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Hello, I recently purchased a Varanus dumeril after not having a monitor of any kind for 15 years. I might as well be a beginner but I am pretty obsessive in my approach to things and have made sure I have followed all the current husbandry info I could find. The dumeril is currently about 16 inches long and eating quite well. From what I have read, its never good to pull an animal from its hide. I must admit I did this a few times before I came across the precautionary instruction in my reading. I have, however, noticed that whenever I wake the monitor from its hiding spot either it be the wood stacks or Tupperware container covered with dirt and filled with moss and moist soil, the animal will eat readily without any fear of me and will then walk towards me and soak for a while. It then goes back to its hiding spot usually - which is the opposite one from which I have woken the animal up in. The monitor doesn’t seem to be afraid of me and has eaten from my hand at one occasion. I don’t handle the monitor currently besides Monday when I soaked the animal for an hour. I’ll even throw a few crickets in the soaking container which it eats as well. My dilemma is that the monitor does hide a lot. I consider this normal behavior, but I fear if I did not make the effort to wake the animal from its hiding spot…the food would likely stay uneaten. I am assuming the animal is eating more by waking it . Am I making the right decision? I’ve had the monitor for about three weeks. Its eaten an assortment of crickets, discoid roaches, small amounts of turkey, smelt, and freshwater whole head on shrimp. The person I purchased the animal from fed turkey from time to time and I have mostly used it to flavor the other food that it did not seem interested in until I made it smell like turkey now it eats every thing. I will also add I only move the hide when feeding the animal. Once again its eating by me doing so and associating my presence with food and something positive.

I think you're on the right track.

It's good you know that unnecessarily stressing your monitor isn't a good thing. I know it is tough to leave them be sometimes as we all worry.

I would give him a little space and keep a keen eye to make sure that he is eating and not getting too dehydrated. Hiding is normal and it by itself should not cause worry. He is young and I assume CB/CH or WC; he's also still getting used to his new surroundings. No need to wake him or remove the hide when feeding, he will eat if he is hungry. If he doesn't than there may be other underlying issues to address.

Since you don't go into detail about your husbandry I will add a couple general recommendations. Provide as many hiding, basking, climbing and digging options your enclosure will allow. This along with a heat/humidity gradient will help him pick where he feels most comfortable.

Stick with crickets and mice as a staple. It would be prudent to dust the crix regularly since he's still growing rapidly. The roaches, smelt, and whole shrimp are ok. Ditch the turkey or make yourself a sandwich.

This forum and others can be great resources. There are a couple very knowledgeable people who are gracious enough to provide us all with invaluable information and insight.

Good luck and please keep us updated.

Pretty much following everything I have read on proexotics to the best of my ability. The turkey was only used to flavor the stuff he wasn't used to eating yet. I have also included information from a care sheet from the guy who had the site roughneckmonitor.com. The cage is a mellanite 2 by 3 foot hes still pretty small and i will be graduating him to a trough cage come January or sooner. I will also be getting a fogger that is regulated not sure of the term. Right now he has a fogger i turn on manually 3 times a day or as much as i can. ambient temp is 85 temps in the cage range from 95 to all the way down to 79 in one corner. I have guttering and reptic stacks all through out the cage. The only problem Im having is the basking temp i can only get it to 110 without overheating the cage. Ive never seen him bask and seems comfortable with the setup. The next cage Im building will be designed with that it mind. Just finished paying off the home depot card so looking fwd to it. I realize Ive got a few terms here wrong as far as name just didn't feel like looking them up to write my reply. Ill back off on removing him from the hide. Hell still eat i just figured since he was eating so readily in front of me i must not be stressing him out to much. Also why not roaches? Ive already got a colony going. Haha like i said Im new but i usually dive into things 100 percent. thanks for the reply ill post some pics soon

I don't know about a mister..but then again I've never kept a dumeril's.

Lower the bulb or raise the retes stack/basking spot. 45-60w flood should be fine.

Roaches are fine I guess but again I haven't done that either.

swapped bulbs today and fixed the problem, dumerils need a very very high humidity they dry out relatively easy

Also I have one more question for any one that wants to chime in. The current set up i have untill january has one flood light on a thermastat and a uvb floresent light fixture that I turn on during the day. Its a bit of a pain to change out the flood light at night for the ceramic bulb, and I would rather not put a new fixture in there if possible. Could I just run a night time flood light 24 seven since I also have the other day light florenscent fixture. If so is there any difference between the home depot red floods and the expensive pet store floods. thanks in advance

Humidity is the most misunderstood things about monitor husbandry.Monitors want choice,if you've restricted airflow and provide a deep dirt substrate,if the basking spot is on one end you'll create areas ranging from dry to humid.The whole living area cannot be dry and it cannot be all wet.Beginners can be extreme,they learn from the past we dried monitors out,now we want to drown them out.It's hard as beginners not to get caught up on humidity,i'm in that boat.There are good posts that relate to this currently on this site.Bulb choice has been posted recently as well.When i go to my local petshop all i see are spot lights not flood lights.Spot lights by definition do not fit the monitors purpose.Floods heat a larger area than spots,you just have to experiment with various wattages(LOW).Pro Exotics is a good site but i don't think you've gotten their jist,you might want to read over-one example is the topic of turkey.Go to varanus.net's captive faq as well

Thus the Tupperware container with more moist dirt and moss, i have two identical containers i swap out every few days to allow each one to dry out to prevent bacteria growth. I am not following everything from proexotics to a t Im also using info from roughneckmonitor.com. Ill reread the light section. I looked around on here but didn't find anything to specific to my question. Definetly not drowning the guy hes already dug a nice little borrow yesterday, and ate a ton of crickets.

the drowning out was just a generalization,that a lot of people think that humidity for monitor needs to be a high uniform percentage instead of a range from dry to humid,with the ability for the monitor to choose.

I agree with Moe.

Having humid AND dry areas on BOTH the hot and cold ends of the enclosure provide more options than a constant high humidity throughout.

Since you are building an enclosure plan on providing deep enough substrate in the entire cage so your monitor is not limited to where the tupperware is placed by you; again this is to create choices.