Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What are the negatives when using this for a white throat? From what I understand it is too light to cause an impaction if swallowed, is this true?
One last quest. I understand that diversifying the diet is ideal but from what a large reptile distributor explained that even large monitors will eat whatever is available. He then went on to say wild monitors diets consists of almost entirely of invertebrates. At that point he said they feed their 5 1/2 ft water monitor crickets every few days. I find this very hard to believe as it is impractcal and expensive and want to hear what you guys think. I think that along with eggs, occasional rodents, and large invertebrates, they eat left over carrion and that contains hair and rotting flesh. So what is the bulk feed your monitors, rodents? I have heard that feeding rodents as the bulk would cause the animal to have an impaction due to the large amounts of hair.

Thanks for your help.
LATER

Try using dirt rather than a store bought substrate. Plain old dirt is free and suits the animals needs much better. the deeper the dirt the better. They should be able to make a burrow. if they don't you may have to try a different kind of dirt. Search the forum archives as this has been discussed many times before as well as the diet issue. I will say that at proper temps impaction from dirt or rodent hair is not an issue.

Good point about temps. Alot of dealers refuse to keep their reptiles at the higher temps because of the cost effectiveness, or whatever(Im beginning to loath all retail pet establishments).
Ive been told that a nonvaried, rodent exclusive diet can lead fatty liver disease. ...I dont know where the research info came from.
I can see the point of wanting to feed as anturally as possible though. After all, after millions of years of evolution, these predetors/ opportunist/ scavengers have developed digestive tracts to suit their environments. So you would think that wavering from what their used to in the wild would cause problems. On the other hand, who do you know feeds their Nile monitors rotting boar carcasses??
To my knowledge, people have had luck for years with both varied and pure rodent diets(*not true with ALL species).

Personally, I lean towards variety.

Michelle

Roughage content of food. Keep the proper temps for digestion to occur and they can digest almost anything, besides rodents and other whole animal foods are the most nutritious and are proven to work, not claimed by petstore employees to be bad as they try to sell you expensive canned food or crickets by the dozen and roaches overpriced. Feed insects as they will eat them but base the diet off of whole rodents and peeps.

The temps are at a solid 125 for the bask and 78-80 depending on the temp of the house. So I huess chance of impactions are low. I would really consider buying playground sand or just digging in some plain ol' dirt. But the thing is that from what I have heard of from a breeder was that if it is in the house they tend to make the cage filthy, especialy after soakig and criuising around scratchin on the glass, and unsightly when guests or the "landlord" come around. Also the animal in general has brighter colors when kept this way. If I were to build a large enclosure in the garage then dirt would probably be the best way to go. To make a long story short, it just plain makes the cage messy.
LATER

Keep them in dirt and youll never go back to anything else. They are happy when they are dirty and muddy. Its very healthy also as it retains moisture great, where do they live in the wild? They dont live in sand it doesnt hold moisture at all. Mix plain old top soil (no additives) with a 25% sand mix with maybe vermiculite at a low percent and see how they like it.

I'll try that and see what happens, but I get the weird sense that it'll like it better. Thanks