Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am planning on acquiring a pair of ackies in the near future and am currently working on setting up their cage. I have the plywood and 2x2 boards to build my "retes" stack. When I read the info from Proexotics their dimensions were 12x12 plywood with 2x2 boards between. They cut holes in the plywood for easier access from one level to another. For those of you who use the stack, do you cut the holes and if so what diameter hole for ackies? I have read so much information on the ackies but still remain uncertain as to the proper diet and how often to feed them as the info I have read is contradictory. I plan on feeding daily using dusted crickets 3x per week, pinkies 1x per week, lobster roaches 1x per week, SDZ 1x per week and superworms 1x per week. On occasion I will feed cooked chicken. Does this sound right as far as a healthy and varied diet? All suggestions are welcome. As you can see, I am preparing before I acquire the animals. Thanks for reading.

All of the other cooked meat etc has little to no nutritional value so why not just stick with what works and is more economical. What I mean is whole animals crickets, roaches, mice, etc. Ackies can live on dusted crickets as proven by several people and do so producing multiple clutches of eggs every year. The stack idea works but I think the holes through it may be slightly counterproductive to the design of the stack. Thats up to you to decide if you want to do that or not, make sure if ya do they are off center of each other and the stack has many levels.

Since I am the retes connected to the boards, I will give this a try. First, no holes in the middle, this is contradictory to th design of the boards. The holes turn the boards into a jungle gym instead of a home and shelter. Also. the spacers to keep the boards apart are suppose to be aprox. the height of the monitors using them. Monitors like tight spaces. Ackies particularly can live and shelter in cracks that are 1/2 their height. I have different boards for different sizes, I also put several size boards to give monitors their own choice. Then I do not stack them strait up, thats a human thing, I have no idea why people think thats nice. I alternate the boards, the first board is on the surface of the ground the second board in 1/2 on that board and 1/2 on the ground. You can do many combinations of this. This makes many many different areas for monitors to pick from. Remember, nothing is stopping you from doing both, for instance, the lower boards alternating and off center and the upper boards with holes and stacked. Now you have tight shelter and a jungle gym. Remember its about allowing to pick places only they know they need.

About diet, you can rely on dusted crickets(vitamins and calicum) to allow ackies to grow up, mature, reproduce and live a long life. But, the addition of other whole food items is absolutely great. I do feel your schedule is silly. there is no need to be so strict. They need food and all but the turkey is good food. The benefit of crickets is, you can throw more then they eat at once and they can eat them, at their leisure. Monitors do not eat once a day or so many times a week, they eat when hungry. At times, several times a day. Your job is to allow that with your monitors, in your set up and conditions. The turkey diet is good to keep in the freezer and use if you run out of whole food items.

Remember, its the results of providing all this and more that predicts how well you are doing. How fast they grow, how large they grow, how much they produce, how long they do it, how long they live after doing the preceding events. Those are what tells you if you did poorly or good or great, not the fact that you put them in the cage. Your job it to use the right tools and guide your animals towards success. As far a I know, there is no one setup that allows all this, not even in nature. In nature, when they out grow an area, they move to a more suitable one. So it is in captivity. F Retes

Thank you for your helpful response. I will move forward accordingly. The diet I stated wasn't meant to be carved in stone, just a sample of what I was thinking. It seems that crickets are the best staple with other types of food given to keep their diets varied and interesting. I look forward to getting a pair of ackies and watching all of their interesting behavior and being able to share some of my excitement with this forum. Thanks again.

Pam