Sorry been very busy.

Your question is HUGE, and much more then can be answered in a post, more like a book.

I would think breaking your questions down to something smaller and more easy to answer.

In general, I treat all varanids the same, that is, deep substrate, plenty of places to hide, and hot basking temps with a normal ambient temp. Like a range of 75F to 135F is great, with room in either direction.

I then let the animal tell me what to do. It it uses something, I give it more, etc.

i have not kept either GTM or melinus in a long time. But, I am attempting to acquire a pair or trio of GTM's

When I get them I will post pics of how I have them set up. Hopefully that will be soon.

About diet, from the thread below you can see that folks are all "crazy" about diet. I do take a different approach.

First, varanids are not picky feeders, not in prey varity or amount, they are friggin pigs. All species consume a huge range of prey types.

What that means is, you do not have to trick them or any oddthing like that to get them to feed. when healthy, they will attempt to consume you. Your dog, bird, etc. Even the small ones.

What this allows is for keeper to support the animal nutrition wise and not worry that it will only consume certain species.

Varanids are high metabolism reptiles when in that mode, their metabolism is more like a bird then even a mammal. So they require a lot of energy to progress.

of course, they can also operate at a low metabolism and not require lots of energy. This is where the problem is. Most keepers address one or the other and not both. The problem is, the are both. One approach to progress the other to conserve.

More about diet, the only rule I can make is, its best to feed whole prey items and not parts.

So I recomend staying away from turkey, unless you absolutely run out of whole prey items. Its a great backup.

The thing about varanids is, they are expensive to keep, they consume in a week what some snakes consume in a year. They require lots of heat to process that amount of food. That is what is expensive.

So the caging is expensive, the electricity is expensive, and the monitors are expensive. So why use a cheap diet to save money on. You've already invested lots of money in all other areas, then want to take a difficult path with diet.

Its not that you cannot make made up food items like turkey diet work, its just that much harder.

Diet should be the last area you conserve on. As its the most important. They require lots of energy to progress.

But if your interest is to just keep on alive in a cage, then thats fine. Monitors can conserve with the best of them. They can exsist on a very limited diet. They will just not grow much or reproduce.

I feel learning the approach is far more important then exactly how its applied. You can keep and breed them in any box if it contains what they need. It could be a trashcan or a large glass cage or a trough, or a custom cage. The cage just needs to include the above.

lastly the biggest area of discussion centers about "species". Like a green tree is DIFFERENT then say an ackie. So folks dwell on that and that has not shown to be a good approach.

The only difference is how they are adapted to secure prey, in water, in trees, in rocks, on the ground, in the ground, etc.

Their reproductive behavior and function, is nearly identical amoungst all the species, that is, A KD pairs, copulates and nests very much like a brevicauda. And all the species inbetween. The problem is, they do not secure prey in a certain habitat in captivity, we give it to them in a bowl(you know what I mean) So those adaptions are not used in captivity.

Take mertens, they secure their prey in nature in streams, ponds etc. In captivity a small tank at best. But mostly off tongs.

The absolute key once past basic care is nesting. This is a huge concern and the cause of high mortality in adult female monitors.

So, you have some steps,

First getting good individual monitors, which is very difficult with wild caught animals.

Then getting them to progress.

Then pairing, nesting, and incubating. Get those down and its easy. it really is. Thanks

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