Reptile & Amphibian Forums

what a good diet to feed them so they dont get obese and should i use a sand and dirt mixture,just bed and beast,or reptile carpet?

good reading!
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I feed mine all rodent. He's doing great on it. When mine was younger I used to feed him as much as he wants to eat almost everyday. Don't worry they don't get fat at that young age, but when they get older, I mean older...I mean old...then you have to watch out the amount of rodent yu give him.

The most important part.

Its cold blooded. You cannot say such things as, feed it as much as it wants to eat, unless you know the husbandry.

How much energy a monitor uses is directly related to its physical conditions and its mental conditions.

Young monitors(all reptiles) should grow long and slender(for its build) Then bulk out upon sexual maturity. Hmmmmmmmm how about most animals too.

You should gauge how much you feed, by the progress of the monitor. If you want it to grow quickly, feed it a lot. But make such its using its energy normally. If your monitor is growing lenght slowly, and girth quickly, then recheck the cage conditions. It may need more usable heat.

As a side note, I raise many many monitors at any givin time and I never ever feed them as much as they will eat and they grow like weeds. Most grow to adults within a few months.

So this "all they can eat" thing, totally baffles me.

So telling people to feed them all they can eat is most likely very very poor advice. That is until the person asking the question understands what good usable conditions are.

Say this keeper has a hotspot of 85F to 90F, that would allow the monitor to feed, but not use the energy properly. Then they would get an obese monitor with lots of problems. They followed you half baked advice, so why would it get obese?

Besides, what is a person with one monitor and is new to monitors doing giving advice?????? YOUR STILL LEARNING, keep learning, you have not allowed your monitor to do anything yet. ITs great its still alive, but come on, give it some time.

Don't take that wrong. You should be participating on this forum, just share you experiences, not give advice, show pics, growth rates, cool behaviors etc. But Please hold back from giving advice, your new. What do you know? You can share. There is a difference.