Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey all. I have just purchased a juvenille Mangrove Monitor on an impulse buy more or less. It was bought from the White PLains Ny reptile expo. I have had pythons and reptiles before,but never a monitor. I was just wondering if someone can give me information on general topics of care for this reptile. I've been looking around for caresheets, but can't seem to find much on this specific breed of Monitor.

My main questions are about feeding. What, how much, and how often.

Thanks in advance

It will eat a ton, poop more, require a huge cage or maybe just your room, use a ton of electricity and cost even more money. It sounds like a good impulse buy and I hope you have a ton of disposable income.
Nate

I love indicus, they are very beautiful, those iv kept grew up to be very friendly and inquisitive, the only real problem iv ever experienced with them is there very sharp claws, but this is true of all indicus related monitors.
Indicus where more fun for me to watch because of there aquatic nature, setting them up in a semi aquatic cage will allow you to witness many behaviours you wouldn’t see with most other species, walking and foraging under water, scrubbing on a log or rock under water is a favourite way to rid of old skin, they will turn over flat rocks and gravel to seek out Cray fish, these are behaviours they share only with mertensis and mitchels.

Yes they are medium size, but none worst then dumerils, rudicolis, panopte, bosch and surly much smaller then waters and BT.

Indicus are one of the most interesting species to keep and study, easy to care for and tough as nails.

Read Pro-exotics water monitor care sheet and enjoy your new monitor.

Excellent post Jobi.

I think Mangroves are more like V.mitchelli and V.panoptes, as being strongly semi-aquatic. Mertens are highly aquatic when compared to other monitors. Mertens have actual structural aquatic adaptions, like head/nose shape, body shape, tail shape. The semi-aquatics, like V.indicus, V.mitchelli, V.panoptes, V.nilenticus(sp) etc. Are generally very normal in structure. Maybe only small/minor adaptions.

Still you gave great advice.

For the original poster, monitors require lots more effort, money, care and support then snakes. But they reward you with far more day to day enjoyment. In a sense, they are snakes on speed. They do everything faster, and that at times can be a problem. Cheers