Hey Frank,
From my own experience with my own varanids and from working with John As animals for the past 7 or so years, this is what I have seen.

My own female vranids while never being with males still laid eggs. The first time I noticed one of my Savs was carrying eggs I spoke to my a friend. He told me to offer deeper substrate and to also offer a nest box. I did what he said. The female went into the nest box every time to deposite eggs even though she had the option to lay everywhere else in her cage. The same for every other female varanid I ever owned that dropped eggs.

When Johns sulfer Cody was alive, she also dropped her eggs in a garbage pail nest box even though she had a huge cage with deep substrate and leaf litter. She may have laid a few times out of the nest box as well.

With the dwarf varanids in Johns collection, John and myself came up with a % of the time they lay their eggs in the nest box over the rest of the cage. It is roughly 95 to 98% in the nest box even though the cages have many other good nesting options.
I can think of only two animals and a few times that they picked to lay fertile eggs outside the nest box and one of those animals and times was a female yellow ackie that could not use the nest box because the was already another female nesting in it. The Ackie that laid the eggs had the option to lay elsewhere but still went for the nest box option first. Maybe your bad luck with nest boxes has to do with your location in the US Frank. Maybe it is harder for you to control your temps than it is for us here in the North East. Whatever the case is, you can not discount nest boxes as a good option especially since there are people who have had great sucess with them.

Keep in mind that I care for Johns collection for 4 months out of the year when John is away and spend plenty of time there when he is home. I personally have dug dozens of eggs out of nest boxes while he was away and have had some animals of his breed under my watch. John is clearly much more experienced with varanids than I am. I have learned a lot from him. There is a reason why John has me care for his animals while he is away and it is not because of my lack of knowlege or his lack of options.

I will contine this debate/conversation as long as you keep it respectful.

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