Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've heard that Frank Retes has had a lot of success with Australian varanids thriving and reproducing under 24/7 basking lights with no UVB, on a diet mainly consisting of rodents.
I'm just curious if that's true, and if so, what species have bred under those conditions and how long they've been kept that way? How often do are rodents fed vs. how large/active are the monitors eating them? What else is offered to the monitors? Has the 24/7 light method been successful with tropical water/ground dwelling monitors (water monitors, etc) and also the arboreal tropical monitors (prasinus, black roughneck, etc)? What supplements are used, if any?

More generally, how do you folks keep humidity up with hot hot basking lights? Has anyone heard of and/or tried the new product out by Northwest Chameleons called Rept-Aid?

Have anyone successfully kept and bred Dumeril's monitors? If so, how did you sex them? At what length/weight were they when they bred/were sexable? What were your temperature gradients? Diet? How did you keep the pair?

Any input on the dumeril's would be helpful, I've had a hard time finding reliable information on them. I've got one now and it seems to be doing well but I'm curious about other ways of keeping them. I'd like to eventually breed them but I have no idea if there's a way to reliably sex them. I keep calling mine a male, but truthfully I'm not sure what gender it is.

Thanks in advance!
~jenny
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)

Hmmmmmmm I have produced thru many generations 23 or so species, from Australia, africa, asia and indo. All kept and raised to adults with constant lite and no UV bulbs.

As far as all rodent diet, I do not know where you get such things. I recomend whole prey items. We use insects and rodents. But we have raise successfully many individuals on only insects and only rodents, just to test how it would effect them.

And example of a few species is, we have done kings to crocs in this manner.

As adults, we keep the larger species outdoors or in indoor outdoors. But the odatria or smaller species are kept indoors.

With our methods, all species have produced in a year or less, with the smaller species producing successfully as fast as four months of age. Medium species such as V.flavirufus, producing at 6 months of age.

So no, I have no reason to listen to, UV bulbs are needed. You can if you like. By the way, my oldest lacie died at 23 years of age, and i have a 18 year old ackie now, I hatched her. Cheers

So with your outdoor pens, you use just ceramic heat emitters or something similar to heat them constantly? By being outdoors the larger ones are getting a day/night cycle by default it sounds. My monitor is kept indoors, can't even seen a window, and even when I've left the light on until past midnight, he goes to bed every evening around 7. Do your captive bred monitors still go by an innate circadian rhythm or are they active throughout the night too?

Any success with dumerilli or rudicollis?
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)

Are indoors, so by default that day/night theory is out the window.
Ive seen many pictures of his buildings, and the cages inside, lots of cages! By the way, no windows either.
Hes not the only one who doesnt use so called "day/night cycles", what many of us do is offer a basking spot that allows them to bask any time they choose to, not on our schedule. Yet in the process our cages allow for them to find darkness, and cool areas at the same time.
Aside from smaller monitors Ive kept that ate insects when younger mostly, all have eaten rodents, and birds, mostly, with the majority of their diet being rodents. Ive kept some that ate nothing but rodents. That diet works just fine for them.
I only used Miner-all with insects on occasion, never any supplement with rodents, its not needed.

A lot of imported animals still have an instinctual circadian rhythm that they follow, which would lead to a bedtime around when the sun goes down. That's why I asked about his captive bred monitors - if they've never been outside, do they still follow a day/night cycle or is it constant activity and sleep as needed, regardless of time of day?

I had asked FR specifically because he's the one I'd heard of that has had success breeding multiple species of monitors. Success with breeding generally equals successful husbandry, so I was curious. A lot of people can claim that their animal is alive under such and such conditions, but alive and thriving are not necessarily the same thing.

I distrust forums and the internet generally speaking because...well.. look at the average poster. "I WANT A NILE MONITOR HURRRRRR"
What've you kept and bred successfully? Have you by any chance bred dumeril's?
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)

I believe your being very simplistic. The reality is, no monitor I know of, comes out when the sun comes up and goes in when it goes down.

All monitors that I know of come out for short periods when temps permit and go in and out during various parts of the day and night, and yes, I have seen many species active at night.

Depending on season, monitors may never come out during the hot part of the day, and in fact, in many parts of oz, they come out mainly near dark or at night.

Also, because they are IN, does not make them inactive. As many species live their lives mostly in the dark, such species as V.gilleni and V.pilbarensis, hurt in the dark crevices or under loose bark. They live THERE, and they HUNT there, and they bask there. So this in or out thing depending on a litebulb is very naive to me.

Which is why I do not feel its important, then after a long very successful history of letting monitors go in or out on their schedule, I have no reason to think otherwise.

It do understand its easy for me to see this as I live where this occurs on a daily basis. Cheers

>>I believe your being very simplistic. The reality is, no monitor I know of, comes out when the sun comes up and goes in when it goes down.

By "in" I'm referring to bedtime - I know monitors sleep, and need to sleep, and what I've seen with the species at work is that around 6 (when the white lights go off) they all go to bed - that is, they find a corner and go to sleep. This is especially true in winter months, when it's dark out by 6, and less so in summer, when it's still bright. My monitor in particular I notice tends to go to 'bed' when the sun goes down, despite the fact his cage doesn't allow for him to see the one window in my room.

>> All monitors that I know of come out for short periods when temps permit and go in and out during various parts of the day and night, and yes, I have seen many species active at night.

Cool. I wonder why mine (and those at work) don't remain active even with the lights on. I've upped the heat/light in my cage and my guy is still going to bed around when it gets dark out (right now, 7:30-8:00). I notice he does move around a little, but the cage is never as ransacked as it is at the end of the day, which to me indicates less intense activity, and also somewhat matches an article I read from the mid 90s that theorized Dumeril's might be somewhat nocturnal.
I'm just curious about the difference between what you describe your monitors doing and what mine's doing. With your imported (I assume with some species you started with imported subadults/adults) animals, did they become active at night immediately or did it take some time?

>> Depending on season, monitors may never come out during the hot part of the day, and in fact, in many parts of oz, they come out mainly near dark or at night.

I notice that with rattlesnakes in my area. Everything I read about them says diurnal, but I have yet to see them out anytime other than dawn or dusk. Crespuscular baskers, I suppose the term would be.

Are you living in Australia where the species you're talking about live?

~jen
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)

BASICALLY THE NEW CAGE IS PITIFULLY INADEQUATE FOR A MONITOR THAT SIZE. I DON'T MEAN TO BE OFFENSIVE AND I KNOW YOU DON'T HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT TO DO. For a lizard that size you need and enclosure at least twice the length of it and the width at LEAST as wide as it is long and thats NOT adequate long term. It's fat, not hot enough, can't move around, and will die in a very short time as most Savannas do because their cheap and purchased by folks who mean well but have NO idea how to keep one. A cage the size of the one you are building is barely adequate for the dwarf Varanids much less a Savanna. I keep the slender 2-3' Tree Monitors in 6' x 6' x 6' cages and anything less would not be fair to them. That size is really not adequate for an adult Savanna...Sorry and please don't take this the wrong way as it's NOT posted in a critical mean way but is the truth...

These are small Monitor enclosures
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

....I have a hunch you weren't talking to me about that one, because I haven't mentioned a thing about cage sizes yet.

~jen
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)

No they dont have instinctual circadian schedules, etc. They come out and go in when they need to or conditions allow for it. Ive bred red ackies, and many other species of reptiles. Ive kept monitors now since the early 90s, and both of my current monitors (reduced my collection it became too much work and not enough time or fun) have been thriving now longer than 1000nds of people who have posted here in that time and disappeared when their monitors died.
Dont trust most forums and the info about keeping monitors in sterile cages and on newspaper, etc. Dont worry about worthless UV and light cycles, learn and understand what makes them do what they do and thrive.
Ask lots of specific questions about basic husbandry, and environment, about food sources, and keep and open mind, seems alot of what you may have been told about monitor husbandry is not important at all for them, or useless.
Heres my little girl.

I think what I'm leaning towards is that a lot of my information is outdated, or geared towards herbivores/the incompetent.

I do also believe that monitors develop a circadian rhythm - they do have a third eye on top of their head for the sole purpose of light detection (and it's capable of detecting wavelengths of light we can't even see), and it's very difficult for me to completely disregard that full-spectrum lighting would have any impact on their behavior.

In any case, I'm keeping an open mind and hoping that an open mind is at the other end of the computer screen too. I don't like to say "Do this!" without a reason, so I've researched and read about UVB impact on humans and animals (did you know one study found that 1/3 of elderly bone density problems were simply due to lack of adequate sun exposure?) and have a hard time swallowing that it's completely unnecessary.

In any case, necessary or not, it makes my animals look pretty when they're under them, so under them they stay.

~jen
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)

I think that there is no way currently to prove or disprove what the pinneal eye does for them, or what it tells them.
Sam Sweet years ago made a great post about light intensity, he talked about how light intensity not UV effects when they sleep. He also mentioned that the light intensity at the time they go to sleep is 25 times higher than the brightest light bulbs, that when they are awake the light intensity was several times higher than when they are going to sleep. There is no way any lightbulb can effect their sleep schedule, like FR has said a thousand times in the past, they are lightbulbs, not the sun, so there is no way a lightbulb can imitate the sun.
Full spectrum lightbulbs do exactly what you saw, they fool our eyes into seeing colors that are not so evident, or that we dont notice without them.
By the way, bone density in old people and the subject of monitors being healthy in captivity are two different worlds.
I used to help a friend that had a reptile rescue for years, he had so many species that were brought to him with a million health problems that were always associated with the lack of UV lighting by so many people, or the lack of dagfood, etc in their diets. These animals or all species were brought in with permanent, long term, disabling, and detrimental health problems. Most of them recovered in simple conditions that allowed for choices and a simple reliable diet not what some pet product company teaches people that they need. No UV lights, all predatory reptiles were fed rodents, chicken peeps, crickets, roaches (whichever was appropriate to that animal, not any variation). Some of the original owners never recognized their old animals ina few weeks to a few months, that vast of improvement.
Sounds like you work in a petstore. I guessed that you were taught what you are posting about by what the manufacturers of these products that make them such a fortune, they tell you to tell customers in turn.
Ive tried these products and compared they with loads or reptiles, fancy foods, canned products, UV bulbs of all kinds, full spectrum bulbs, etc. No difference in how I keep them any other way.