Reptile & Amphibian Forums

how many hours a day do savannah(bosc)monitors need UV lighting?
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My herps:0.0.1 savannah monitor 1.3leopard geckos,1.0.1 green iguanas, 0.0.3 chinese water dragons, 2.2 fire belly toads, 0.0.2 green tree frogs, 0.0.1 egyptian toad

0 hours a day is fine!
UVB hasn't shown any proven advantage to monitors, except maybe a slight color gain.

This is not really relevant to the original question, but there can be medical situations where UV-B is helpful to monitors. In particular, I remember a juvenile female argus monitor I had who, a few years ago, started exhibiting muscle tremors, particularly noticable in the hind limbs. This is characteristic of hypocalcemia, so I stuffed a human calcium supplement pill in the atrium of a chicken heart, fed it to her, then put her under a medical grade UV-B light for half an hour (these are the lights that put out enough UV-B you are not supposed to look at them without sunglasses or other eye protection). The tremors cleared up and never came back.

Now for otherwise healthy monitors, I agree, UV light is not necessary.

Luke

I believe that all monitors lizards do not need any UV lighting.

wow thank you guys so much!!!the guy at the pet store was trying to sell me a light but I had read they dont need it so just to be safe i left the store and asked you guys to be sure. Thanks again
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My herps:0.0.1 savannah monitor 1.3leopard geckos,1.0.1 green iguanas, 0.0.3 chinese water dragons, 2.2 fire belly toads, 0.0.2 green tree frogs, 0.0.1 egyptian toad

Grrr, I really hate it when they try to sell you stuff you don't need. Here's another tip: go to the Home Depot (or another store like Lowes) and get you heating lights and lamps from there. They are better quality, and about half the cost!