Reptile & Amphibian Forums

These recently hatched monitors, their parents and their parents, etc. were raised without the use of UV bulbs. They are all raised inside in tanks with incandesent bulbs.

I hope a picture is worth more then the silly confusing(1000) words down below. The use of temperatures and humidity is far more important then UV bulbs. Of course if you want to use UV bulbs, thats fine, its simply not necessary. Thanks FR

Your hatchlings are beautiful!!
(telling myself NO you can't have one!!LOL!)
I do see you all love a good fight! err..discussion!
So I take it you all use the calsium with D3 added?
No comments on the consistancy of you application of said calsium!
I don't want to start another 'conversation' LOL!

Sparky Report!
He is deffinatly ajusting well to his new home!
Turned his nose up at a pinky I even brained it! Maybe in a week or two. When he is bigger.
I was doing some house cleanng and he hissed and thru a fit! Then retreated to his den....Just like a man!!
He should learn never swear at the help!!
LOL!
Diana

Like I said down below(in the mess of off-subject stuff) I do not give calicum with d-3 or otherwise to larger type monitors. Which means, the individuals in the picture, their parents, etc, etc. did not recieve calicum suppliments. As least on any normal basis.

On occasion, if I have extra crickets(way rare) I have tossed them some leftover crickets from feeding the odatria(small species of monitors)

No I am no afraid of a good discussion, the problem is, many here do what I call smoke screening, they offer this and that, without actual experience to back it. Most are repeating what they heard or read. U know, what you already read and were trying to clarify.

Like I said below, It would be great if they, linked/sited/posted, the literature. But for someone without successful(related to the subject)experience to interpit those for me, well, is not what I want.

Good luck with your monitor, and good luck with the forums, Cheers FR

By "at least on any normal basis" I assume you are refering to the countless calcium/vitamin powders available. Do you supplement their diet in other, more natural ways? I found a website (can't remember which) that said chicken heart can be used as a calcium supplement for example (is that true?). Also, do you feed the pray animals anything special to get extra nutrients into the monitors or have you found this to be unnecessary?
Thanks

No I do not do anything period, I do not gut load, or suppliment in any way. There is no need to.

Do these monitors look like they need something added to their diet? Is their color not good enough? are they weak looking? They will grow as fast as I feed them and they will not have calicum problems. On normal white mice without suppliments and special foods.

Think about it, there are millions of snakes, boas, pythons, colubrids, etc. That are raised on rodents(mice) and there is no concern for gut loading, varied diet, etc. The Cham folks, the dragon folks, the frillie folks, again the snake folks do not concern themselves with a natural diet or varied diet, yet all their charges grow up to be healthy adults. Tortoise people do not feed them what they eat in nature. Yet monitor people seem to have some silly(in my opinion) fasination with that. It surely baffles me why they do.

Again the reason I know this is, I have done it generation after generation. A generation is egg to egg, the next generation is, the monitor hatched from that egg that goes on to lay its own eggs, the next is, etc, etc.

Most if not all of the varied diet, additives, gut loading, suppliments, are from folks who for the most part are hoping to raise generations. Or have not and simply like to make suppositions. In most cases, people blame the diet for basic flaws in husbandry. They fix the diet, and do nothing about their husbandry. As it turns out, its most likely a direct relationship to other husbandry and not diet. FR

It makes sense for a monitor to be getting enough calcium from the bones in whole pray items provided its environment allows it to digest properly. Do you start hatchlings off on crickets? If so, how soon do you move them on to pinkies?

Also, you have some of the nicest lookng monitors I've seen. Do you have a website? I thought I'd seen it once but I can't seem to find it now. Maybe I'm thinking of a different site.
Thanks.

So, monitor geeks are more concerned with diet than any other herp communitry? -Personally it seems like the cham crowd is about the most pretentious.

http://www.animalarkshelter.org/cin/
http://www.chameleonnews.com/year2003/oct2003/nutrition/nutrition_oct_03.html
http://www.chameleonnews.com/year2003/oct2003/baby_feeding/baby_feeding.html
http://www.calumma.com/food_items.htm
http://www.chameleonjournals.com/husbandry/
http://www.chameleonjournals.com/husbandry/index.php?show=Gutload.html
http://www.chameleonjournals.com/husbandry/index.php?show=Supplements.html
http://www.adcham.com/html/husbandry/gutload.html

Heres a very common theme...

"I also use a large variety of food, which helps keep them from getting stuck on one food. Use silkworms, crickets and if possible, roaches as a daily food item, and throw in random superworms, houseflies, waxworms, hornworms or any other type food you can get ahold of either on one day, or feed them in addition to something else on a normal feeding day."

and to finish with a quote... "We promise you the best of the best! We will not sell any chameleon that we would not buy for our own! We promise you will never get a chameleon that has been bred with any blood related parents or siblings, THAT, to us, is a total no no!!!!!" ~chameleon corral

and this is JUST the cham people. ~Shall I go on??

Haha why are you quoting off the carsheets of others? When someone speaks for themself you get there answer, when someone else speaks for them you get that persons interpretation of the answer.

I have bred chameleons myself, and do not offer them much varied diet. They get crickets for the most part, then on occasion I give them a pinkie. Usually the pinkie is given to my gravid females, I also give it to my gravid female gecko's as well. Oh yeah and to my bluetongue skinks.

I am betting if I could get them to eat just them they would do just as well. As far as inbreeding go most animals are line bred, it is more of a religious based belief that makes us against inbreeding. Reptiles are not built the same as mammals and it effects them very little especially if your talking about the first generation.

Please, quit it already. He questioned monitor geeks, and I simply was theorizing that there are just as wacky characters in other herp communities. Go pick on Andrew for a while.

Haha but your more fun. My dear

Oh and yes there are wacky charecters all over. But I could of sworn it said something about diet in the last post hmm maybe I was wrong. Wasn't the title of your post varied diets???

...

obsessive compulsion, I mean

np

FR writes
"These recently hatched monitors, their parents and their parents, etc. were raised without the use of UV bulbs. They are all raised inside in tanks with incandesent bulbs."

What's the scoop, Frank, we've all seen the pictures of your argus and lacies in their outdoor cages in the sun? No UV bulbs, OK, but be sure to mention for the newbies that a lot of your monitors get sunlight instead.

Why do you assume so much. You should research.

I have a raise up rack That I build in 91, that all our babies are started in, Then they are moved to larger raise up cages. Then as adults some of the lucky ones get to go outside. All the people who have come here have seen this. Try asking on of them, maybe a peer, like Daniel Bennett. Or Dr. Muroffka(really sorry about the spelling) hes at one of the Cal State schools I think. He came here and aquired some monitors.

That you assume stuff without actually looking or asking, is what scares me about your information. Do you not think to ask about the papers you read. I think you should.

In the case of UV and calicum placement. I would ask what the animals envolved were doing, like what life stages they were in. I would want to know about both the wild ones and the captive ones.

You know it would be, so easy, to find a decalicfied captive and then give it UV and calicum and say the UV was important. But what would it be with a normal healthy monitor that has not been raised with UV bulbs?

As a person that has raised many generations of monitors, I understand that the calicum needs of monitors is not constant. It changes with need, age, task. The two key times are, fast growing babies and females at the time they deposit eggs. The standard old thickening of the forearms and legs are, in my opinion, a long term result of individuals kept in substandard conditions.

Heres a pic of odatria and larger monitor raiseup cages. Thanks FR

Not exactly on the topic Frank, but you might want to know that David Morafka died in February 2004; I assume you knew that Dennis King died in January 2002. They were both too young.

I did not know about David, I did know about Dennis King. That is sad. Both good fellas and your right, to young to die.

Dennis King also visited here, I have some great conversations with him. I enjoyed him very much. He also sent me about forty pounds of reprints and he sign several of his books for me.

I am indeed sorry to hear. Frank