral powder, mix well then get a pipette or syringe, suck some up and slowly squirt some in to your beardies mouth.