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I was surprised yesterday with a beautiful baby nile monitor. Unfortunetely I had never researched them until I was surprised with it. I wanted a savannah, so i know a lot about their care, and i have ten snakes so i am familiar with basic reptile needs. this is however my first monitor.
everything i have read online is really just negative towards the lil guys and rather than giving good care advice it just says not to get one in the first place.
i need cage set-up advice, feeding regiments and handling tips please.

>>I was surprised yesterday with a beautiful baby nile monitor.
>>Unfortunetely I had never researched them until I was
>>surprised with it. I wanted a savannah, so i know a lot
>>about their care,

Fortunately for you, the care of all monitors is very similar.

>>and i have ten snakes so i am familiar with basic reptile
>>needs. this is however my first monitor.

Unfortunately for you, the care of monitors is very different from that of snakes. Trying to keep a monitor using experience you gained with snakes doesn't end well for the monitor.

>>everything i have read online is really just negative
>>towards the lil guys

And there's a very good reason for that. Nile monitors can be very beautiful and impressive animals. They are also a pain to work with, both metaphorically and literally. Expect blood - yours. Expect a very active, destructive, powerful, fast, and agile pet that is afraid of you and will do whatever it can to defend itself from your perceived aggression.

Some Nile monitors can calm down to the point where a human can meaningfully interact with them. This is not typical. If you expect this, you will probably be disappointed. If you do not expect this, there is a chance you will be pleasantly surprised.

>>and rather than giving good care advice it just says not to
>>get one in the first place.

Since it is too late for that now, I applaud your attitude. Some people find them rewarding animals despite their paranoid disposition. I myself have had one delightful Nile monitor companion (and far too many that were terrors).

>>i need cage set-up advice, feeding regiments

The Pro Exotics web page has good advice on keeping monitors. Since the care of all monitors is basically the same, you can apply this to your animal
http://www.proexotics.com/care_sheets.html
http://www.proexotics.com/FAQ.html

>>and handling tips please.

Simple. Don't. Seriously. With high strung, suspicious monitors like Niles, handling causes stress. Stress makes the animal associate you with something unpleasant, teaching it to fear you. This makes it resist harder, leading to more stress.

What you want to do is get your monitor to trust you. This means letting it come to you on its own terms. Let it come to think of you as a provider of good things - particularly food. Do your best to not do anything to frighten, stress, or upset your pet. A young monitor will be afraid of everything, so at first you will get no meaningful interaction with it. As it matures, however, it will grow bolder. Eventually, it may come to look forward to seeing you since it knows it will be fed. As it becomes more comfortable with you, you can try to interact with it more. It might let you touch it. It might even come and climb on you, or at least sniff you. This is good, you will be making progress. In time it may even allow you to pick it up. If you reach this point, congratulations!

Oh, and check to see if it really is a Nile monitor. Ornate monitors are often sold as Niles. In my experience, ornates tend to have a calmer disposition, but get a bit bigger and are a bit more powerfully built.

Best of luck,

Luke

thank you, that was very helpful.
I do have a lot of experience with animals that are just to be looked at and respected (viper boa, green tree python, pacman frog, western diamondback rattler, sidewinder). i will save my cuddling for my red-tails and my rats lol.
It turns out it is an ornate nile monitor, if the descriptions i read are true, so i really hope it is lol

ok, so he is only about a foot long head to tip of tail, so i have him in a 29 gallon aquarium right now. he has a very big corner water dish, about 2-3 inches deep so he can swim/soak. i have terrarium carpet in it now, because i need to know what is best for digging for them, like sand vs. reptile mulch. He has a hide-box that is big enough for him to completely turn around and be completely hidden in which is right above his undertank heat mat. i plan on getting a heat light tomorrow, is red or ceramic better for them?

thank you guys in advance for your help and remember i was surprise with him, which is the only reason i am unprepared and i sincerely want to learn everything i can to keep him healthy.

>> i have terrarium carpet in it now, because i need to know
>> what is best for digging for them, like sand vs. reptile
>> mulch.

Go to your local nursery and landscaping store and get some basic dirt (fill dirt). They usually have huge piles of the stuff that you can buy by the cubic yard. That will work better than reptile mulch. Sometimes one variety of dirt doesn't work so well. If that's the case, go back to the nursery and get a different kind of dirt.

>> He has a hide-box that is big enough for him to completely
>> turn around and be completely hidden in

Keep in mind that what a monitor wants is to feel squished in by its hide spot. A tight squeeze means security. Roomy hides will make it nervous (not as nervous as no hides at all, but not as good as a tight hide it can squish into).

>> i plan on getting a heat light tomorrow, is red or ceramic
>> better for them?

I would use a halogen flood lamp, myself.

>> thank you guys in advance for your help and remember i
>> was surprise with him, which is the only reason i am
>> unprepared and i sincerely want to learn everything i
>> can to keep him healthy.

I am going to guess you have a screen top on your terrarium. This is bad news. Monitors need it hot and humid. If you make it hot but have screen on the top, the hot air evaporates the water in the cage and then rises out of the cage, pulling in dry air from outside. So go to your local hardware store, get a sheet of plexiglass or acrylic sheeting and a cutting tool for plexi, and cut the plexi to fit over the screen to block air movement. If you have light fixture that rests on the screen you can cut a hole in the plexi for the light to shine through. Otherwise, you can get some wiring nuts, cheap porcelain light fixtures, an extension cord, and a couple small pieces of wood and make a light fixture that allows you to screw the bulb in on the inside, which attaches to the top of the cage.

In the end, you will need a much larger enclosure for your critter, because your critter will become much larger. Feed stores sell large metal troughs for watering livestock. These can become the basis for a cage. See the Pro Exotics website links that I posted earlier - or follow this link
http://www.proexotics.com/FAQ2.html#lizard_monitorhousing
and wait for the entire page to load so it takes you to the right section of the page. There are lots of pictures of what you should be doing.

If you do a good enough job, it is likely your lizard will eventually outgrow even a trough cage. You may need to convert an entire bedroom into a lizard cage. Good luck, and start investing in power tools.

Luke