Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How come no one told me to get an Ackie as a beginner BEFORE I bought my Savannah?! Reading article through article and asking a few monitor owners, I was told that the Savannahs were beginner monitors. Now, I hear, from research, that the Ackies are the best bet for a tame, handlable, and easy to care for monitor. Hmm... I'd like to get a couple of Ackies and breed them someday. But first, I want to raise my Savannah to adulthood. I have the Savannah for a week, and all of a sudden, Ackies are now the best bet for a beginner monitor.
Haha, just a little input.

This is exactly what I was saying below. People say things just to say things (they are wannabe know it alls). I certainly do not know it all, I only speak of what I have experience with.

That said, a Sav is a fine choice for a monitor. They are medium sized, do well on f/t mice and don't require outrageously sized cages (like a nile or water).

Ackies are fine, don't get me wrong, I have had them, I bred them and they were fun, but I have had more enjoyable monitors (my preference).

If you read where the original "an ackie is the best beginner monitor" lingo came from, it was to advertise a product a person carried. They may have been correct, ackies are a good choice, but a sav is fine.

Just do your best with what you have. Breed Savs, not enough people do. The main problem with savs is that everyone has one and this can lead to people feeling that they are worthless. My savs are just as valuable to me as my Kimberly Rocks or Gouldi or Bredl's pythons (high end herps) or what have you, same goes for my leopard geckos and other inexpensive animals.

Cheers, Andrew
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Varanus Creations

Hey, thanks for the input Andrew. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I think it was a good choice. I really like my Sav. It's starting to get really well adapted to its new home. And I think mine is CB or CH. Well, the owner of the store said it was CB, but my thoughts tells me different. They own a reptile shop called Reptile Outlet in Sacramento, CA. Really nice people, they set me up with my 40 gallon, heat pad, heat lamp, aspen bedding, crickets, and my baby Sav all for under $70. The 40 gal had minor silicon work and a hole in the bottom. I just re-siliconed it and siliconed a piece of plastic to the hole area. The deal I had when I called in, before I picked up the Sav, was $29 for the baby and $15 for the used 40 gal, but when I went in, I noticed they were setting up a few new cages for the hatchlings, and they had a few used things lying around, so I picked up the UTH and the lamp(w/Fluker's 100Wt bulb) for $5 a piece. Then, they gave me 2 full bags of aspen shavings for $4 and threw in about 4 dozen crickets for free.
Whoa... I didn't mean to go on like this... haha, got out of hand. Well, thanks for the input. I really like my monitor, but do you have any "taming/handling" tips? I want to know how I should go about doing this because I want that "dog" tameness.

Chris.

Basic monitor husbandry can be found on my site (varanuscreations.com or follow the link right above the forum under forum sponsors/varanus creations). It will be under the link "caresheet" at the bottom. Please atleast use that as a guideline, the methods I use are proven to atleast have some success, although I constantly make revisions as they are an ongoing process.

Dog Tameness: Your sav is not a dog, it will never like you, it will never want to walk on a leash. Your sav will at the very best tolerate you. Monitors do not like to be handled, it stresses them out. Handling is not evil, but check your motives before doing it. Monitors are highly enjoyable and can be that without handling them or having them to show off to the neighborhood.

I don't care what your reptile shop says, they apparently do not know crap about monitors. So please use my faq as atleast a guideline or a place to start.

My hope is that I will improve everyday, I learn everyday to do that. I learn first by practicing, secondly by reading.

Cheers, Andrew
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Varanus Creations

Thanks for the insight, Andrew... REALLY helpful..

Test pic of my baby Sav.
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ARghh... can you tell me how to post pictures? Thanks.

Why ackies are the best beginers monitors.

The first is, they are all, captive born. They are simply not imported.

They are generalist, They climb, dig, burrow, etc. They also, beg when hungry. This tells you when to feed them.

They are small. Housing an ackie or a pair or trio of ackies in a medium sized cage, 6 or 7 feet long, is compared to housing savs in a 25 feet long cage. Savs are much larger, go by mass not lenght.

With that size difference, comes the same comparisions with food. Also with depth of substrate. 12 inches of substrate for ackies is easy to give. To make things equal you would have to give a sav, three or four feet of substrate. Same goes of climbing or water. Those are not easy to provide.

With space you can learn about monitors. Not about monitors crammed in boxes. Even ackies crammed in small cages suck.

Of course you are allowed to like or dislike any and all species. That is indeed your decision to make.

I am sorry Andrew, but I seemed to missed the pics of your baby ackies. Can you post them. Frank

Hello Frank,

First of all, I do think that an ackie is a better choice. However, it is better than people dumping their savs to get an ackie. A sav is just as important as an ackie, right?

I do not have pics of baby ackies, it was my second breeding experience. the only reason i ever had pics of my first argus clutch was because they took longer to incubate and i got off my butt at that time to buy a camera.
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Varanus Creations

I am sorry, I thought the question was, what was a better first monitor. The poster also mentioned something about breeding them.

The question of, is one more important as a life form, is complelely your problem. As the poster or I, mentioned anything about that. As in, That is a completely unrelated subject.

Funny, you actually showed pics of your ackies and their setup, and mentioned you were hoping to breed them. They were setup in a fish tank, with some sort of potting soil stuff as a substrate, with a stack of boards, all the way to one side. with a lite over that. But who cares, that is off this subject as well. Frank

Well whatever on the sav deal. The pics I did have of my ackie setup were my buddie's camera when he was visiting me from washington one day (where i am from) 350 miles away.

I had my ackies setup in a 4 foot fish tank (does it really matter, i mean shoot you set them up in 4 foot troughs). the potting soil as you put it was clean dirt from my backyard, i put 10 inches of it in there. the ackies never had a problem with the boards. they dug burrows in that substrate, ate in that tank, and behaved like monitors with the female laying 13 eggs as a result, i hatched them out with limited success (4 survived) because I made a mistake (we all do that, don't we frank?). Not that this matters but :I then traded the ackies off (i did not like them) for two het atrox females and one other ackie for half of the cost of my 100 pound alligator snapping turtle. So next time that you think you "remember" something, try asking instead.

andrew
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Varanus Creations

Alligator snapping turtle?Are they crazy?They are the wildest looking creatures.A while back my neighbors killed one and displayed it for all to see.I thought that was so cruel.Then the neighborhood kids came around to Tease it and it actually bit someone with a big hook(like a bad movie)stuck through it's head.I didn't feel bad for the kid

Naw BRG, I gave it to Brad Tylman (he lives near me) for his educational programs (its the biggest he has). I kept it in a full size hot tub outdoors, I fed it jumbo rats and bass that I caught locally. It was a definite blast but with my divorce I had to get rid of a couple of things.

Cheers, Andrew
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Varanus Creations

We are awful sensitive aren't we. I said it did not matter anyway, it was off subject. Take a chill pill dude. Frank

We are awful sensitive aren't we. I said it did not matter anyway, it was off subject. Take a chill pill dude. Frank

I saw an article in 1997 when ackies were much more expensive and they were suggested back then as the best choice in first time monitors. Bosc monitors can make a good first monitor but you must realize that all of the money you save in buying a $5 WC animal you will spend in the food required for a much larger animal housing, vet bills, etc., and then some. Are you prepared to set up a 4x4x8 cage with a a foot or more of dirt for your animals living requirements in the future? Ackies are a great choice to start with also because they have alot of attitude and spend alot of time in the open doing things in front of you. Bosc monitors are somewhat secretive animals that spend alot of time hiding to escape everything that stresses them. Be prepared to buy alot of rodents and insects very soon for your bosc because a healthy bosc is an eating machine. It comes down to choice but ackies are the best way to start.

Whiptails! Yeah they aren't monitors but they are just as neat. You can house them in a fairly small cage and keep them like ackies (on dirt with a Retes stack. They are cheap and easy to sex lol. They can be as tame as a monitor without the risk of getting bit or scratched. Yeap I would say they would be a good start before getting into monitors. You would also learn a lot about lizard behavior to help you in the future. And when you get babies I'll buy them. I got these @#$%$#^& pythons that eat lizards.

Don't get me wrong monitors are great. I am just suggesting that whiptails would be a good place to start not a replacement. One could learn a lot from the experience.

np

I know. Check out this one it looks like a little lace LOL! What is cool about them is they are parthenogenic Fertile eggs laid without actual breeding (not my pic)