Hundreds of thousands of reptile owners come to these forums constantly, they stick around for a few months, or a year at most. Most of these keepers come here with problems, or for advice on something they are far from seeing ever happen. They dont realize the problems in their husbandry, and its always the typical issues with following petstore advice. These people argue that they are right, and that they read it in a book, or that they were told by their local petstore "reptile expert" that what they sell is needed, and nothing else.
A very good friend had a reptile rescue for many many years, they recieved and cared for thousands of reptiles of all species. The majority of these animals came from homes with aquarium/petstore caging, the animals always had UV lights, those that were fed insects were fed meticulously gut-loaded insects, those tegus a and monitors were fed a broad range of catfoods, dogfoods, fruits, veggies, canned monitor/tegu diets, and everything else the local "reptile expert" told them was right. Beardies were fed pelleted food, kept in sterile environments, under UV bulbs, fed little to no crickets, but other insects, typical beardie forum advice, under low basking temps, under higher air temps, etc. Almost every one of these animals was dieing, had MBD, impactions, were dull colored, stuck sheds, parasite problems (even with repeated treatments)you name it.
All were set up in simple homemade environments with broad temp ranges, high basking temps, useful substrates, and most with 24/7 basking lights (not one UV bulb on the property). With very very few exceptions that were too far gone, all recovered in no time at all and looked like completely different animals in a few weeks to a few months.
I dont need statistics to prove anything, or publications, I have firsthand experience caring for these animals, setting cages up, and watching them recover.
On the other hand, the typical forum poster that does as I described above comes and goes with their reptile here in weeks, months, to a year, some a few years, 90% go with the death of their monitor and confused as to why the advice their local "reptile expert" told them killed their monitor, because they thought they were proving a point by standing their ground and arguing that they were right and refused to learn.
You know I posted at one time on the beardie forum, I was called every name in the book and then some, and accused of abusing my beardies with the captive care I provided, in that time I had raised a hatchling female to 10 months old, in the next years time she layed 226 plus eggs, I fed most of the eggs off to monitors and tegus to reduce the numbers my friend had to sell. My beardies grew huge in a hurry, ate alot of crickets, roaches, and some veggies. A year after I stopped posting on that forum because of the constant abuse from the "experts" several posters there asked for help for their poor sickly dieing beardie, the advice I gave had them up and breeding big fat healthy beardies in no time at all, 5 of which had similar results to myself, 220 plus eggs in a years time per female. I personally dont understand how the big name breeders can sell beardies for the prices that they do, I bought some years ago for $10-$25 each, $70 was the most I spent on one.
Imagine if every reptile keeper stopped buying useless petstore profit making products, and followed useful advice, we would never need to import another reptile from overseas, we would be drowning in excess captive bred reptiles.

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