Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just thought i would post some pics. I really love his/her coloring. He/she is 18" from snout to tip of tail Tell me what you guys think!

Do some research and you'll find out what people here think. If you want your Sav to thrive then spend some time finding out how to care for it. There are another 100 threads that start exactly as your's does and your's will probably end then same way too.........

You don't have to be rude. If you new anything about me you would know that I am extremely experienced with reptiles and i know what i'm doing. I don't know exactly what your referring to though. Right now he is in a 36x18 cage (temporary for a few months) with 110 degree basking spot and the normal temp ranges about 85-90 degrees. He is fed a diet of rat pups, various insects and hard boiled eggs as a treat. I am debating if i'm going to be building my own cage soon or i might just buy one of the animal plastics enclosures, but i don't know how that will hold up to an adult monitor. I know the substrate isn't IDEAL but thats temporary until i find some good soil, but everything around here is full of fertilizers so aspen shavings was what i decided to go with at the moment. By the way i have owned many reptiles (chameleons, turtles, snakes, skins, tons of iguanas) I actually ran an iguana rescue for a couple years, so don't talk down to me like I’m just some impulse buyer. If anyone is interested here are a few more pics.

As I found out these forums are full of experts wich are waiting for the moment to tell you how dumb and stupid you are, as far as your prior reply from your first post I dont know if that was meant to help or be rude but I wouldnt worry about it it wont be the last. I have owned a few herps myself and still learning. It seems that if you havent owned herps for 30 years and arent reproducing by the thousands you are doing something wrong. When I post ?s here Im looking for advice not a lashing then advice, but at the same time there are some very knowledgible people here wich regardless if they seem rude or not have alot of experiance with herps of all kinds. What you might think is rude can be the way someone is expressing themselves over concern of the animal. So just relax and take the good with the bad you really have no choice there are no faces here just words thats all. I hope I dont get any lashings for this post LOL! and if I do oh well Im rubber........etc

yeah....
kingsnake forums are a place for advanced herp owners and thats it.
atleast thats the way it seems.
If you post anything on here just wait for the uppity comment by a Forum God to let you know how dumb you are.
lol.
Good luck with yer monitor.
--Cody

OK i wasnt going to post, but to claim you are such an expert, why is it in a chinchilla cage? and not on dirt. IM no expert myself, i dont even keep a monitor at the time being. but thats just obvious

Well is your read my post you would know why i'm using aspen shaving and not dirt. As for the cage it suits him fine at the moment. I live in southwest florida and that cage is perfect because it lets alot of natural sunlight in when is is outside in my screen room during the day without cooking him (i like him to get the natural sunlight during the day, then at night he comes in and get a ceramic heat lamp). Now if anyone can give me a really good reason why keeping him in that cage is such is disastrous idea, i would listen. Like i said i am trying to decided whether to custom build the cage or go through animalplastics.com So if any of you EXPERTS have any advice on that, that would be great. I did custom build all the cages for the iguanas so i do have a little experience in that (yeah a girl who can build, wowee!), but i really like the clean look of the animalplastics cages, plus it would take alot less time. (i have 2 kids now so i don't have as much free time on my hands)

I still think that nate had no reason to reply like that. I was just posting some pics. It's not like i came on here saying something like "I got a croc monitor a year ago and he just hasn't grown and looks sick, i feed him lettuce everyday in his 10 gallon aquarium, whats wrong with him" I mean something like that i could understand, but geeezzz.

I know, I should not do this, but its either this or go to home depot and hand over a bunch of money(monitor cage building stuff)

First, your monitor is nice, your cage is nice. But what does nice have to do with it???

As you have seen, you mostly get the inexperinced giving advice/comments to other inexperienced or to people with more experience. The advice givin is great, if you do not like it, not take it to heart. Heck, ignore it.

In my humble experience, its failure that causes all this bad attitude stuff. Monitor keepers seem to always fail, no matter what they do. Dirt no dirt, it does not matter if you fail for other reasons. And the case is, most here have failed, or will fail. That is the sad reality.

Its really all about your goals, if you want a monitor to be alive and look good, in a pretty cage, great. Your doing a good job. If you want your monitor to be a monitor(what a monitor wants), then that cage is all wrong. If you want your monitor to do the things its designed to do, you know, grow up and reproduce(show all assoiated behaviors), then that cage is again all wrong.

If you have a monitor to have a pet, then your cage is great. If you have a monitor to learn about what monitors are and do, then that cage and ones like it, are all wrong.

So its really all about you and what you want from your monitor.

One poster said something about if you do not produce zillions of babies. That poor poster is in need of some heavy thinking. There is a real line drawn in the sand. Those with experience understand, that monitors reproduce in the bare minimum of conditions. That is, anything less usually meets with them perishing in a short time. Monitors kept in anything near decent conditions produce like mice or parakeets, or pigeons. So the line is, monitors reproduce much like your dog or cat. And if you keep a dog or cat in conditions where they physically cannot reproduce, you surely understand that your doing something wrong. And its possible you can be fined for keeping dogs and cats that way. Well its the same for monitors. If they are halfway alive, they reproduce like pez despencers.

I guess people expect dogs/cats/mice to be able to reproduce. They do so, because all you have to do is meet basic needs. Yet, its a rare keeper that expects monitors to reproduce. They all are capable you know. So why don't you expect monitors to breed???? That is really a good question.

You do not have to hatch eggs or even have a female mated(like with dogs and cats) But if your keeping them healthy, like dogs and cats, they will cycle and make lots of eggs. This is what that other poster did not understand. I believe he was making it about people and their egos, and not about the actual monitors

For instance, your basking temps are marginally low and your ambient is a bit too hot. A basking area in the 130's is great, with a the ambient temps in the mid seventies is, oh so nice. The monitors want to be able to conserve energy by picking cool temps, and completing high demand functions by picking hot temps. They seem to think all those mid temps are somewhat useless. You can go hotter and you can go cooler, but you should not play middle of the road. You know, High ambients with no or little choices.

Another line in the sand is terms like "treats" for the life of me, I do not understand what a treat is to a monitor. It appears to me, its a treat if someone will feed them anything near what they want to consume when they are healthy. I just don't get the "treat" thing. I mean, if you want to feed them something because you just want to, good on you. But is it a treat?

Dirt, dirt is of no particular use or value, if it does not provide the ability to make a network of burrows and tunnels. You see, monitors live in things, like in the ground like a gopher. They live in tunnels and such. They do not only use them to sleep. They actually live in them. They do come out some, maybe like some ground squirrels. Maybe 1/4 up, and 3/4's down. Some species live inside trees or others inside rock cracks and crevices. Some species use the ground and trees and rocks. Depending on need. But all species spend a vast majority of their lifes inside something. They are inside living, not sleeping.

So dirt is to provide them with their real life, that is, to live underground. If you only cover the bottom few inches of a cage with dirt, then you may as well use sawdust or aspen or whatever.

Think of deep substrate as the material they build their houses with, and then think of the rest of the cage as their yard. I think this approach may hit the spot. Most posters here do not understand the use of dirt, as they do not understand that reptiles are designed to reproduce as a normal course of life.

Also, over the last ten years here, only two posters actually bred savs. The rest post like you do. like thousands of you. Thousands with reptile knowledge and only two that allowed savs to do what they are designed to do. I think this upsets lots of people. If you look at this from a neutral view, maybe we do not know a silly thing about savs. For all the "I know what I am doing" there almost no actual doing.

About your cage. You may understand, there is no room for enough dirt to allow a network of burrows. Hmmmmmmmmm kinda like giving you a small bathroom, and asking you to build your entire house in there. Yea, monitors are active and need space. If not, they may as well be pets. Cheers

Thank you, someone who can actually give useful information instead of cutting me down and not giving any useful suggestions. After reading what you wrote i will build my own. The animal plastics just wouldn't be able to give the monitor enough substrate to do anything with. (i still need to find some useable dirt though, thats the only reason i have aspen insted of soil) That’s what I was needing as far as info on deciding whether to build my own or buy a pre made cage. I just got a temp gun today to measure the temps (i was using a cheapo aquarium one to try and figure it out the first time) Here are the temps i took today. (when the cage is outside in my screen room, these might vary slightly during the day though) In the natural sunlight 119-121, in the shade area 82-84, in his burrow/hide (he has about 6" of aspen he digs in, under his cut out log thing) is 76. Here are the current temps with the tank inside. Under the heat lamp 123, rest of the cage averages out about 78.
Now for building the enclosure i am thinking about making it an out door one in my screen room which would have the advantages of being outside but also it would be protected from the elements. Even though i am in sough florida it does get chilly sometimes and was thinking about having a light censer hooked up to a red heat lamp so that it would automatically turn on at dusk. For the substrate i was thinking about how i can get it deep and still have a nice cage. I was thinking of 2 options. The first was just building the cage so it can be filled with a couple feet of dirt and maybe lining the wood with marine resin to water proof it. The second option is to get a some sort of water trough and building the enclosure around it, but i think the first option seems better because i would be coating the enclosure with the marine resin either way.
And I guess what I refer to as a "treat" is more something that he really LOVES (like eggs) that i might give to him once and awhile, but i know that it's not the best thing to feed him all the time. He also eats the shells, so i figure it's a calcium boost too.

Please if you have any more suggestions and comments, please post

First, there is nothing wrong with feeding eggs. Eggs can be a huge part of wild monitors diet. At least seasonally. Also, eggs are very good for monitors.

I would not feed eggs as a staple simply because its to much work.

I have not found monitors to love one food item over another. At least not how we think of it. They seem to gravitate towards food items by two things. One is ease of aquiring it and two, need. Then seem to understand what something is needed. Also size of food is important, at least to females. When carrying ovum or eggs, they simply perfer smaller prey items or items such as eggs because they again seem to know they do not have the room in their body cavities for larger prey items.

They may(theory) also understand what they can and cannot digest properly. For instance. If their health is marginal, they may look for prey items they can digest. Eggs seem to fit this bill as a compromised individual does not have to break down the hide or scales in order to digest the contents.

Also at times, nearly all the species I have worked with will consume fruit or leafy veggies. Just not on a consistant basis. Maybe like a cat, when they have reason to consume plants they do.

So to sum it up, I do not think they consider one prey item a treat. A treat is sorta something sweet that is not so good for you. There prey items are not consumed because one tastes better then the other. But more along the lines of availibility and need. Cheers

I would like to apologize for my useless post and beng rude to you. you seem like you do actually care and mean well. and have all intentions of absorbing the info you are given.

A lot of people are having success with roaches for food, i just started my colony so im no expert lol. but so far they are cool. i know they are restricted in florida, but a phone call to the dept. of agriculture can help with that.

good luck

What do you mean by success? I ask because I have not seen people who feed roaches have what I call success with monitors. What is your idea of success?

I think the word success is placed in the wrong area. That is, they the keepers can and do learn how to successfully keep and breed roaches, but they have not shown any particular ability to keep and breed the monitors. Or that roaches in a diet helps in that.

To breed is only to allow normal life functions. Again, you do not have to hatch the eggs or be a dealer, to allow life functions. To allow life functions should be normal, actually it is.

Another way to look at this is, you would not be successful with roaches unless they achieved life functions. So shouldn't that be the same for monitors?

I have been on here for many years and have not seen any continued success or pattern of success with those who breed roaches. Except in the breeding of the roaches, which is not the subject of this forum.

Also roaches are not really applicable for this species, size wise. You see, if you feed savs any normal diet and keep them in proper conditions, they will grow up within a few months and move on to a much larger type of prey. A 30 inch female or 40 inch male would consume all your colony within a few days. Adults savs can consume 50 to 100 roaches a day. I think a few rodents(rats/mice/etc) would be much easier to keep up with. Of course chicks of several types or eggs or fish plus insects can and be added to this staple of mice.(as a treat???) But are not really needed. That must be the difinition of treat.

So tell me again, what is success when keeping monitors. If its to keep one alive, heck you can do that with almost any diet including dogfood. So what good are roaches?????

Its my humble opinion that ration feeding is the main cause of failure with varanids. Ration feeding is the keeper counting out the prey items. I.E. heres your roach, heres your two roaches, etc. Non ration feeding is, feeding until the individual is full. You know, like you feed. Its not impossible with roaches, you would have to leave a supply of roaches in the cage for the monitors to feed on, at their leisure. I have a hard time invisioning that. Cheers

n

I was not trying to be rude. And in fact I wasn't, I was stating facts. Everything that has been discussed from this thread can be found in others on this exact forum. It's redundant, same questions same answers, same statements about experts, breeding zillions, and dirt, same responses to "rude" people. I'm no expert I'm just in the larvae stage of reptile keeping, in fact I know I'll fail but I hope to learn from those failures. I was just pointing out that It's all been said before and if you had skimmed the forum you'd have known that. Good luck with your monitor.

Nate

But if your wanting something new, then your in for a long wait. The reality is, ALL this stuff has been discussed for over a decade. But that is not the point is it?

What is new is, monitors are suppose to achieve normal life events. (its really not that new) If they don't then something is wrong. Its all that simple. The problem with varanids is, if you keep them well enough to make a clutch, they tend to make lots of clutches. In fact, its very hard to limit them to one clutch a year.

The problem is, people think they are achieving success if their monitor is alive tomorrow. Which indeed was a good goal, a very long time ago. But times have changed, now its commonplace for some people to breed generations of varanids and most kinds have been bred.

The task is, how to teach those newbies that is no longer a miracle for a monitor to live a few years. Its now expected for monitors to live and breed, like other living things.

I will admit, this task is harder then I would have thought. I believe people would rather believe commericals, then reality. Which means, people tend to fall for commerical items, like UV bulbs, suppliments, this and that, and not actually believe in the monitors. If you want your monitor to do well, you must first believe in your monitor. This is where most fail, they believe in the products, not the monitors. Cheers

IMO success doesnt mean breeding, i said nothing about breeding. so where you got that idea i am puzzled. success is keeping a healthy monitor for a long lifespan. savannahs are heavy insect eaters naturally, you can feed other items if you want, and may not have any problems. thats up to the keeper. Yes a sav will down 100 roaches per feeding, thats a given. thats why you develope a big colony first. I bought 1,000 to start mine with, and all will be adults and producing nymphs before i begin to feed from the colony. i will be producing about 500 per week. IMO thats a nice amount to add to any diet. why not alternate feeding, rodents one day and insects the next.

but its not up to me.

This is hard concept to grasp, because you have been taught and think you have to do something extra to breed reptiles, like to cycle by hibernating or photoperiod, etc.

The real hard reality is, you do not have to do anything to monitor to breed them, other then keep them healthy. Oh and have two sexes(which appears to be the hard part)

So to clarify this, to actually produce babies is not important. The ability to reproduce is very important. Monitors do this is the LEAST suitable health, not the best health. I often use this analogy, if you keep your dog or horse in such conditions it cannot physically reproduce, you can be arrested. Yet most(99%) of monitors are kept in such conditions they physically cannot reproduce.

The problem seems to be, people(you) have no gauge to tell if your monitor is healthy, other then its alive. So you say your monitor is healthy, but how do you know? Other then its heart is beating. I get the feeling you only think your monitors are healthy until they die young.

A healthy monitor, grows up and does so very quickly, it then reaches sexual maturity, it then reproduces and does so A LOT. And if supported, it does that for a very long time.

No offense, but all I can compare my breeding monitors to is the pet monitors people keep here. again no offense intended, but my heavy breeders outlive these so called healthy pets. And they do so by a very long period.

What is odd to me is, those of you that say breeding is not important, are the ones that do not keep monitors for long periods. Its your monitors that seem to perish first. Or, you simply get rid of them before they do.

The problem with this type of thinking is, without set goals, you have no way of gauging your monitors actual health, which leads to no improvement in how you keep them.

While you like to talk about long life with monitors, you have no idea of what your talking about. I get the feeling most of you are thinking a year or two. And most of you do not attain that time period.

Just for example, I have ackies that have multiclutched their whole life and I have a couple over 15 years of age. My original Male lacie is over 22 years of age and going strong. Hes a great great great grandfather.

In all reality, my small monitors, life a productive life, which ranges from 8 to 15 years. Larger monitors can life much longer.

Its this that leads me to think theres something wrong with the monitors that do not breed. They do not seem to live all that long.

Now this may be way out there, but I think of this at times. If all other things are the same, the only thing I can think of is, those non productive monitors die of excess stored energy. That is, they do not ever expend energy. When monitors breed, they expend all excess energy(fat) You do understand, monitors store energy. That is what they do. They feed at all oppertunities and store energy to be used later. They need the later.

Also, Its my bet that the interaction of reproduction gives them two things, most importantly is a reason to live. Please do not underestimate this.

I get the feeling being a pet does not qualify as a reason to live. And Two, reproduction gives them a outlet for stored energy.

So I am asking you, why are all these pet monitors dying at a young age??????

To summerize, I do not understand why pet monitors tend to die young, I am only guessing. There have been lots of really nice people here with really nice pet monitors. As far as I can tell, most have died.(their monitors, not them)Cheers

LOL you have read me entirely wrong. i'm all aware of your breeding records, ages and such. having a monitor that only lives a few years, IMO is the keepers fault for not providing the right care. personaly i dont kepp monitors, i read and talk about them a lot but i dont keep them. I plan to but ot right now. I see your point about releasing energy via breeding, but if your saying that all monitors need to breed, then every keeper would have to own 2. there must be other ways to realease energy. like chasing insects, diggable substrates, reasons to dig like earthworms in the soil, and various other ideas.

what im having trouble understanding is why you are arguing with me lol. all i said is she can feed roaches. now we are arguing about breeding lol.

We are discussing points of view. No more no less. You really need to understand, I could not care what others do. My concern is what I do.

If you want to do something different, and try something different, good on you. You are free to do or talk about whatever you want.

I am merely expressing what I(backed by whatever successes I have had) think is important.

Your also missing the point about breeding. If you do not want your dog to make puppies, you have it fixed. That should be the same thing you do with a female monitor. If a female monitor is healthy, she makes eggs. You do not have to have her mated, or dig up or incubate eggs. But she SHOULD lay eggs. As that is their design. When monitors meet the minimum level of success, they recruit. Same as your dog or cat.

Even most fish keepers understand, if you do not keep you fish right, they will not breed. Why is it so hard to understand for monitor keepers. If a female does not cycle and lay eggs, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG. The reason is, laying eggs is what they are designed to do with minimum conditions are met. Not maximum. When maximum conditions are met, they lay many clutches and or larger clutches. Cheers over and out.

If so should monitors be kept together in pairs all of the time or can they be introduced only for breeding cycles?

Did I offend? My apologies.

No sir, you cannot offend me here. I only get offended(when its about real reptile stuff) if I kill off a clutch of eggs, due to my own stupidity. Or kill off or injure a prefectly nice reptile, again thru my own errors. Or I get offended when I accidently run over a snake or other animal. Which I seem to have done lately.

But what someone says here, its only words and at a click of a button they are gone(exit thread, stage left)

To the real subject, I explained the introduction thing in an above thread, it was right above this, it somehow got gone/deleted. I have no idea why it got gone, it surely couldn't have been something I said. Or could it? Shay is taking blame for it, what did he say? did I miss something? So I should not try again or I may be put in time out.

Dude this place is getting tight. I wish the mods would tell us what is excepted on that given day, as it seems to be changing day to day and have little to do with the TOS. Unless I missed something, and I could have, nothing I read broke the TOS.

I guess the mods want this place to be meaningless, I am only guessing. As, anything of meaning, causes strong debate. Debate is the heavy discussion of a subject. With any debate, there is two or many more sides. I think this is not allowed here.

They really need to understand, in a debate/discussion, one side or the other is going to get offended, to be shown in bad lite, to be shown wrong is offensive by nature. If they are going to delete threads(whole threads) because somebody reacted to being offended, then they may as well get rid of these discussion boards. They should only delete the offending(against TOS) post, not the thread.

My feeling is, they have no idea what is important in the keeping of varanids. So without understanding, they delete the good with the bad. Cheers

Is it possible to answer my question? About keeping breeding pairs together or apart.

Hey Frank,

I feel the same way about the mods deleting whole threads of good information when all they really should do is take out the offending pieces.

As far as the introduction post I think you are mentioning, I don't think it got deleted. Its still right above this...the subject you put was "the reality is" if that is indeed the one you are referring to..

Very cute i have 1 that has great color i been told but urs is so cute but not sure just thought i throw this in incase but moniters they has such sharp nails a concern when older w cages is that they can tear screen and scratch through cages so maby thought plactsic and thin wood . Mines 2 years old but still small. sry u cant realy see the color .