Caiman Lizard Care

Hello everyone!
I recently acquired a caiman lizard and, as I raise him from baby to adult, I will continue to update this thread. Think of it as an online journal for him (Irwin)

Currently he is roughly 2-3 months old, and his previous owner fed him apple snails and ground turkey. I would have kept this diet, but we dont have a chinese market where I live to acquire these snails. I have ordered some online and they will arrive in a few days. But he needed to eat when he arrived. The way I solved this dilemma was with canned cat food and canned shrimp. I mixed the two together, and left some apart. I put the mix of both, just shrimp, and just cat food in the cage. To my surprise he went for the cat food, and left the shrimp alone. Today I removed the leftover food and cleaned the dish. So over the next few months I will try a few other foods to see what he likes and dislikes, and to give him more variety to chose from.

His cage is currently a 4' x 1' x 2' cage, As he matures and grows (he is only 1' now) I will make a larger enclosure. I plan to add pictures of Irwin and his cage tomorrow afternoon or the next day. His branch was made out of bamboo staves (8' long) bought at michaels and the vines were purchased there too for around $14. This, I think, is the best way to go for reptile decor. An olive branch from petsmart that is smaller cost twice as much, if not more. Making your own items tends to be more in your favor. His water bowl is 14" long by 12" wide x 6.5" deep. I feel this is too small, and plan to put together something larger to make the ratio 1/4 land 3/4 water. In the bowl I have a $14 pump from amazon, to keep the water from becoming stagnant and gross (although it still needs to be changed every 2-4 days). I plan to add fish to water area once it's bigger, to eat the algea and feces he puts in it, along with any extra food he tracks in. Hopefully he wont see them as prey, due to the fact caiman lizards are big fans of crustaceans like crawfish, and shrimp, and mollusks like snails, things that dont run away to easily. But more on that later, when it goes into effect.

Taming him down has been a big time consumer for him. When he is in the cage, he doesn't like me coming near, and will huff and tail whip the glass. When I reach in to scoop him up he runs away and huffs. When I pick him up he huffs and opens his mouth as if to bite. HOWEVER, once out of the cage and in my arms, he calms down and falls asleep. It's bizarre. I put a used sock in at the end of every day (taking the old one out to be washed and worn) to get him used to my scent. So far, not much change.

Well, this is the first entry for Irwin, the baby caiman lizard. Pics will be uploaded soon, and I will try to update this every one to two weeks, unless something big should happen or change that is worth mentioning at the time.

For those of you who read this whole thing, sorry about the giant walls of text, I just wanted to fit all the info I have into a few sectioned paragraphs.

Thanks for reading,
Connor