Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey all, long time lurker. Had a question.

I've very much enjoyed the discussions and pics, but have had a hard time determining this. In some of JPsShadow's pics I've noticed more than one monitor in some of those enclosures. I realize not all of them are waters, but some very much look like it. Were these during breeding times, or do you house some of your waters together?

Has anyone here had success doing this? From what I understand they aren't very territorial in the wild and do seem to have capacity for greater density than most other asian lizards.

I personally have two and while they do seem to get along beautifully when together, I don't want to risk that my male would ever hurt my female, and thus they're never together unless under my supervision. Otherwise they're housed seperately.

My animals are both relatively small; my male is around three years old and just shy of five feet, while my female is two and a little over three feet. Up to now they've been housed next to each other sharing the same airspace but seperated from direct contact except for supervised tub time, at which point they get re-acquainted and then happily settle down for a nap together.

The next set of enclosures going up will occupy a 7x10 foot space divided in half with a removable screen, that way they can remain familiar but I can still keep them seperate if needed, or remove the screen and let them share the entire space. I'm just not sure how advisable it would be to do so (remove the screen). It is being designed in such a way that most of the shared wall will be a sight-block to reduce stress, only the front third or so will be screen.

And I call it screen, actually it is heavy-duty ocean aquanet, I've no qualms about them tearing through this stuff, I can barely cut with wirecutters as it is, even though it isn't wire-based.

I'd love to hear more experiences from other water keepers who've put their animals together.

Didn't get any replies, so I decided to go ahead and give this a shot.

I've been keeping a close eye on them. My female has always been fiercely independent. The male spent a good four hours working to dominate her, I was getting concerned as things were starting to get quite rough in there. Then, suddenly, she submitted to him and things have been just great ever since. They act very, very much like my pair of tree monitors (which have been together at least two years now with no incidents).

I'm quite hopeful that this may actually work after all.

Of course that's not a permanent home, it's a temporary enclosure I threw together while I continue to build the much, much larger habitat in my basement. And I do have back-up caging to seperate them should something unexpected happen. However, I'm quite encouraged by this behavior so far. They readily share basking areas, hides, water, and have been sharing food from the same bowl now with no serious mishaps. I'm very pleased.

Those are very nice monitors! I don't have any (yet), but one of the larger reptile stores I go to has a pair of full grown Water Monitors housed together in a large enclosure and they seem to get along fine.

That's encouraging! I'd like to hear more about them. I've never seen anyone do this before, but I figured if given the right conditions they very well could live together. Water monitors aren't really territorial, and while I realize they're different from other monitors, behavior similar to that of my tree monitors has me thinking I'm on the right track.