A few questions about leaf litter and wood. Can I use sticks and bark from trees outside and if yes how should I clean them? Also when I harvest leaf littter should I use live leaves because all of the dead ones on the ground are fragile, crisp, and crunchy and would you say any leaf coming from a larger tree is likely not toxic?
I need a new Monitor
- Thread starter Whiptooth
- Start date
As long as it is not Cedar or Pine and you know there aren't any chemicals on it, you can use just about anything from outside. Don't bother cleaning them, they will bring in all sorts of beneficial bugs and bacteria to act as your monitor's own cleanup crew. Most successful monitor keepers use bioactive cages like this. Use dead leaves from the ground, the noise they make serves as mental stimulation for the monitors, and they will spend time out foraging around in the leaves. As long as they are not from Cedar or Pine you should be okay unless it is from some other toxic plant, so do the research on whatever leaves you put in. I suggest Oak leaves because they are slightly acidic and will last longer. The larger leaf size also means your monitor can hide in them easily.
Much better already. Try to pile a bunch of cork tubes up higher, just lean them against those branches. He won't really want to climb on those branches, they're too exposed. What is the basking temperature, and what bulb are you using? A halogen flood bulb will work much better than that red one.
The basking spot is 120 degrees and the basking bulb is an Infrared 100W and the rest of the heat bulbs are 75W and infared as well. I would get flood halogens but my light unit won't allow me to fit bulbs in it like that so I would need to get the correct lamps for that
That should be okay, though if you can get the surface temp over 130 it won't hurt. Be sure he can hide around his basking spot, he won't use it as much as he should if it's too exposed. If you can't get more cork yet, you could stuff some big palm fronds in there if you can get them. Wild Peacocks very happily set up shop in Palm plantations, in particular Lontar Palms. To the point of being more abundant than in their natural habitat actually, LOL.
Oh I live in NJ, we don't have any palm trees up here but i'm sure I can get more cork. So in terms of leaving live insects in the tank for Smaug to feed on, examples of that would be Meal worms and Crickets correct, because i'm not sure Smaug will be able to find little crickets in the leaf litter and I don't want to put too many in because I've heard in large quantities crickets will nibble on reptiles.
He will find them, trust me. I have yet to see crickets actually nibble on a lizard that wasn't already half dead. If you're still not convinced, just leave a slice of apple or something in the cage for the crickets to eat instead. You might also look into starting a roach colony, it will make feeding a lot easier. Dubias are the most commonly pushed species, but there are others which are just as easily available and will work just as well. Monitors seem to prefer Lobster Roaches over dubias from what I've heard, especially the smaller species. Plus, roaches will bury themselves in the dirt so the monitor gets the fun of hunting and digging them out. I'm not sure about Peacocks, but a lot of monitors go nuts for earthworms, so you might give that a try. You could stash pinky mice around the cage too every now and then.
I would actually not go with mealworms, simply because they offer relatively little nutrition compared with other prey items.
I would actually not go with mealworms, simply because they offer relatively little nutrition compared with other prey items.
