Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After a lot of soul searching, lol, ok, well not a lot, but knowing that I was really wanting to get a monitor of some species that is often known for it's mildness, and yet still wanting one that reached impressive lengths, I settled on one of everybody's favorites, the blackthroat. I had pretty quickly narrowed it down to being between the BT, dumerils, or argus monitor. I suppose I chose the BT for a few reasons: easy availability, very affordable cost (I acquired one of Xtreme's cbb babies for $89), hardiness, good nature, and impressive size. The little guy (or girl) just arrived today and it's an impressive little lizard. Overall length of around 12 to 13", pretty fiesty, but still seeming to enjoy the heat radiating from my hand to warm up a tad after being in that cold box for so long. It likes puffing it's throat and threatening a tail whip, but so far hasn't really followed through with anything. I have a feeling that it and I are going to have quite a time together as it grows.

Now knowing how herp people occasionally like to attack others that they don't really know or that they may deem "incapable" or taking care of certain animals, I'll put my disclaimers here. I have been catching and keeping herps for my entire life, keeping the secret pet snake here and there as my parents would never have allowed it otherwise. Actually, my first real herp pet (that the parents and everyone knew about, that is), was a rescued savannah monitor. She went on to find a new home with a good friend of mine that lives around here. In the past few years I've decided to get into venomous, and have kept a large number of Naja species (cobras), as well as many other elapids and some viperids. Currently I decided to point more in the direction of specializing, so I liquidated just about everything but my pair of adult boomslangs and their offspring, pair of cb juvenile Papuan taipans, and the 1.2 retics that we recently acquired. The retics were the main reason the rest of the collection was liquidated, as they will need a large amount of room. I guess I sort of fell in love with retics the expensive way, acquiring a female '03 lavendar, male '03 tiger het, and female '02 normal het. So there are my credentials, just incase anyone was curious as to why I decided upon a lizard that can reach such large sizes.

Speaking of, I'm currently housing it in a 55 gal with a hot basking spot on one end and a cooler lighted spot on the other. At night, I have a couple of those "invisible" heat emmitting bulbs that will be put in place, but soon will acquire a ceramic heat emmitter for it. Once it outgrows the 55 gal, which from what I've been reading, could be surprisingly soon, I have a gigantic enclosure someone gave me with a huge burm I rescued and readopted back out. It measures 8.5' long, 7' high, and 3.5' deep. It has, needless to say, now taken up the vast majority of my dining room, lol. Oh well, anything for the herps. I'll be damming the door and putting in a good bit of soil, as well as putting a few elevated ledges as basking spots and such. The elevated ledges should also more easily provide for a hide large enough for a lizard the size of an adult blackthroat. I'll dangle lights from the ceiling, out of reach of course, shooting for a basking spot of around 140 F or so.

Anyway, that's a little bit about me, this monitor, and my future plans for it. Any comments are welcome. For those of you who have adult BTs, I'd appreciate being able to see some pictures of you with the lizard, to better get an idea of the size. I've seen SHVar's hybrid's pics, and they're pretty nice. I'd just kind of like to have a better idea. Also, for those of you who have raised them, did it just take constant, incessant interaction to calm your babies, or is that something that comes a little more with age? Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
-Chance
River Valley Snakes

You got one of the imported babies from Balki?

Cool glad he is doing good. Sounds like you'll offer him a good home.

>>You got one of the imported babies from Balki?

I'm not sure where these were bred, but I was told over the phone that the "cb" ones were actually captively produced. They had others that were w.c. juveniles, and they were more than happy to say over the phone that these wc juveniles were not of the best quality.

>>Cool glad he is doing good. Sounds like you'll offer him a good home.

I can only hope so. I just offered him (going to say him for now because I don't like saying it) a fuzzy mouse just to test it's appetite since it had warmed up nicely, and boy was he ever interested...lol. I believe I'll wait until he defacates from that and do a fecal on him, then get him up and running on food, since he seems to be very interested in it. Oh, and the fuzzy was f/t, so at least he's taking that fine and not being finicky about live things.
-Chance

truly captive bred Ionides run well over $200, i think you are falling for the okey doke here : )

i would encourage you to take the animal to the vet for an exam and a fecal, that would establish a solid base to start from.
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robyn@proexotics.com

Pro Exotics Reptiles

CBB BTs are rare anywhere and expensive. My 2 crosses were between $245-$275 shipped each, and Rob Faust payed the shipping on Shadow ($65 Delta Dash) and sold him to me for $245. There are only a few people who have bred Albigs in captivity in North America in years, Rob Faust, Frank Retes, ProExotics, Dan Turner, and Gary Quirk and Steeve Blain. The price only tells one side as many sell cheap imports for those prices. Ive challenged hundreds of adds to get a few responses, "Oh that was a typo", "Ill try to find the breeders name and get back to ya" (then the add changes to WC), they insult or get upset at ya for asking for proof, "oh those are Captive Born in farms in Africa", but none the less they are imports. If you want some proof get a good competant Herp Vet (ARAV, and Herpvets.com) to check for any parasites, they may not show up on a test or may show up a year or so from now, either way CBB animals dont have parasites from Africa on or in them at all.
A WC animal is also a good choice but takes more time patience and understanding to get them to trust you. Good luck, cant wait to see pics.

Obviously these animals were not produced here in the US, but I'm just related to you guys what I was told over the phone. I'm not an idiot when it comes to imported herps. With the prices in this situation, it was $89 for the cb and $75 for the w.c. With that little of a difference, that either means that the animals were taken as eggs from the wild and were "captive born," or were laid from a w.c. gravid female and were "captive born." Over the phone I was told that they were captively produced, so take that as you will. I was also told that the w.c. ones weren't the best of quality, so they were honest there. I've never had any problems with Xtreme and when I ordered some w.c. snakes from them a year or two ago I was very pleased with the results. This little monitor is fat, fiesty, and eats with a vigor. I'll probably take him into my vet tomorrow (who is a very knowledgable herp vet), and have a swab done if he doesn't defacate before then. Hopefully I'll get my roommate to take some pictures with his new $900 digi cam...geez (and he gets mad at me for "blowing" money on the monitor, lol), and get them uploaded. Unfortunately the monitor's attitude has taken a light turn for the worse now that he's really warmed up in the enclosure, and he's now tail whipping and trying to bite all over the place. Oh well, at least he's small. I've started out with worse animals and socialized them fairly well, even my '02 het female retic that was the devil's spawn when I acquired her in Oct of '03 and is now just slightly flighty. Anyway, enough rambling for now.
-Chance

Listed as CBB on their website for $125 now, but no WC in stock. Ill post the results when they contact me.

I noticed that what they had listed on the site was different from what was in their kingsnake ad. When I first called to place my order, the lady was going to charge me $125 for it, but I caught her as the sort of mumbled it and corrected her that the ad said $89. I'm assuming someone posted that ad as a sale price or something, who knows.
-Chance

They are imported animals period, whether they were dug up and hatched or WC after a few days out of the egg or who knows as WC animals stay tiny for a while.