Hi and first off, its not about letting you have it. Its about letting the monitor have it. It being what it needs.

Ok, if that nile was well supported, it would outgrow that cage in one month. So your extremes are a bit much, there are cages between an 8 foot cage which is way to small for a large adult.(remember, if you do well, you will end up with a large adult) And what you have now.

So lets start, monitors burrow, so your deep substrate is not deep enough to allow a BURROW. A burrow is something that goes into the ground and is several times the lenght of the animal digging it. While it would look funny, you could fill the cage half full of soil and it would be far better for the monitors.

But indeed that would look funny. yup, but not funny to the monitor, just funny to us.

That also means there is less air space to heat, which means less air movement. Is that a screen top, If so, screen tops kill varanids.

Lets go back to the substrate. Monitors are active, which means they do stuff. Whats there to do in a cage like that, sit there?

If there were branches in there, it would climb. but what good is climbing a few inches. The monitor starts up and is there is what, a second. Then what?

So maybe to swim, well swimming is to travel in water, to travel means to go a distance. A distance is WAY more then its body lenght. So in effect it cannot swim or climb.

Heres where the deep substrate comes into use. Its like an exercise wheel for rodents. Monitors dig and dig and dig an dig somemore. Its something that they can keep doing. And they do.

So what we are talking about is what the cage is suppose to do for the monitor. Of course, once you understand that, you can also try to make it look good for you. Except there is one problem. A healthy monitors DESTORYS cages. They dig and move everything everywhere. But you can try.

Now to temps, well small cages actually suck for providing a range of temps and they do so because of the demands of varanids. They thrive with hot areas(about the size of the monitor) at 150F. So if you have an area the size of the monitor, at least snout/vent lenght, Its very difficult to have other areas around room temperature, mid seventies. Which is why larger cages work well.

Those dang hot areas, are why screen lids do not work well. If you actually provide a usable hot area, the hot air travels up and out of the cage, taking all humidity with it. We varanid guys call those cages, Beef Jerky machines, as thats what it would do to raw meat. And your monitor.

So we cover the lid and put the heat source inside. It works really well.

Once you get this right, your monitor will grow over five, six inches a month, if you feed it. Oh and it will feed full up, twice a day. Of course you do not have to feed it that much or have it grow that much, but it would if allowed.

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