Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recent bought a baby nile monitor that is currently living in a 36 in. x 18 in. x 17 in. cage. Although it is a hatchling, it seems relatively docile. It never tried to bite me nor has it attempted to tail whip me. I could get within inches of the cage and it will not try to run and hide. However, when I open the cage it will sometimes run away, unless I have food (of course). Other times, it just stays in the same spot and lets me pet it gently. Sometimes it will even climb onto me from the cage. It’s about 15 inches long, and appears to be very healthy. It’s very curious and alert, and often keeps an eye on me. It appears to be very active, and loves to climb. These lizards grow extremely fast, so i’m already planning on building its future enclosure. I plan on moving it into a small room that is actually attached to my bedroom (not a closet, but still has a door). The dimension of the room 7ft x 6ft x 4-6ft (ceiling is not flat), with a small space attached to it on the left (2.5ft x 2.5 ft x 3-4ft). This room also has a small window, which is a plus. This gives my nile monitor roughly 48 sq ft of space. However, there is another room attached to that same room, which you can enter in through a 3 ft tall x 2 ft wide door. The dimension for the second room is about the same size as the first room (7ft x 6ft), but the ceiling slants to the floor, which leaves the room with 5 sides (rather than a standard 6 sided room). So if you looked at the second room from a sideway view, it would look like a right triangle. This gives my nile monitor a total of 90 sq feet. I’m pretty sure this space will suffice for an adult, but the problem is converting the room into an actual enclosure. The first room has carpeted floor, while the second room is unfinished and is covered in wood (including the sides). The first room has dry wall surrounding it, which my monitor could probably dig through. The main question I have: How do I convert both rooms into a full sized enclosure? I know I need to reinforce the walls and cover them waterproof material, but what would be best? I’m thinking of using FRP to cover the whole area, including the floor, but how do I safely attached it without really damaging the dry wall? Should I cover the floor with wood first for support then put FRP on top? Another concern I have is water maintenance. I don’t think hauling buckets of water for hours everyday is efficient. Could I instead put water filters in the water tub to clean the water. Are filters strong enough to clean monitor feces and make the water clean? I know I could create a drainage system connected to the tub, but I wouldn’t have a place to drain it, considering the enclosure is next to my bedroom on the second floor of my house. If there are no other options, I guess I don’t have much of a choice but to manually change the water. I have never actually built my own reptile enclosure, so I am relatively inexperienced with this kind of project. Are there any other things that I should take into account? In addition, I also have a shelf attached to the wall in my bedroom that stands between my bedroom and room #2. I’m thinking about knocking it down and replacing it with plexiglass, or any other strong clear material, so that I could have a better visual of my monitor from my bedroom to the second room. I’m going to keep the door open so that it has full access to both rooms. I have tried to research online, but there isn’t much information about converting a room into a reptile enclosure on the internet. If anyone could give me some advice, I would really appreciate it! I really want to make this happen and give my nile the space it deserves. Th

BUMP! If you have any experience converting a room into a reptile enclosure, let me know!

Hi, the room is so small, it`s just an "average" sized enclosure! You need an ambient temp around 24c (75f), then a basking spot with a surface temp of between approx 50 to 60c (120 to 140f).... Humidity between approx 50 to 80%, the lower figure will be around the basking area, that`s inevitable and acceptable...
And by the way, you shouldn`t be force handling the monitor at this time.

If the room is too small, would you recommend a bigger one? I could always build a bigger one and put it in the basement. Could i see a picture of your cages? And i rarely ever "handle" it, i just let it get used to my hand by petting it gently during cleaning times (changing water bowl, etc) and let it know my hand isn't a threat. I've only taken it out once, and it was to put it in another container while cleaning out the whole cage.

Hi, if you`re absolutely sure you can provide the necessary conditions in terms of heat/light/humidity, etc, etc, then the bigger the better. However, if you`re not too experienced at this time, better something smaller, where you can provide everything a little easier. Don`t make things harder than need be, or the monitor will pay for any faults... I hope you take this the way it`s meant; to help you help the animal!

The other thing to consider is the weight. If you are bringing in a couple feet of soil for that area, and adding a rather large water feature, you are literally talking about tons of weight that the floor has to accomodate. A cubic ft of soil weighs about 75 pounds, a cubic foot of water about 63 pounds; multiply that by your 180 and you have around 14000 pounds (to give you a frame of reference, a full sized truck is about half that)

If you decide to go big, I would think that maybe putting it in the basement would be a better bet. Depending on your floor slab, it should handle your weight requirements without a problem. It also may solve your drainage problem as all basements will normally have a floor drain you can just tie into. The basement should also make it easier to control temperature and humidity levels as well. Just thinking out loud here...

Given what you will ultimately need for a cage you would be better building it in the basement. You really don't want to build a cage for an adult nile on a second floor of a house. It would require some modifications beyond what you want to do.
I am not sure how much soil weighs but considering the bags of topsoil you get at the store usually weigh 40lbs or so and are comparable in size to a standard bag of concrete (1/2 cubic ft.) and you will need probably 1 or 2 cubic yards of dirt or possibly more (27 cubic ft in a cubic yard which is 54 bags of concrete btw although it is different than dirt it will give you a ball park estimate on dirt.) that's a few thousand lbs of dirt.
On top of that water weighs 8.5lbs per gallon. If you use one of those pretty molded ponds that figures out to 850lbs for a 100 gal. pond. That's a lot of weight for a second story. You would need to seriously re-engineer the structure of your house in order to keep it from falling through the floor.
In the basement you could build the base of your cage using concrete blocks. You could even dry stack them and coat them with a surface bonding mortar (quickwall). You could then have a base that could hold dirt just fine and at a cost much cheaper than some of the projects I see on here sometimes. You could then build the top part of the cage on the base. With a bit of tweaking you could probably do a water feature for him in a similar although I would suggest doing homework and trying some outside ponds first. Obviously there are other possibilities but doing them in the basement is the way to go.

Thanks for the replies. It is possible for me to build a cage in my basement, but what should the dimensions be?

Minimum size for an adult nile should be at least 20 ft by 10 ft
-----
"We don't inherate the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children"

Can you post pictures of your cages. I'd like to see your 20x10 cage.

I would love to but I do not own a digital camera (or any camera for that matter i'm just not a picture kinda guy) and even if i did i doubt i could figure out how to post a pic onto KS sorry. I am one of the most computer un-savy people you will ever meet just posting on the message board here is about the limit of my computer know how!
-----
"We don't inherate the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children"