Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a BT that is maybe 2' total length. I am trying to plan proper housing for the future and need to know what to expect as a growth rate if fed moderately 2-3 appropriate size prey items per week and lots of heat.
Also, is the anyway a novice can sex these guys? I searched the archives but nothing anywhere with instructions if there are any. Also the pics in the past posts are not working to see the difference between fem and male hemis. Any pics of hemis of known sexes and bulge comparisons would be awesome! Thanks for any input!

An albig is a large monitor that can grow from 9 inches at hatching time to 5-6ft in the first year alone with males topping out around 7 ft, heres the catch if kept and fed properly. The animal should be kept in a cage that has a solid top to prvent moisture lose, high basking temps (130-165f surface), with ambient temps from 90-60f from one end to the other. Feeding a big problem I see on your post, they eat like its going out of style, they can eat 3-9 mice a day around 2-3.5ft long, also you can offer roaches, crickets, chicken peeps, quail, in appropriate amounts. Mine poor little girl is 6ft 2 inches long and waiting for me to build a 10ftx6ftx5ft, heres the catch shes only 2years and 8months old. If your thinking of a few appropriate sized food items a week you need to consider something different not a large species of fast growing monitor.

I just have not found any info as to how fast. I am in S FLA so the cage is outside which has ambient temps of 78-90 this time of year in the shade. I have a basking area peaking around 150 right now. As for feed I was misinformed as i was under the impression that feeding every 2-3 days is sufficient. I do not mind feeding more but might mix the mice up with one of the turkey mixes to make it more reasonible until I find a fairly priced feed supplier for frozen mice. I am stoked that they grow that fast! I will need to start working on a larger enclosure since it sounds as if it will outgrow this one quickly! And I thought this cage was large at 3'x6'x3'...lol! Good thing I have 1.3 Acres!!!
What about lifespan and sexing now???

Lifespan - 10 to 15 years - If I am wrong please correct me

Sexing - Hard to sex them when they are young, your vet should be able to sex it
-----
Ed

There are water dragons, chameleons, and monitors in my jungle room.

In captivity the records for age are from lousey husbandry also, yet the max age keeps growing every year as some of the records are still alive.

we used to be able to go get male chicks (which they toss out like trash) for free from an egg farm about an hour away (in NY) which we fed our burmese pythons on. Other than it being a somewhat unpleasant job to go pick dead and dying chicks out of their trash, bag them up and freeze them (need a big freezer), it was definitely the cheapest way to go.