Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Sorry it has taken so long for these pics I had a huge maple tree fall in my back yard and have been trying to get that taken care of as well as doing stuff for my morgage company what a pain in the ass. Any ways here are new pics of what I have done thus far. I have rearranged the driftwood and such so that it is more usable for basking. I have lowered the light into the cage and decreased wattage. I stayed with a red light as I was still unsure of day night cycles. I added a 5.0 repti light just to help with my ongoing day night cycle and figurd uv light couldnt hurt. I took out 1/2 of the dirt and mixed in leaf litter and grass clippings. I offered a few hoppers and comets for food but it seems the monitor is not super intrested in food so far in 2 day it has only eaten 1 hopper and 3 commets. I have seen an increas in activity since the upped humidity and rearanged basking area. I really think this has been an improvemnet for my monitor and I thnak you all for your input and critisitizm. As i said b4 i am going to be building a larger enclouser when i move and I intend on building a reptile shed out side that will house my retic and nile. If any of you have such a shed and could give any pointers that would be great. any does or dont or damn i should have added that while I was at it is kinda what im looking for. Thanks again and here are some pics of the improved cage. If you see anything else let me know thanks.

Discard the red flood and neon, use a simple 65w flood instead, throw away the grass and cover the bottom half of the door.
Then you have a basic monitor cage, if it hold moisture?

I can do that but if I do do I need to turn the light off at night or leave it on all the time for heat. I know some animals like snakes which I have foar more experience with will get stressed if you leave them under light 24hours a day. Is this the same with monitors. Also what about the drop in temps over night if the bulb is turned off will it cause any problems or should I add a second heat source like a het mat or tape. Thanks agian.

If you use deeper substrate, the monitor will hide(dark) anytime it wants. So it does not matter if the lites on.

This is the exact same thing for snakes. Both snakes and monitors, NORMALLY sleep in a hole, in a deep crevice, in a hollow, all these places are DARK 24/7 or they would not use them. Also, both snakes and monitors do NOT only sleep at night, they sleep over a 24 hour period, and are active when the needs they have can be filled.

Also, a lite bulb is nowhere as bright as the real sun and should not be confused with the sun. A litebulb has less lite then most of the places they rest in the shade. All you have to do to check this is, hold your monitor in your hand, place it under the lite bulb, look at its eyes, note how much the pupils dialate. Then take the monitor outside in the sun and check again. Then you can move to different degrees of shade and compare. All in all, a litebulb is not the sun, not even close.

Monitors need to hide and perfer to hide/shelter in very dark places, and they do this at any givin time in a 24 hour period. Actually they perfer hiding areas that go from completely dark, to where they can have their heads at the edge and see whats going on outside. They spend more time doing that, then any other activity. To watch, equals to monitor their surroundings. Their namesake.

So do what Jobi recomended and offer deep substrate and plenty of places to hide. Do that even if you decide to turn the lites off at night and use a heat pad. They still need dark choices, 24/7.

Why Jobi mentioned to get rid of all those other heat sources is because they only complicate controlling a range of temps. Your actually after a range of temps your monitor can pick from. Not one temp. With all those lites, its makes it difficult and complicated to control. One basking area, down to room temps, is very very easy and works very very well. Cheers

Thanks I am making one of the stack things so it will have a better hide Ill get rid of the other two lights and add some more leaves and stuff for burrowing. Thanks again for the info.