Maybe we should not forget that Uros are NOT monitors.

They not only follow a completely different nutritional strategy but do also differ a lot with respect to other metabolic aspects as well as in activity levels etc etc.

To me its somehwat like comparing dogs and cows. Sorry...

In all cases experienced so far, a BIG Difference was found in the importance of food composition for herbivorius vs carnivorous/insectivorous reptiles.

Also its just not true that there is not much experience in long time Uro keeping available.

Here in Germany there are several keepers who do breed Uros since the 80s, which already is quite some time.

And they DID publish their experiences and they still ARE willing to exchange information.

Also there is a lot of evidence out there that nutritional aspects for Uros tend to be very similar to those for tortoises form arid areas. There is A LOT of experiences and -scientific as well as herpetocultural- papers out there on nutritional aspects of those. Instead of concentrating on monitor experience ...OK maybe not instead, but in addition, we should READ these papers and learn from these experiences!

Would help to save a lot of discussion time.

Composition of natural food and relative amount of food intake of Uros seems to be very similar to those of the mentioned tortoises.

And for the latter it is very clear that power raising can be very detrimental, even if the specimes appear to be healthy for years. The risk of later appearing liver and kidney damage is tremendous. Also much is known about the role and importance of dietary fibers, amount and importance of vitamines and minerals for tortoises.

We shoulöd all be aware of this, read the respective papers and have those in mind when contemplating about Uro husbandry.

Also Thomas Wilms and Coworkers quite intensively studied and still study Uro nutrition the professional scientific way.

Being a biologist myself, I want to underscore the importance of scientific approaches to these questions and the importance of reading the original papers.

IMHO, this is an absolute prerequisite to be able to have a opinion on the topic. A few years of Uro experience do help a lot but are by far not sufficient. Paperwork IS important, believe me.



And for me the state of the science conclusion for Uro husbandry still is:

Sparse feeding, low in protein, rich in dietary fibres. Well balanced mineral/Vitamine supplementation with calculated IU s of the fat soluble vitamines, careful yanalysis of Ca/P ratios (YES, there are tables out there), throrough brumation of even -and especially- the tiniest hatchling of brumating species(!!!!!), lots (!!!!) of brightness and space (55g for adults? NO O O O!!!!) and a controlable hiding system with tunnels which end in caves which gives the Uros the choice and provides different humidity levels-however the latter may look like.

I still prefer the artificial tunnel/hide box system I mentioned before, since its easyly controllable and since not many ceilings do hold the literally tons of dirt, which otherwise would be necessary (I recall that more than 500kg of dirt did not give a layer sufficient for good tunneling in my big tank)



Thats my 2 cts



Ingo

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