Hello Matt

Sorry for your lost!
I have experienced this a few times in the past with jobiensis and indicus, it took me a while to figure out the cause, fortunately I did and never saw this with any of my numerous captives again, in fact its been a clean 15 years.

As FR said varanids wild or captives stress out for more reasons then I can say, this is why they are called MONITORS. I feel we pay to much attention to stress and not enough to husbandry. From your post I see that they where feeding well and apparently getting along? I say apparently because often we don’t witness aggressions, both these species have long teeth’s that can puncture skin and allow infection to set in deeply, this may result in lumps of hard puss and septicaemia, in my care these species are known to kill each other by suffocation, drowning, evisceration, bullied monitors will show sings of feeding refusal and constant hiding. I think in your case damp soil was the problem, allowing bacterial build up, this leads to water contamination and infected wounds.

These are water loving monitors that spends much time in water, you don’t need high humidity for monitors that soaks as much, they don’t suffer dehydration as other species do and have no shedding problems. I keep mine on somewhat dry substrate and make sure the water is changed daily (sometime twice)

Harold your comment though interesting can be applied to all animals, I don’t see how it relates to this case?
In my book stress increases hart rate=blood flow=hormone production=better immune system, why do you get it backwards?!?

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