Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi-
I am a graduate student and will soon be embarking on a study with Nile Monitors. Very shortly, I will be recieving 12 of these guys, and I was wondering what would be the best way to set them up. I have considerable amount of experience with the big snakes, but not a whole lot with lizards (especially monitors). Any tips or suggestions on how you would set these guys up would be great appreciated. Thanks!
~Brian Ott

I hope you have alot of room when housed properly they will grow quickly and will need large cages for each of them. Unless your study is real short but if so then where are you going to put them when your done? You'll still need to house them after wards right?

There are plenty of sites that tell you how to house monitors properly so I wont go into all of that. Just do a forum search on here or type it in on a search engine you'll find the info., your looking for.

May I ask what this study is?

Monitors are very basic in their physical needs, there are many care sheets with that information, but, and thats a big but. The success of monitors is not based on their physical reqirements, but(huge tracts of land, but) instead its based on their behavioral needs.

You may be better off looking into the requirements of many of the larger birds, then applying that to ecto-therms. Good Luck and please fill us in. Frank

As for housing them together goes that all depends on how they egt along. Sometimes they do fine together sometimes they do not. It is not a well 1 male is always fine with 2 females sort of thing it is a well this one gets along with this one or this one doesnt like any of them etc. But if raised up together from babies you'll have a better chance of them finding there spoot and fitting in. But you'll always have to keep an eye on them.
If you studying there metabolism you might want to keep them all seperate or one will eat more then the other etc. making it hard for your research to stay consistant.

Use Dirt for substrate.

To light the cages you can use a room light but it will not heat the cage.. it is best to heat each cage individually with a basking light or flood light not a spot bulb.

Ambient temps for the room do not matter much unless it effects the cage temps. You cannot heat the room and expect the cages to be heated that way though. Each cage needs it's own heat again making your study hard to make everything exact. Everytime one gets more heat then the other or less food it is going to digest faster. But if your not comparing them all to each other then you should be fine.

As for the metabolic rate of them not digesting. Seeing they are cold blooded they are effected by heat. Cool them down the metabolism slows warm them it speeds up. Or atleast thats how I was taught. it will be interesting to see what you find out with your studies. Keep us updated.

Actually, when it is time to get any data from these animals, they will be separated. When we are getting data they are in very controlled environments with constant temps and I dictate how much each animal eats (5% of body mass, 10%, 15%, etc.). Each animal will be acclimated to any certain temp we want it to be at before any metabolic rates are measured. We have done this quite a bit for other animals, just not Nile monitors. I am basically trying to figure out the best way to keep them happy inbetween actual testing times. What kind of temps do you recommend for basking spots? I suspect if the room is kept at 80 degrees, this will be good for an ambient temp, but if it is not, let me know. Thanks for the response
~brian

There is only one problem with keeping the room at 80 degrees and calling that an ambient temp. . You have them in a cage in this cage you'll have a basking sight or two. The temp. you'll want for that area is 130 to 150. Now when you do this it will raise the cage temps. if the outside is heated also it might overheat the cool end of the cage not allowing the animal to thermoregulate.

I have this problem here as I keep my animals partly indoors partly outdoors. works ok but if I am not careful on cage design it gets much to hot and much to humid. It is best if you can control the outside temps surrounding the cage not to heat it and say that is the ambient of the cage. But if you must like in my case then you just build the cage to suit that situation.

But you'll want a temperature gradient within the cage a cool side of say 70 to 80 and a warm side with the basking area of 130 to 150.

Hope this helps. I may just be over thinking as usual.

Thanks a lot for your help; I really appreciate it. I keep a large number of snakes at school for my work, as well as a couple retics and various other species at my house for pets. But, I have never had any extensive experience with lizards such as these. Anyways, I appreciate it and hopefully in a few months I'll still have all of my fingers...

Also, you may not be the person to complete such a study. I believe your major professor should be the one explaining this to you.

First, in order for the information to be meaningful, you should already understand and have expert experience with varanid husbandry. The questions you ask are beginer(please no offense)

Niles can obtain a lenght of over two meters. You must understand in order for your information to be meaningful, those that obtain that lenght quickly are the ones that should be studied. They can do this in a very short time. Within a year or two.

You must have the ability to understand that. Monitors have an extreme ability to metabolize, but only if needed and the conditions are right. IF you do not understand those conditions, then your information will be like, taking the performance information on a parked sportscar. It simply will be useless.

You should be asking questions such as, what are the performance standards or extremes of various species and which species would be a good study species. Remember, monitors are exto-therms and respond directly to their enviornmental conditions. They are respond directly to their behavioral conditions. Lack of application in either of these areas will make your results invalid and useless(as is with most information similiar to yours)

Its called context, is the information you recieve from successful or unsuccessful individuals. Truth is, you can recieve a million different results from your group of twelve. I believe the context should be directed to successful individuals, or again it will be worthless.

I have no reason to understand why you picked niles, other then they are cheap. But they are a very poor choice. By your naive questions, you do not understand what you are getting into. I may be wrong, but I think it would be very difficult to keep twelve niles in a condition that would be worth measuring. Unless you have excellent housing(very very expensive). A better choice would be argus monitors, V.panoptes horni, They perform at high levels in the broadest range of husbandry. They also are much smaller. You fail to understand that a young adult nile would be five times the mass of a similiar argus, and many thousand times the mass of a similiar Ackie, V.acanthurus. The larger the mass, the more support they require. Again from the questions you ask, you do not understand what this support is or means. In reality, all these species have the same(about) range of metabolism.

The ability for you to be successful, would surely depend on your ability to maintain them successfully. With monitors, the smaller the better.

Finally one last thought. I find that science wants to quantify results, yet you were taught that only a small percentage survives, I believe its about time, science starts to study the ones that survive and not the ones that are food for other animals. Please quanify the results of successful individuals, as they are the meaningful ones.

I am not saying any of this to offend you. It surely should have been said by your professor. If you do not understand what I am saying then your results will only be good for toilet paper. Good luck F

Contack Danniel Bennett. He is the author of many books and papers. Hes also a field biologist.

We were entertaining just such a study, after he was here and realized that subjust was sorely misunderstood.

He is also giving a talk at the IHS meetings in Houston, I believe, the weekend of Sept 19 or so. You may attend and make a visit then. OH yea, hes from the UK.

mampam.com is his site i believe, good luck F