Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What insects are you feeding your large monitors? For those of you that suppliment their diet with insects. Instead of just feeding rodents all the time. Just wondering. We are talking adult large monitors not juveniles.

I ask because some people claim crickets are superior to roaches. I can't picture a 7 foot water monitor having too much interest in crickets.

I use to give free roaches to my friend all the time and his fully grown Sav would gobble it down like they are going out of style.

Recently, I've acquire a pair of hissers. Once they have enough babies I will be feeding off to my friend BT and see how that goes.

Recently, I've acquire a pair of hissers. Once they have enough babies I will be feeding off to my friend BT and see how that goes.

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The only thing I don't like about hissers is they climb glass. Otherwise I would have them. The giant cave roaches are cool too but they don't breed as well as say dubias or hissers.

You would be surprised at how readily a 7 foot water will go after crickets or roaches.
I have adult waters that will go after crickets more readily babies will. I usually don't even bother feeding crickets to baby waters because they seem to want to take pinkies and small mice much more readily.
All that said I don't bother feeding crickets to my adult waters ( only on rare occasions for cheap amusement lol.) times are hard and crickets aren't cheap these days. I have smaller lizards that are in need of the crickets more than the monitors.
Large monitors do fine on a diet of rodents. There is no need to make their diet more complex for any health reasons, If you want to throw bugs at them for mental stimulation type purposes that is certainly fine but from a nutritional standpoint a vertebrate diet is going to be superior to insects for large monitors and certainly cheaper.
BTW on a side note, here in Fl. we do have these giant katydids that are the size of a small mouse and all the monitors seem to love them so of course if I catch one they go into one of the enclosures. Black roughnecks really go nuts over them which is not a surprise since large Katydids are a prominent feature of their natural habitat.

Hey Calparson, do you have any pics up of your animals and/or set ups? Sounds like you have a lot goin on and I'd love to see some of it.

No actually I don't. I'm not the most computer savvy guy out there and even on the rare occasions that I manage to get pictures on the computer I don't know what to do with them once they are there. Even then I don't have many reptile photos online, I think I've got some pics of some brazilian rainbow boas, some leaf chameleons and a leucistic fl. softshell turtle I had and that's about it. Most of the monitor pics I do have are the old fashioned non-digital kind.

You would be surprised at how readily a 7 foot water will go after crickets or roaches.
I have adult waters that will go after crickets more readily babies will. I usually don't even bother feeding crickets to baby waters because they seem to want to take pinkies and small mice much more readily.
All that said I don't bother feeding crickets to my adult waters ( only on rare occasions for cheap amusement lol.) times are hard and crickets aren't cheap these days. I have smaller lizards that are in need of the crickets more than the monitors.
Large monitors do fine on a diet of rodents. There is no need to make their diet more complex for any health reasons, If you want to throw bugs at them for mental stimulation type purposes that is certainly fine but from a nutritional standpoint a vertebrate diet is going to be superior to insects for large monitors and certainly cheaper.
BTW on a side note, here in Fl. we do have these giant katydids that are the size of a small mouse and all the monitors seem to love them so of course if I catch one they go into one of the enclosures. Black roughnecks really go nuts over them which is not a surprise since large Katydids are a prominent feature of their natural habitat.

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I am suprised adult waters would eat crickets?

I have a adult sav I don't think I have fed crickets to in a year or more. I put roaches in a sweater box and put it next to his cage and he leaps into the box and starts devouring them. Too bad you don't have a video of them eating Katydids that would be quite awesome.

as I said I don't often feed bugs to them. Usually how that pans out is if I am feeding all the bug eaters and have a few left over and I don't feel like trowing them back in the cricket container/ I'm bored and want to watch a 5-6 ft lizard chase bugs. then I throw a few in at one of them.
As Frank said (and I said too actually) it would cost a fortune to feed crickets to a big water. they could eat a box or two a day. It would almost be cheaper to take up smoking lol.
The katydid thing isn't very impressive they just gulp them down. The size of those katydids on the other hand is a bit impressive. They aren't as big as the Lubber grasshoppers we have here (which are toxic.) but it is still surprising to find a katydid that big here in the U.S..

Yes, that is common sense, actually...! [laugh] Who would feed crickets as the main staple of a water? [chuckle] But, as I was saying, it does give them something else to munch on. Must be kindda boring eating the same think over and over again.

Who gives a flying frog toe which is suppose to be better. In my experience, I have recieved far better results with growth and reproduction with crickets, WITH SMALL MONITORS.

Giving a 7 feet varanid insects is NOT THAT SMART, unless the insects are a pound each. As far as I know, cricket and roaches are out of the question. There are some giant crickets, but they cost more then the monitors, hahahahahahahahaha

Larger varanids do not require anything other then rodents. But can include other whole prey items such as birds, fish, reptiles, anphibs, etc. Insects, only for fun.

It would be like you eating one M out of bag of m&ms

Larger varanids do not require anything other then rodents. But can include other whole prey items such as birds, fish, reptiles, anphibs, etc. Insects, only for fun

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I don't currently have room for the giant species but I thought it was good to mix their diet up with bugs or other prey items.

This is an important question, Why did you think that?

I don't know if they get bored in captivity eating the same over and over again, but iguana sure did. He went on hungry strike for a long time until he gets something different. Now he eats mostly hard veggies.

heres a thought for you. if you gave your captive more to do then eat, then maybe it would not be BORED.

Also, how do you know if a captive is bored?

And do reptiles actually get bored?

Theres also a huge problem with 90% of the captive monitors, they are not healthy enough to get bored.

I think I would be more concerned with allowing a captive to First be healthy and have the ability to achieve life events. Then worry about bored later.

As it is a minimum level of health should be the ability to reproduce. Which is not that common here.

Yet you talk about all other things but what should be a huge concern, basic health.

I brought a starving monitor back to life... He was on the brink of death, but bounced back. I've raised my iguana since he was tiny and they are a lot harder than monitor I bet. Iguanas can easily get calcium deficiency or MBD if you don't feed them right. But I'd only had one monitor.

Thats the thing, you give all manner of your opinion and you've had one monitor an one iggie.

Thats the problem with advice, you really cannot give much with so little experience. Thats had naive information gets passed back and forth.

Theres no problem stating your experience, but you cannot make to much out of "saving" one monitor and keeping an iggie or two.

During my time, I have kept many many iggies and even bred them once. That was a long time ago. But I claim not experience with them. As in, I do not give anything other then basic advice based on my limited experience.

With varanids, I have had thousands. Raised up generation upon generation. And still there is no absolutes.

Best wishes

Thanks for your insight!

I know newbies have a lot to contribute, but they must understand, reading a caresheet and typing here or on other forums is not a replacement for experience. So to give advice to other newbies is odd. You know, I read it yesterday and teach today.

That is academic. The problem is, keeping animals is not ACADEMIC. Its applied. The real knowledge is gained from recieving results. And that means over and over.

The reason is, its not a simple, this or that. There are many causes and many cures for any single problem.

I think a great discussion would be able the difference between conversation, talking about ones personal experience and giving advice.

Its so very common here, just WATCH and observe and see, that beginers ask questions for a day or two, then are answering them the next day or two. ThAT IS confusing academic information with applied information. With animals, in order to know what will work or what is right, you must apply what your read or were told, and gauge the results, from the animals. Over and over. Then if successful, it becomes information that can be taught to others(in academic form) They too have to apply it in order for it to be meaningful.

In this case, academic means in theory, or aside from. If you look it up, academics is information or knowledge that is not actually applied to the subject, As in school. There you learn material to be applied later to a area of work or a field of study that will sooner or later be used in real life.

This is an important question, Why did you think that?

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Well I noticed the dwarf monitors and medium size monitors are often fed insects as well as rodents. So it would make sense to apply it to the larger species as well. I have snakes that have never and will never eat anything but rodents...but they are different then monitors quite obviously. Keeping monitors healthy in captivity is more like a art then a hobby. The art of keeping monitors, yes I like the sound of that.

So does it make sense to you to feed a cricket or roach or superworm to a 40pd reptile?

monitors eat about anything and at times in nature, all they can find is insects, but it surely is not what is necessary to support growth and reproduction.

So in captivity, yes you can feed them a moth, my dog loves moths, but its not going to gain anything in the way of sustenance.

And yes, sometimes for grins and giggles its a good thing for both the keeper and the kept.

My focus on this forum is more about supporting basic health, which is missing in 99% of the cases you see here. So I stay away from grins and giggles until basic health is attained.

On the opposite side of the spectrum you have dwarf monitors. Do you feel it is ncessary to feed them insects? Could they be fed on a diet of rodents? say..... pinkies?

First I wonder why you try think like that. You ask if you could this or that. Who cares what you/I could do, what should we do is a better question.

We should allow are caged monitors the support to reach basic life events. You know, grow up, pair up, reproduce(to be ABLE to reproduce) life a decently long life and do it over again.

The reason I say reproduce is becasue thats what all behaviors in their life directed to do. Everything thing they do, all behaviors, the whole shabang.

Of course you do not have to hatch eggs.

of course all the behaviors like burrow, climb, swim, bask, etc. are done in order to life and gain the energy needed to reproduce.

A successful monitor in nature is that that was lucky enough to find the support to, grow up and reproduce. That is normal.

So you sit around asking questions like this one? Odd, yes small monitors like ackies, are insect based in captivity, but they can be raised on mice too. In my opinion a insect based diet is best, but should also include rodents at least.

I do think rodents in captivity replace other larger prey items they would consume in nature, like lizards. They indeed are lizard feeders.

Insects such as crickets, may need to be supplimented, dusted, with calicum and vitamins, well it sure does help. Rodents do not require such dusting.

What makes you think of one or the other is odd. I would think you and others would want to know the best way to support growth and reproduction. Not a possible way, that is odd to me and causes me to think, its actually more about you then about the monitors.

More about me then the monitors? I don't know what thats suppose to mean. I was seeing what you feed your monitors. I get the impression it is rodents and crickets. I feed more then two items to mine and they like them.

Maybe they do get bored with just eating rodents. These aren't snakes we're talking about after all.... I noticed that my iguana seemed to get tired of the same food if I fed too much of it all the time. But I only had one iguana. He's become increasing finicky as he got older. Food that he usually gobbled down are ignored. These days he seems to be more interested in hard veggies...and even more recently the lady iguanas! hehe! To bad I don't have him anymore. I still miss him, though! But he's in good hands and is surrounded by beautiful girls. Hehe! Sorry for getting a little off topic, but I wanted show that large lizards iguanas and monitors are very smart. I hope to keep more in the future.

Its about you because of what your saying, You said, i feed more then two items and the monitors like it or them.

I keep saying what diet allows monitors to grow and prosper, reproduce and attain good longevity. It really has nothing to do with what the monitors like. If you go there, they would dearly like to be free.

And my base diet is indeed mice and crickets with most or the species we have. Base diet means what they get most of the time. But that is not all they get. If I find a wounded bird, or a freshly killed rabbit, often some monitor gets it. Or during the season of cicadas, we throw in lots of those. Or large grasshoppers, if they jump into my hand or net.

The key to understanding this is, a base diet that works. Not what you or others call treats. The truth is, monitors like to eat, and in all reality, rarely do most here fill their monitors stomachs. So to allow a monitor to eat until full, would indeed be a treat. And surely the monitor would "like" that.

In this varanid world of near total failure, the basics are so very important. To understand the basics is Key to success for the animal, not you.

You guys go on with, I do this and I do that, yet, you have shown no ability to support your animals to success in life. So it is indeed about you. Or you would be concerned with your animals progress, not more then two food items.

If one food item takes a monitor to aduldhood and repeated reproduction and longevity, then its better then 10 food items that don't. You really need to get that in your head.

My monitors are doing fine they are within the range of what the species averages as adults. Yep I do feed more then two items to them and will continue to do so.

Explain what you mean by species average????

How long have you had them, what have they done for you, etc.

You know, what size when you got them, how big now, how long has that been, how many clutches a year, how many eggs, etc.

If you want to make it about these details, I will be glad to oblidge you.

Whats funny is your missing the point entirely.

Simply put, I will have any species out perform your varied with a simple diet. I am going to post species after species going egg(hatching) to egg(laying) on a very simple diet and doing that over generation after generation.

And your going to post what? two average sized monitors? good on you.

Now, what makes you think average size is a standard that measures captive dietitary success. Well if you did that in six months, then that would be a good measure of success.

I do think this subject is beyond your ability to comprehend.

If you want to feed them 30 food items, have at it, good for you. But that does not make it better. You do it because you want to. No other reason. And that is the reality, you just want to, you rationalize reasons to back it up, but you have no results to express any real need to do that. other then you want to think that.

My bet is, I have fed more different prey items then you have, but I realize that I did that for me. Just to see what they will eat.

In reality, they work better with a simple RELIABLE diet.

But then you would not know, as you have two average sized monitors. Good on you.

When I lived in longwood north of Orlando. I used to watch this coyote all the time that would sit underneath a neighbors yard light at night and catch and eat bugs.
It used to do this all the time. Based on some of the logic I'm seeing here people would think that according to that observation that they should feed their dog a diet of insects.
Obviously that would be stupid and it also brings to light making assumptions about an animal's diet based on limited observations ( ie a certain author who comments on here.). I used to watch this behavior quite often sometimes several nights in a row. If I knew nothing about wild canids I would think all they ate was bugs based on this observation. We know that this is obviously not the case and that coyotes eat a varied diet of animals from bugs on up to the young of large vertebrate prey and lots of things in between.
Looking at the entire picture we can see that coyotes (and other wild canids) can survive on many types of food that meet their basic requirement of animal protein.
As a monitor keeper you should keep that in mind and rather than making diet the complex issue I see people trying to do on here, simplify their diet and concentrate on other aspects of their husbandry that need more attention.
Trust me if you keep water monitors you need to be more worried about housing, proper temps and providing them with adequate clean water (also at proper temps) than whether or not they should eat bugs. Especially when they can do just fine eating rats which are much cheaper and more efficient for a large reptile than bugs.

Dogs eating mice???? hahahahahaha

your reply brings up dog diets, hmmmmmmmm Dry dogfood is fed to our dogs by the millions of pounds daily, with canned dogfood offered as a treat, and a bunch of other treats are made as treats. well what the heck does any of that have to do with what dogs and their ancestors really ate? or want to eat?

I have a dog and she gets mice, well her job is to catch mice that get loose in the rodent room. ITs her dang job. When I tell people she eats mice, they get all weird and stuff.

Let me think, mice , as in rodents, is indeed a central prey item for wild dogs, fox, coyotes, etc

With that said, she goes for dog treats about like she goes for mice, or a piece of steak for that matter.

Ok, enough of that, back to the point. The first thing a keeper should know is, what would be a successful diet.

Instead, they run all around reading out of context papers with stomach contents etc, and apply that to their monitors. Which is ok, but we already know what it takes to successfully raise and breed varanids. And its not what was in those papers with stomach contents.

I know...? I keep telling people: one of the key to successfully keep monitor is feeding them the right food. This applies to other reptiles also. It's common sense...really. I tell them the secret to good monitor diet is rodents...mice and rats. They seem to thrive on that stuff, even the small species. I guess their metabolism is build for eating this kind of food, and so is their body built. I found out a friend that works at the pet store around here also feed his water dragon a good size mouse once a week. When I first saw it, it was a bony and drape little lizard, and now he has nice vibrant color and is very energetic. Water dragons are more carnivorous than people think. That thing pounce on the mice so fast, you'd think it was a monitor lizard. Hehe! Sorry for getting a bit off topic! But I wanted to share what I've seen.

guess what, green iggies love mice too. And do very well on them. If they have heat.

Aren't water dragon predator or something...? They are big and this thing killed it in less than 5 seconds. It eats mainly roaches, but thought he could boost some vitamins and minerals intake by offering an appropriate size mouse once a week. In the wild, they probably eat some vertebrate.

Iguana eating mice...that's funny, Frank. You're right, though. They'll eat anything in captivity.

They do not eat anything in either nature or captivity. They eat what they think is FOOD. Period.

If they did eat anything, why don't they eat the litebulb or the cage, or the dirt, or the indoor outdoor carpet, or the hide log. Or the millions of other things that are included in "anything"

This is the part that your missing, you think what they are suppose to eat, NOT what they really do eat.

I saw two wild iggies fighting over a Big mac in Aruba once. hahahahahahaha that is the absolute truth.

No offense but in nature green iggis eat lizards, birds and rodents. And yes, lots of grass. yea thats right, grass.

so, throw a bird or lizard or rodent of appropriate size in with a healthy iggie and its down the throat, just like that. The reason is, the iggie thinks its food. In fact, it knows its food.

Sadly, if they like savs cannot get to the heat to utilize such high energy foods, they will have problems. But if they can get to heat, they prosper and grow like weeds.

Again, why I say its all about you guys is because, you think you know what these lizards are and what they do, and you refuse to listen to the most educated expert in the field. THe stinking lizards. The iggies know, they are the ones doing the eating.

That you think otherwise makes you not all that smart. Really it does.

I'd like to see you type what you just said here on the Iquana forum. They laugh your big ego off of there.

do you really think petshop caresheet forums are really about the animals??????????????????