Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My husband and I inherited a beautiful 4 foot black throat monitor 4 years ago, she passed away this past year and devastated our family. At the time I was 3 months pregnant and couldn't possibly think of adding a new monitor to our home. My son is now five months old, we have bought a new home, but still I do not feel we have the space or energy such a large monitor requires, nor do I feel it is in anyones best interest to house such a large animal with our son as our family room is the only room large enough to house such an animal. But we still have a desire to bring a monitor into our home. Hence the ackie. I did some research and I looked at timors, ackies, freckleds, and rock monitors. With a new son the rock monitors are a bit out of our price range, the freckleds seem to be very hard to find, hte timors do not seem to be as interactive a pet as we would like and seem to have more of an aggressive side, not to mention many seem wild caught. The ackie seems to be our best choice, as far as price, hardiness, space, and personality. I have looked all through ProExotics and their animals are gorgeous! But I was wondering of any other breeders around where we could acquire a baby as we went the adult monitor route with our Ionides and he was with us for way too short of a time, but an adult monitor would be considered if under the age of two and in great health. I wanted to run some caging ideas by you to get some opinions. We are going to have a cage custom built by Custom Wood Reptile cage company. The cage we are thinking of building will fit into a corner and be triangular in shape 48 in long, 36 inches wide(at it's deepest point 24 at all others(I think) and 18 inches high. I believe this should be ample space for one monitor, would it be enough for two? Also I could use suggestions on a soil substrate, heating, and a place to acquire crickets as our BT did not have much use for them. Thank you for taking the time to read this and any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Been trying to avoid your questions, but you asked them so nicely. dang

The problem is, the answers either void the TOS(terms of service) as in advertising. Pro exotics and I both breed ackies, we have eggs of three types getting ready to hatch. There may be many others as well. Your best bet is to keep an eye on the Classifieds. I will advertise there when we actually have babies for sale. I believe, Robyn and I know I have been away from breeding ackies for a while. Actually for me its not about breeding them, that just happens and boy does it happen.

You cage questions are also hard and sensitive to answer. As a wooden cage and monitors do not really go in the same sentence. Moist dirt, humidity and a creature that burrows all thru the dirt and hides eggs in there, all team up to make wooden cages, not the cages of choice. Large tanks of glass, plastic, metal(troughs) etc are much better to meet the particular needs of small monitors. Of course you can get creative and decorate all the above to look nice. Or you can cheat, hahahahahaha, and cut the bottom off a wooden cage and place it as a top part of a tank and have the best of both worlds. There is no limit to how creative you can get.

About cage size. Hmmmmmmmmmm another sensitive question. There is no set size. It depends on what you wish to see and what you wish to support. On one end, you can keep a full grown ackie in a ten gallon tank for many many years. But all it will do is eat and poop and have a heartbeat.

Or you can increase the size to allow options and things for the monitors to do. The larger the cage, the more you can allow to happen within the cage.

Four to eight foot cages are great for a pair or trio. Large doors give good access for cage decorations and substrate. That is very very important. Make it easy to get stuff in and out. Or soon you will get rid of the animals, too much work.

I like simple cages, with big doors, as opposed to building permanent decorations like rockwork and such. I like to be able to change all things around(i am wrong a lot) It gives me the ability to fix what I may have misunderstood. Good luck