Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can any body give me some advice about caring for these monitors ?

How big is the lizard you have/are considering as the wee ones have somewhat rather delicate constitutions and are thusly more particular in their needs.
These guys are way cool! About my favorite of the monitors. Very intelligent and active once acclimated. Some tend to remain skittish while others can become remarkably tame and interactive given time to adjust on their own schedule.

I'm considering getting a baby.These monitors are really cool,its surprising that these aren't that popular. I hope with time my little guy/gal could tame done nicely , but I'd still love it if it didn't.

Babies are somewhat delicate in my experience. Requiring high humidity plenty of hidespot where they'll get neither too hot or too cold. As its almost certainly an import it will traumatized and need a good deal of acclimational time and patience on your part. I'd thnk you would do better getting a slightly older specimen at least 12-14" still young enough to acclimate more easily yet past the fragile stage thus more apt to survive the whole process.a And yeah! They are totally cool lizards and once they get settled in are great to watch as they cruise the enclosure climbing over everything digging through the substrate for bugs and all. One of my funniest monitor moments was watching a 4' plus roughneck chasing crickets. Animated to say the least!
hope this helps a bit!
Guy

Thanks.I'm planning on getting pretty large pieces of cork bark flats and rounds and lining the enclosure from bottom to top, so he has lots of room to explore and climb.I'm going to use a mix of orchid bark , cypress mulch, and CLEAN REPTILE SAFE topsoil for its substrate .Also adding varies basking spots around the enclosure too let it get to choose how hot or cold it wants too be. I might just get a misting system and put it on a timer so its stays humid.

In my experience with these guys i found the installation of fresh cut shrubberies such as bamboo and the like(obviously use non-toxic plants) to provide a leafy cover really ads to their sense of comfort and security which lends itself to them exihibiting more behaviors. As for substrate i had been using pottingsoils orchid bark and such on top of newspaper until this madman told me to try simple leaflitter collected from someplace without much chemical pollutants. He actually took me into the hills where we filled countless bags with leaves and sticks and such which he actually put in his otdoor lacie and croc monitor enclosures! What a whack! So i got home and put in a foot deep layer of the stuff and the rouh necks LOVED it! On the same trip he convinced me to try hollow logs in place of the manmade hide spots i was using at the time. Well hell if he wasnt right about that too! They NEVER used the old ones again! And these were all just bug covered out in the woods pieces of old log gathered in dirty old nature. Sure i hosed em off but other than that straight on in. A few months later they were breeding. Thanks Frank!
The leaflitter kept the humidity good though i still hosed thecage once a week or so as the tucson air is rather dry and the logs were the monitors meow so to speak. The cut bamboo was the icing on the cake. Be sure to provide a number of basking spots both hidden and unobscured at various heights. That crazy fellow also got me using basking spot temps around 180 degreesF whIch proved rather effective to no ill result. Hope this helps!
Guy