Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I purchased a Nile monitor who is about two feet long including the tail and body size is around the same as a full grown healthy male mouse. She won't eat. I've tried a monitor diet which is cubes of beef, bone and blood that has congealed, crickets, wax worms and beef and gravy baby food. She seemed to like the baby food but not enough to seriously dig in. She is starting to get skin folds around her middle and I'm worried she's going to die.

Should I get her a buddy? Try different foods or should I resort to force-feeding with repta-aid for carnivores/insectivores?

Take it to a qualified vet and check your temps and humidity levels. It could be parasites, dehydration, lack of heat.
Without your set up info and pics, I don't see how anyone here can help.

Scott
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Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

there are dozens of things that could be causing the problem (basking temperature, humidity, stress if you are handling the animal too often), but why not start with offering it food it might recognise? Not sure where you got the ideas of baby food and gravy from. Try a live pinky mouse.

However, the first thing you should do is describe its setup for us in great detail, including what it's kept in, what the basking surface temperature is (get a non contact temp gun - the ones sold by tempguns.com are very good), whether or not you are using a screen top on the enclosure, how often you have been handling the animal etc.

Her cage is about six feet tall and two feet wide, screen on all sides except the bottom and back which are wood. I have a heat rock in her hide box, which has wet moss inside so the temp is at a constant 85. She has a pool so she can soak and she has a smaller water dish which has treated water at luke warm temp. I don't have a basking spot set up yet but she does have a UV light that stimulates sunlight which it over her water pool.

I try to handle her enough so she'll recognise my scent but not all the time. Mostly at night when she'll fall asleep in my hands.

I'm going to try cooked ground turkey, hard boiled egg, raw beef heart and some super worms today but it's going to be a while before I can get back to see if anyone has given any answers.

As for the baby food...it was left over from when I had my Emerald tree boas, both of which died because I wasn't set up to deal with wild caught animals. She liked it and it wasn't cold so I could offer it right away. She does have a vet appointment but it's not until tuesday because that's the only time their reptile guy was available.

Should I get her a buddy because she was housed with three or four other monitors at the store I got her at and maybe she'd do better with a friend.

I know I sound like a kid who didn't read up on anything about monitors before I got one but I did. I just don't know what to do with her not eating. None of the other animals I have, have any problems eating. Even my scorpions which I got last night ate some crickets overnight. I've really grown attached to Snuggles and I hope someone can help me with this.

Screen on all sides? OMG! The poor thing could be dehydrated! You need to first have a wooden box all the way around and cut small vent holes in the side of the enclosure. Try adding a sliding glass window to the front for viewing. Get rid of the heat rock( they have hot spots) and go to home depot and get yourself a full spectrum flood lamp bulb or better yet Philips makes a infrared heat lamp to heat bathrooms(they work well). They don't have to be high wattage 45- 65 watt bulbs will be fine. Visit proexotics.com and check the fact sheets - theyshow you how to make what we call a Retes Stack which is several flat wood surfaces stacked on top of one another and placed under the heat lamp for basking. The stacks allows your animal to choose from a range of temps, the top of the stack should be 120-130f. You can move your heat lamp up or down to acheive these temps. Like someone mentioned above get yourself a temp gun- these measure surface temps. That 120-130f i mentioned above should not be the air temp but rather the surface temp of the top of the stack! Also you might want to purchase some sort of rheostat to control your all around ambient temp. These work well with min/max thermometers which i think pro exotics also sell for a fair price. So your all around ambient(air) temp should be between 80f-85F , basking surface 120f-130f, cool side 79f or so. Good luck with it , hope its not too late for this little guy/girl. Advise for future animals, research, research, research some more. I know you said you did but by your setup(unless its an outdoor enclosure) you've gathered a lot of false info.

Cheers(as FR would say)
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James Grigsby - " When you try of all your forces to make your own way, you will help some of others and will be helped by others. As long as you do not make your own way, you cannot help anybody, and nobody can help you. " (Shunryu Suzuki)

The heat rock I have doesn't have hot spots...it's hard to explain what it is but I use it with my red tail and she's always on it. The room Snuggles is kept in is always about 75 and I have three humidifiers going so I don't think she's dehydrated. I've seen her drink on several occasions and she swims regularly in my mom's bath tub. I just can't get her to eat.

We're telling you, get rid of that heat rock; it is a waste of money. Do what monitorman315 said and get those temps up to 120-130, or higher. These guys really need it. And be sure to keep the temps at night above 80 degrees. Hope this helps.

They all claim to not have hot spots but most if not all do. A monitor doesn't feel heat like we would so when something is to hot they still remain on or under that object like they normally would or longer if temps are inadequate. So i would watch for blisters and such if you are going to continue to use it. Another thing 75 degrees is not the proper ambient for these monitors so you may want to consider raising it 5 to 10 degrees and doing the things which i reccomended in my last post if you want your monitor to thrive, otherwise continue the path you are on and it will get costly and the chance of you losing this guy/girl will go up. Its on you!

Best of luck.
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James Grigsby - " When you try of all your forces to make your own way, you will help some of others and will be helped by others. As long as you do not make your own way, you cannot help anybody, and nobody can help you. " (Shunryu Suzuki)

Three choices: 1. You can defend what you are doing now, continue to post that you just can't seem to get it to eat and watch your monitor slowly die, then go buy another and start the whole process

2.You can pay attention to what people are telling you and make some changes to your setup so your monitor has a chance of living

3. Give the monitor to someone else that is prepared to do what is necessary to allow it to live.

I didn't have to read far into your first post to see many glaring problems:

Set up a basking light so that you have a surface basking temperature of at least 110F or hotter. At present your monitor has no way of raising its body temperature to the level required for it to digest food, so it has no desire to eat.

Get rid of the screen walls, replace it with something solid (sealed wood works well)that holds in humidity. No matter how humid your room is now, once you set up the basking spot your monitor will dry out unless the screen is replaced.

Stop handling your monitor for now. It doesn't need the stress. Once it starts eating, see if handling causes it to stop eating. If it does, stop handling it. Better to have a live nasty monitor than a dead tame one.

Once you have set it up with basking light, solid walls etc, THEN try some real food. Keep on trying the food your are trying, but also try food it is more likely to recognise, such as a live pinky or two. It's okay to try a variety of things until it starts eating, but once it starts you'll have to try to wean it onto something healthier than beefheart and babyfood.

DO NOT GET YOUR MONITOR A BUDDY. You're too busy killing one, no need to start killing another until you've finished with this one. If this sounds harsh, then consider making the changes mentioned above and prove me wrong.

What were you doing feeding gravy baby food to a boa? WC was the least of your problems.

I am not sure where you read or researched most of your information, but your nile monitor is not currently being kept very well. There are a number of things that are wrong with your setup. Those problems are probably causing it not to eat. That means that you can either fix the real problems and give the monitor a chance to live, or you can just try to get it to eat food in a really bad setup and probably watch it die. Now your vet will probably tell you it has parasites and will try to treat those and your animal will still die because it is not setup very well. History has shown those of us who have been on this forum for a long time that you will either disappear or you will tell us that the vet said it had some terminal illness and there was nothing you do. That is not usually true, so here is what you CAN do.

Stop handling it. Handling a monitor is stressful. A healthy monitor can deal with the stress. Yours is not healthy right now. Stress kills unhealthy monitors.

If you have an aquarium, move the animal into the aquarium. Your big cage sounds roomy, but right now it leaves too much space for a sick monitor to just get sicker. I would suggest a 55 gallon aquarium or larger for now.

Get it a basking spot. Just do it. Go to Lowes, Home Depot, Menards, or some other home improvement store and buy a workshop lamp. Use a plain old light bulb. Get a digital thermometer at the same store ($15) with an outdoor probe. Put the probe under the basking spot. Use a light bulb that makes the basking spot about 110 or so. The hot rock or whatever is not going to help you much. Monitors do MUCH better when the basking spot is a light from above.

Provide a water dish, crickets, and pre-killed rodents. If you are obsessed with giving it other foods, use the beef heart. Baby food is not for monitors; stop using it. You are not helping your monitor at all by giving him baby food.

Go to a bookstore or online book store and buy the following books: Nile Monitors, by Rob Faust, and Savannah Monitors, by Daniel Bennett. The second one is not about nile monitors, but it has a lot of useful information that should help you.

Do not get your monitor a buddy. A buddy will make no difference in how yours does right now. Yours is doing badly because the setup is not good. Fix the problems I mentioned above and it is likely that your monitor will improve.
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^x^ Bloodbat ^x^
Monitors, monitors everywhere
and all the food they ate.
Monitors, monitors everywhere,
their parents loved to mate.