Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey every one
my name is kirk all of you may no me from the monitor forum well i have slowly started to fall in love with dwarf caimans and have been doing some reasearch i was thinking in a bout a year or so about getting a pair and building them a nice roomy enclousre around 2x6x2(until they reach roughly 2 feet) then they would get a nice 12x4x4 and then there own room prolly around 16x8x8 in my basement
i was mainly curious tho of how deep the water should be i have herd only about 6 inches since they need to touch the ground but wuld giving them 6 inches and then a 1 foot deep spot be better for them or just 6-8 inches all the way
thanks a million
kirk

I personally think you need to go deeper. Our P. palpebrosus has water that ranges from a foot to nearly 3.5 feet deep and in all honesty, he prefers the areas that are deeper (but have lots of cover like submerged/surface level drift wood, etc to make coming out much easier). Water only 6-8" won't give him many opportunities to do what comes naturally for them. It wasn't too long ago that I visited an alligator exhibit in Wisconsin (shall remain nameless considering it was pretty pathetic). Their featured exhibit provided perhaps less than 8" of water for full grown american alligators! That just seemed absolutely ludicrous to me. No opportunities for swimming, submerging, foraging, etc. If I were you, I'd provide shallow areas as you plan but also provide some deeper holes in your enlosure (but they must be easy for the croc to get out). Just make sure you realize that a dwarf caiman is NOT a monitor in terms of personality. They stay fairly aggressive all throughout their life even with lots of interaction. They are a look but don't touch animal to keep but I'm sure you already know that.

Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center

>>hey every one
>>my name is kirk all of you may no me from the monitor forum well i have slowly started to fall in love with dwarf caimans and have been doing some reasearch i was thinking in a bout a year or so about getting a pair and building them a nice roomy enclousre around 2x6x2(until they reach roughly 2 feet) then they would get a nice 12x4x4 and then there own room prolly around 16x8x8 in my basement
>>i was mainly curious tho of how deep the water should be i have herd only about 6 inches since they need to touch the ground but wuld giving them 6 inches and then a 1 foot deep spot be better for them or just 6-8 inches all the way
>>thanks a million
>>kirk
-----
Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, IL

hey
so would giving the babies a foot be fine then i just herd they would rather be able to touch.
well thank your for the great info
kirk

I only give my baby a half foot at most