Just wanted some facts on them is all. We are getting rid of our boa - and my husband wanted a Monitor before we got him. I know that the subject will come up again - so I just wanted to be prepared. Your opinions? What breed has the best temperment? How big do they get? What kind of environment do they need (temps, substrate, hides, ect)? What size cage (start to full grown) What do they eat (I've heard you can feed them catfood? True?) How do you keep them more docile? Thanks for your help!
if your want a 2ft get a timor or an ackie. if you want something you can handle then the ackies. timors are very shy. sav's are a good starter but they get up to5ft long and can be very tempermental if not handled regularly. most others get in the 6ft+ range and need a huge enclosure. a timor can be comfortably kept in a 4'lx6'hx4'w an ackie can be kept in a 5'lx3'hx4'w. a sav can be kept comfortably in a 6'lx5'wx3'h. remember as with all reptiles the more room the better. to keep them more docile all you have to do is handle them on a daily basis. make sure you start from a hatchling as it will help it get used to you. i would suggest contacting www.proexotics.com they are the best when it comes to monitors. as for food; crix, mealies, rodents, raw chicken or turkey, raw steak, cooked eggs (shell and all). dog and cat food only sometimes and make sure it is high quality. click the link in my signature and i have a caresheet for sav's that i made myself. there is also a link to a very well detailed caresheet on it from a person who has had long time experience with monitors.
Wow Kilk - thank you so much for all of the information! I will forward it on to my husband. From just what I read from you - it looks like the ackie is almost the way to go (if we chose too). We still have a lot of time before we decide this. We just got rid of our snake , even though he went to a good home, we still want to really think about the next reptile we own!! Thanks again!
Klik gave ya some good info, for sure. I have a little bit to add also though. On ackies, the cage could be a bit smaller than klik's dimensions if need be. Since they're around 2ft, you could keep them in as small a tank as 2ft wide x 4ft long x 3ft tall, however that would be minimum and as klik said, bigger is better. If you're herping on the cheap and don't mind if the tanks aren't especially beautiful, you can convert one of the big 2 x 2.5 x 3 ft plastic storage bins (found mine at wal-mart for 15 bucks) into a very useable growing enclosure that will house most monitors quite happily for about the first year or so, or until they are about 18" long (really, you could even keep an adult ackie in this enclosure since it is still shorter than the smallest enclosure dimension, but you'd have to give it lots of free roaming time out of the cage to keep it happy). You just need to construct a screen top for it. Cattle troughs are also useful. On diet, another very healthy food to feed them is seafood. I feed mine on various fish and insects, shrimp, and the occasional rare treat of cooked egg. I do not reccomend ever feeding a monitor cat or dog food. It is nutritionally all wrong for a monitor, and has far too much salt besides. Also, you'll notice I didn't metion rodents in my diet. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with rodents as a prey item, the monitors do enjoy them and they are decent nutrition, especially if you gutload them with vitamins before feeding. My reasons for not feeding rodents are twofold: First, while you can cram a lot of vitamins into a mouse and it is high in protein, they are still a bit too fatty IMO to use as a staple food. Obesity is a big problem in monitors, and using rodents as a staple makes it worse. Secondly, I believe that rodents, being mammals, might taste just a bit too similar to humans for comfort, and so it may complicate the taming process. Monitors taste everything, and I believe they may become confused somewhat by being fed mammal meat and then expected not to bite at hands, which could smell/taste very similar. Seafood and insects on the other hand, are nowhere close to what your hand tastes like, so its easy to make a distinction during the taming process. Variety is good though. Feeding just one prey item all the time is almost guaranteed to create some deficiency of something. Soon I plan to put together a nice little article on monitor keeping, with special attention given to how you can keep your monitors at their happy healthy best without breaking the bank. I'll post it here as soon as I'm done. Hope I didn't confuse ya too much!
Savanna. I think they are the best of them all.they get 3-4ft.the temprament is great.Klik also talked about then savanna s so you have all the info you need just make sure you are up for the long hall.Good luck
