hey everyone, my first post here , ok so here goes, I have 3 bearded dragons ( 2 female 1 male) i breed them, i have had snakes and lizards all my life etc, but i have never had a monitor, which i now want to get. soooo questions: I have a screen enclosure that is 4 ft long, by 3.5ft high by 2 ft wide, , now what i am wondering is do you know how long i could keep a mangrove or blue tailed monitor in there? (like from a baby to _____ how old ) next question, whats the best way to keep the enclosure at the right temperature at night? ceramic heating? thanks everyone
yeah either ceramic heating or under tank heater. Well both those monitors will out grow that tank pretty fast. i would say any where from 6 months to 1 year...depends on how fast they grow. If you do not have a Custom cage that will house a 5 ft. mangrove than i would not recomend gettin a mangrove. Mangroves are pretty aggresive too(just the nature of the animal) they hate to be held and hate to be picked up. And with the blue tail wont be as bad but will still out grow that tank really fast.
mangroves like yesITis said, can be aggressive, but can become rather dociile if they have an experienced handler. if this is your first monitor then do not go for a mangrove unless you know what you are getting into. no monitor will do good in an all screen cage, because of their claws and strength. all monitors grow very fast and would outgrow that cage in a matter of a few months
if i were you i would go with a Timor...your cage sounds perfect for 1 as long as you can keep the heat/humitity up.
The Screen enclosure isn't going to cut it for a monitor of anykind unless you built a solid cage around it. Mangroves and blues tails both get to a pretty decent size. 3-4ft on mangroves and 5ft on blue tails. Timors are nice I had a trio at one time but they are small and very fast. Don't plan on holding these indo monitors very much as for the most part they are very skittish! It's almost impossible to find a c.b.b. animal. What are you looking for in a monitor? Do you want something calm, handleable, big or small? So you want something neat looking that you should really not handle? With some more info we may be able to better help you out.
I think your cage would be fine for something like an ackie, red or yellow. if u can keep the heat up you should be fine, they dont have real high humidity requirements, plus theyre always fun intresting little lizards. If your looking for a more classic monitor reguarding size and what not than build a cage, if you pm me or e-mail me i have some blueprints i can give you that will work for a lot of mid-large size monitors, and i have 2 of them built, i can take pics and show you if your intrested.
that isnt good at all for any ackie. ackie are terrestrial and need something such as dirt to dig in.
wouldnt there be a mess from dirt coming out of the enclosure through screening if the entire enclosure is screen?
If you realy want one of those monitors you might as well build a cage that will house it its hole life. good luck
