Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone here have experience breeding these guys? I am looking at Varanids and I am having trouble finding satifactory information on these guys. Thanks for your help.

caleb

The reason you're having trouble finding satisfactory information is because there isn't much of it to be found -- even less info on melinus. Actually, to my knowledge, there is no one at all having any remarkable success with their reproduction. That species, in particular, is typically difficult to work with, and should be entirely avoided by anyone without extensive varanid experience.

So, if you're new to varanids, I suggest you get something captive bred and start there... However, if you do have extensive varanid experience, or you're stubborn and unable to hear the advice; your best bet is to find the limited information on proper varanid husbandry available, and apply that to keeping melinus.

Hello Calebharris,

Melinus really are just a yellow skinned indicus. If you are going to read up, open your eyes to this outlook... I think as more people begin to work them from baby pairs, trios, etc. up to adulthood they will find that they are monitor just like all others and respond well to the same caging enclosures, feeding regimens that produce eggs, etc. Good luck on your hunt for knowledge and Best to You- Mike S

Agreed. My experience has been that they are docile, display well and are not difficult to breed. I am not sure why they get a bad rap from so many people. They are not ackies, but they certainly aren't difficult either.

Start with babies and give them the respect the deserve and they are not difficult.

Thanks for the input. I figured they probably fit into the general monitor husbandry mold, and it doesn't seem like the people who have them are finding them too difficult, they are just as many cb babies as wild caught adults (at least thats how it seems to me searching classifieds. I plan on starting with ackies, but I have enough experience with reptiles in general, that I need something more challenging than ackies. Thanks again
Caleb

Most of the 'CB' monitors one sees in the classifieds are 'captive born' rather than 'captive bred'. That usually means they were hatched from eggs received from wild-caught, gravid females, rather than actually bred in captivity. There have been some interesting articles online recently about many of the Indonesian monitor 'farms' being exposed for just being a front for selling wildcaught animals, rather than an actual animal-breeding facility. I don't think many people were surprised by that. Here's an example of one paper covering a small number of companies selling a handful of species;
www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_reptiles26.pdf

melinus may or may not be an easy species to breed, but I've yet to see anyone post photographs of mating pairs, gravid females, eggs and hatchlings emerging from eggs.

Good point about the pictures, I thought I had seen a few websites or ads or something that said captive bred spelled out, but there were no copulation pics, I don't even think they had any of them in the egg.

I didn't even know that those farms were supposed to be breeding facilities. thanks for the link.

Caleb

I know of an article in Biawak covering the first breeding of F2 quince monitors at the Cologne Zoo in Europe. I'm sure you can find it with a quick google search, I can't remember which issue it was.
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Jason