Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a problem. I have had two monitors die within a 2 week period for unknown reasons. They're eating, appear to be doing fine, then they get sluggish for 2-3 days and drop dead. I have lost a young mangrove monitor and a young peachthroat(both of them being in the same enclosure together). Here's the stats of the set up: 55 gallon, glass pane covering up approximately 65% of the top, the rest is covered with screen. There is a 75 watt bulb inside the aquarium on one side, approximately 4-5 inches from the substrate. The humidity is usually between 70-80%. There is a bowl of fresh water available at all times. The substrate is a clean potting soil with no added chemicals. I have a couple of live plants on the cool side with a basic flourescent plant bulb overhead. There is a large hollow log for a hiding place. What is going wrong here? They were both doing very well for several weeks, eating and drinking, then this happens. I need help!

(As a side note, the mangrove escaped a week or two prior to its death and was slightly scratched by a cat. He appeared fine and the death didn't seem to be caused by this. Plus, this doesn't explain the death of the peachthroat).

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Matt

After closely examining the body of the dead peachthroat, I'm noticing several bumps from the base of the tail to the tip. The "bumps" are whitish and are spaced out....fairly large too. I'll get a pic up later today.

Matt

I cut into a couple of the bumps on the tail of the dead peachthroat. There's white substance which I can't decipher as being white blood cells or worms as there is no distinct form to the white mass. The body of the mangrove has no bumps and appears normal.

Matt

While it is possible it is some disease, the most likely culprit is husbandry.

Doing well for several weeks, would not lead up to their deaths.

My guess... Bacterial infection gone uncontrolled from a weak immune system, followed by organ failure. The bumps, are puss filled pockets, and are a symptom and not the source.

If you have monitors (or other animals) die of mysterious deaths, that you really need to know the answer to. Bag them, toss them in the fridge (not the freezer), and contact a vet to do a necropsy.

You are taking the fact they died in the same period as meaning something, I would take that they both died in your cage and your conditions to be far more relevant. I'm not trying to be mean, but an inexperienced keeper throwing two different species of monitors together in a small crowded aquarium is a recipe for disaster.

Sorry,

--Robert

Just to add to Robert's last paragraph. And I know there is a lot of anti-scientific bias on this forum.
But a recent study done in Rich Shine's lab in Australia measured the level of cortisol in the blood of lizards under different conditions. In lizards as in humans cortisol levels go up when stress goes up.
The highest level of cortisol (=highest stress) came from being kept in a cage with another species of lizard (closely related).

Monitors are stressed by anything that may be a threat to them. That is their nature. So indeed placing different WC individuals in a cage is highly stressful, no matter what species they are.

Consider if they are acclimated to other individuals and even other species. Conspecfics and other speices "may" not stressful.

Again, this is all about context. I would "NOT" take two wild caught monitors and place them in with other species, or even with members of their own species, until they fully regain their health. Then I would continue to gauge how they are doing. If they are healthy, it gives you time to decide if they are being stressed or not. It gives the keeper time to make adjustments. If they are not healthy, then the result is most likely poor.

Consider, successful keeping is not following a recipe, its addressing a series of adjustments. Remember, a cage limits options for montiors to make. So you as a keeper must keep changing the closed enviornment to allow the captive monitors a outlet for their behaviors.

What bothers me is, this one way or the other, method of understanding, Surely you and others understand by now, it simply does not work that way. There are indeed ways to fail and ways to succeed. Your job as a keeper is to pick the methods that succeed in your area of interest.

As I have clearly shown over the years, I can keep pairs, groups, colonies with great success. I can and have also successfully kept many different species together. As you know I have produced generations of crosses for several different species. With this in mind, obviously there are methods to be successful in this area. Yes, there are ways to avoid this stress. But the keeper has to do it. It does not happen on its own(their in a cage)

What is hard for me to understand. Is no one, not even academics consider the history and behaviors of monitors(ethology). If you took two monitors from the exact same spot, you will recieve different results then if you take individuals from totally different areas. You will also recieve different results with different ages of monitors. Testing neonates will surely offer completely different results then testing haggards(old individuals) Please consider, this is a well known understanding with all sorts of animals.

So yes, your advice in this case would be correct. Why did this keeper place newly acquired WC individuals of different species together?? That is very risky. But to take that information and apply it accross the board is foolish and very limiting.

If you can remember, I offered this bit of advice many many years ago, if your interested in breeding monitors(minimum level of success), the best advice is raising them from as young as possible, TOGETHER. If you fail to do this. You stand a much higher chance of failure. This is truely more important with WC then CH. But still goes for both. ALso consider, if you do not make correct decisions, you will fail, no matter what you start with. Its captivity, and the keeper is responsible for allowing normal behaviors to achieve success.

Lastly, you can indeed successfully keep and breed WC's, but you will also experience far more problems you have to solve. Cheers

Boy, you guys know how to write one hell of a story. One person makes an assumption, quickly picked up by another person and then before you know it I am an irresponsible keeper that doesn't know what he's doing. Let's back up again and reconsider the facts. Where did "Wild-caught" come from my problem? The peach-throat was a captive bred individual as was the mangrove. Both were young juveniles. I don't feel like the parameters of the enclosure were out of whack. What could have been done differently *besides* keeping the two monitors separated? Both the mangrove and the peach throat are two very similar monitors that are closely related. It's not as if I threw a savannah in with a green tree and wondered what went wrong. Plus, a 55 gallon is adequate for two very young monitors. The fact that I get on here and ask for advice and I get a pompous shoulder shrug...that's not what I was expecting from some "professionals".

Matt

The people answering your question have enough experience to know that your monitors were not captive bred, regardless of what dealers might have told you. No one is producing those species.

If you are lacking experience it doesn't really matter if you "don't feel like the parameters of the enclosure were out of whack". Just try to keep an open mind an listen to what these folks have to say.

Well, this is news to me...and this is what I like; to be educated. I have an open mind for learning and I didn't know that neither ones of those species was being produced in captivity. Even Varanus indicus isn't being bred? I thought they were farm raising them...

Well, if you or the person who sold your monitors as captive hatched can prove they are, I will eat my post. hahahahahahahaha, OK, i will print it out and eat it. I am not going to eat the computer, althought it looks tasty at times.

Heres the deal, your monitors died. Thats horrible but it happens. If you post that they died, then I would imagine your asking for help to understand how or why they died. Is that so?

That they died, means something was not right, in a very disasterous way. I would think, you should not expect a pat on the back. I think you should want and expect real meaningful answers. I would also expect that those answers may be hard to swallow. In all cases, if a monitor dies in your hands, its your fault. Its also not the end of the world. You get to try again, those monitors do not. They are dead. So a few bumps and bruises to your ego, should be Ok, after all, anything you read here will not actually hurt you. It just may offend you. No biggie if you think about it. Cheers

FR,
You're right in the sense that no one likes to hear that they killed their animals, and the information is very helpful. Learning that both of them actually were wild caught animals is a surprise to me. I thought they were breeding mangroves in captivity, at the very least. The peach throat being wild-caught makes sense...

I hear of one person producing a few indicus every year or so. So what are the chances one of those is yours???? The chances are very very slim. Then if I may be so bold to ask what you paid for them. That would most likely indicate WC prices, not captive hatched prices.

The real problem is, dealers are constantly lying to customers. And no one really wants to know the truth. In otherwords, you want to believe they are so it eases your mind. The problem is. Neither are being bred in any number. All you have to do is ask for proof. Cheers

FR,
I paid the average going rate, $80 a piece. I originally had two indicus...the smaller one is the one that recently passed and then I have a larger one that is doing very well so far..*crossing fingers*. The funny thing is the smaller one was very young when I got it, a little over hatchling size, convincing me it was a captive bred(or hatched) individual. I have been shown the light, thanks to you guys.

Matt

About five years ago, I was told by a friend from Japan thats is one of the main collectors in Indo. He said, they had recently told the local collectors, no more large monitors, only babies.

The reason is shipping, Shipping is way more for adults and they actually get more for babies. They can ship dozens of babies for the cost of shipping one adult.

In this case, its a good thing for the conservation, as adults are far less expendable then babies. It takes many many babies to achieve one adult. Cheers

Your 'Mysterious deaths' are far from it, it is very typical organ failure.

I never said keeping them separate would make a difference, and I don't believe that alone would've been enough. But you only gave a post with limited information, no one can do anything but make assumptions off of it. But, you don't want to hear that, you are expecting a disease name.

I will say, the fact you have live plants in the enclosure could only mean one of two things. Either the monitors were not healthy or you are changing things on them constantly.

--Robert

Somehow I don't think the plants contributed to the death of my monitors. They didn't eat the plants, the plants were clean, and I didn't "change up" their enclosure at all. The plants were in there before the monitors were.

Matt

I think what Robert is saying is, a healthy monitor would have dug up the entire cage including the plants.

I agree a sign of a healthy monitor is they are always doing something. Because most if not all of our cages do not offer enough size, they tend to redo the entire cage over and over. So things like plants take it big time with healthy monitors.

If I have a monitor that does not dig up the cage and is inactive, I will check to make sure that monitor is OK.

In your case, having healthy plants may indicate, unhealthy monitors.

Also, please consider, those trying to help you, do not have very much to work with. Its your job to fill them in. Good luck

FR,
I didn't think of that. The monitors are small and the plants are big, but there has been plenty of digging going around. The plants are also located in the center on the tank, so there was a "trench" made by the monitors around the plants and the rest of the space. When you say monitors are always active, I have more than once seen a monitor just "chilling out" in the afternoon and doing nothing but lying there. Is that not the norm?

Matt,

Frank got it, that is exactly what I meant, I've tried for years to keep live plants with jobiensis, and the result is always a very quick death to the plant. With a larger outdoor cage I'd like to try a tree, but I have a feeling this is more about me than what the monitors need or want.

Not only digging, I've never had a live plant last more than a week with a healthy peachie, even a small juvenile. If the plant is small, they will trample it, if it's large they will climb on it and tear it to shreds.

I've found most young monitors to be incredibly active when there is no one around, but stay hidden if they sense anyone (and they are real good at picking up movement and sounds). When they get older things seem to typically change, they care much less about my presence, except when they are hungry.

I highly doubt there is any one thing that you could change, it was probably a number of factors. Since some people seem confused by what I meant with mixing species, I only meant it will complicate matters, and an inexperienced keeper should not be making anything complicated that doesn't need to be. I got the impression from your post that you have had them for a couple months, and peachies don't stay small for long. I wouldn't keep two in that size cage for much longer than a month.

You do seem to be taking this better than you initial posts. That's good, no one is being judgemental, and accepting fault is much better than ignorance.

--Robert

Robert,
My whole deal is that I want to provide my monitors with the absolute best care possible, so anything and everything I can learn from the pros is a blessing to me. I have learned many invaluable things from you guys, and I appreciate it.

Matt

As an old timer, I often hear newbies proclaim they want to give the best care possible. Or the best cage possible, the best food, the best this and that. That approach tends to make me wonder.

I supposely have as much success as anyone. I have no problem keeping monitors alive, breeding them, hatching them, generation after generation. Yet, I do not give them the best possible anything. I try very hard to give what is needed. Not the best. Just suitable, or sufficient. I would hope good, is OK.

Thinking in terms of "best" is very odd to me. Why not one step at a time. First keep your monitors alive, then allow them progress, then allow basic life events, then possibly explore other behaviors, etc. One step, one level, one task, at a time.

To go directly to the best is a lofty goal and very unreasonable. Think about it.

I need to ask, Why do you think it that way??? I mean, you make me feel bad and inferior, as I have no idea what best is and I have been doing this for a while. Cheers

i'm pretty sure that it was ment as a figure of speach. "providing the best possible care" means the best that they can do. which in reality could mean ok, or satisfactory care. you achieve better results than most... so your best care may equal "good"

i like to see people wanting to provide the best care. if they're not that motivated, they shouldn't be keepers

cheers

To avoid getting so philosophical about it without analyzing every statement I make...

When I say "the best care possible" that doesn't mean I want to duplicate the rainforest or the savannah. It means I want them to be alive, healthy, and thriving. Whatever that includes is purely opinion.

If I was an "old timer" and someone new to monitors made the statement "I want to provide the best care possible", I would have the utmost respect for them in the fact that they are willing to learn on how to care for their animals. It's really quite simple.

I don't keep animals as a "hobby". My desire to keep monitors has nothing to do with "they're a cool side project". This is my passion. This is why I'm going to school. This is why I research and make an attempt to stroke the egos of the more experienced grandfathers of the field. I do try my best to be the beta wolf, but unfortunately my young and cocky attitue tend to surface.

I am trying to be nice, please consider, a newbie is not capable of the best care. Not because they are not smart or motivated, they simply lack experience to understand how to get to the best.

They must start with little successes, win little battles(keeping monitors is war, hahahahahahahahahaha)

Beginers or midlevel keepers need to take one step at a time. In reality, barely sufficent is pretty darn good, considering the normal is massive failure.

For instance, on all other major catagories of reptiles, turtles, torts, snakes, beardeds, geckos, etc. The average beginer, will be breeding them successfully in a short time. They expect to breed them. Yet, here on our fine forum, the average post is, Help my monitor is dying. Why is that. In my opinion, monitors are about has hard to keep and breed as mice. They take work, but there surely is no magic to them. You do not have to hibernate or photoperiod or anything. Like mice all you have to do is have a suitable temp regime and feed and water on a regular basis.

Of course the hard part with monitors is nesting, its more like parakeets or love birds, you must provide the proper type of nesting.

Yet, the average keeper here fails within months. I have to wonder.

Its why I fight those academics tooth and claw, they keep trying to send keeping monitors back into the dark ages. I guess its bad enough that I have lots of continued success, muchless having newbies doing the same, so they keep passing out cropola information.

So, no offense, its my opinion you will learn faster by taking a step at a time, then think about the best.

ITs so very common here for excited monitor owners to want the best food, the best lites, the best, the best, the best. When none of that equals the best. What is best is the combined results from barely good enough of many things.

For instance, once a female monitor cycles and has eggs, you pretty much have to stomp her to death to stop here from having another clutch, then another clutch. It does not hurt them to have many clutches, it hurts them to not have many clutches. You literally have to starve them to death to stop them.

I have lots of success, many here do not, I do not try to provide the best of anything, I hope to have good results, and as far as I can tell, my results are amoung the best. But what I actually do is not the best. Does that make any sense? Cheers

you're still misunderstanding the statement. wanting to provide the best... what ever, is a figure of speach. it's to do the best that you can. it's as simple as that.

That's an interesting study, however I have a few questions. I can understand if you were to keep, say a bearded dragon in with a savannah monitor, two entirely different species from a similar habitat envoking stress on one another...but what about two very closely related species in the same genus? I don't mean something like a black tree monitor with a crocodile monitor, but perhaps a Chinese water dragon with an Australian water dragon? Or a green basilisk with a brown basilisk? I would not think that if sufficient space was provided with plenty of hiding spaces that this would be such a big problem. Just curious.

Matt

The specific design of that part of the study included the experiment just tested one skink (Eulamprus) with another competitor species (Egernia). I, also, wish that they had expanded the study to include more tests along that line. But most of the experiments involved cortisol levels under various handling procedures.
Any monitor keeper with access to a medical lab could devise similar experiments. All (LOL) you need is somone to run cortisol level tests on blood samples.
Any rich medics out there?

No Beardie, the monitor would kill and eat the beardie in a hurry, whether in pieces or as a whole.

Monitors do not like to die. They are almost impossible to kill. When they die, they are normally skinny, bony bags of skin. They fight death to a degree unknown(rare) to humans.

Except for organ damage. A common cause of healthy appearing monitors just rolling over dead is organ damage. In most cases, Kidney damage. Monitors normally live a month or so after kidney failure. Liver damage is another common cause of death, but it normally causes a lingering death.

Sometimes kidney damage causes symtoms like swollen limbs. But not always.

You can take them to a vet, and may if your lucky, get some accurate cause of their death, but most likely they will be of no help. As there are very few experienced vets in this field. They will normally find some damage and call that the cause of death. The problem is, they do not look deep enough. They take the first abnormal sign and assign blame there.

Its my personal opinion, all or nearly all wild caught monitors, have suffered some type of organ damage. Either from extreme torture, the conditions of capture and transfer. Or from being treated to prevent these tortured individuals from dying on them(only to die on you)

You may want to ask your doctor(on your next visit) how wise it is to treat extremely dehydrated humans for parasites & such. Without returning them to normal fluid levels. Then ask about treating for bacteria, in the same conditions. I hope the doc tells you, the patient should be stable first. That is not done with monitors. They are treated by the exporters/importers/middlemen, mainly when they are in poor(compromised) condition. Not a wise thing to do, if you want the patient to live a normal life. Cheers

Hello Matt

Sorry for your lost!
I have experienced this a few times in the past with jobiensis and indicus, it took me a while to figure out the cause, fortunately I did and never saw this with any of my numerous captives again, in fact its been a clean 15 years.

As FR said varanids wild or captives stress out for more reasons then I can say, this is why they are called MONITORS. I feel we pay to much attention to stress and not enough to husbandry. From your post I see that they where feeding well and apparently getting along? I say apparently because often we don’t witness aggressions, both these species have long teeth’s that can puncture skin and allow infection to set in deeply, this may result in lumps of hard puss and septicaemia, in my care these species are known to kill each other by suffocation, drowning, evisceration, bullied monitors will show sings of feeding refusal and constant hiding. I think in your case damp soil was the problem, allowing bacterial build up, this leads to water contamination and infected wounds.

These are water loving monitors that spends much time in water, you don’t need high humidity for monitors that soaks as much, they don’t suffer dehydration as other species do and have no shedding problems. I keep mine on somewhat dry substrate and make sure the water is changed daily (sometime twice)

Harold your comment though interesting can be applied to all animals, I don’t see how it relates to this case?
In my book stress increases hart rate=blood flow=hormone production=better immune system, why do you get it backwards?!?

Jobi,
Thanks for the advice...I agree on the moist soil as the culprit. I got paranoid about them dehydrating and developing gout, so I probably did a little overkill with the moisture. We live and we learn, I guess.

Matt

Yes I think its this to, other species will exhibit blister disease in such conditions but not these water types, its often to late when we see the problem.

Best of luck next time