new to monitors

hi im thinking of getting a savy thats about 3 1/2"s and i have a cage thats 4’x18"x18" and uvb bulb 15 watt
and a 85 watt heat bulb and wanted to know what vitams and minerals and how often to dust i plan on feeding ground turkey shrimp boiled scrambled and raw eggs chicken liver and heart crickets the occasional cock roach fish meal worms super worms and snails
and for soil i plan on using all natural soil this my first monitor not reptile i have six snakes gonna be five selling carpet python to get savy and can i not use a lid or do i have to have one i know he cant get uot but im not sure if i need a lid i have one just didnt know if i needed and tell me what i need or for
food i might use canned monitor food as main food and give other stuff as snacks

Im a little late but better late than never.

If you mean 3 and a half inches than yeah that cage is plenty big for him. Maybe even too big. Sometimes its easier to start them off in something a bit smaller and move them up. But if that cage is all you have available it can certainly work. Just make sure he is finding his food and water.

Of course you know he will outgrow it but it will hold him for a while.

When feeding whole prey items I find its not necessary to dust the food too often. It may not even be needed at all. But as a precaution you could use a good vitamin/calcium dust perhaps every 3rd feeding.

When feeding non-whole prey you may want to supplement each feeding as things like liver arent nutrionally complete.

Personally I would keep the menu a bit more simple and stick with insects/small rodents as the mainstay. You can feed that other stuff on occaison but whole prey should make up the bulk of the diet. Whole fish, shrimp and snails are fine. A small amount of fresh ground turkey with vits will do no harm. Id steer clear of that canned stuff. Its just not needed and there are better choices.

The wattage of your bulb doesnt really matter. Its what temperature it produces. You will need to set up the cage, run the bulb and test it with either a temp gun (best choice) or a good thermometer. Its going to vary based on how cold the room is and how far away the lizard is from the bulb. You should be shooting for a 130 degrees basking spot, several spots at different degrees of heat (100,90,80) on the hot side and cooler side of abouty 75. A Retes stack is a great way to allow a monitor to thermoregulate. If you dont know what that is I can explain lemme know.

You will need a solid lid to help hold in your heat and humidity. For sure.

alright and i think i know what a retes stack is it layers of wood stacked so that they can choose there own temperature that they like

Originally Posted by jere000

alright and i think i know what a retes stack is it layers of wood stacked so that they can choose there own temperature that they like

You are correct!

A fantastic tool for monitor keeping. They loooooooove it!

Feeding monitors anything other than whole foods is like breasts without nipples...pointless. When feeding whole animals your are giving complete nutrition in a manner far superior to supplemented parts. Examples whole chicken good, breasts inferior. Fish fillets are inferior to whole fish. Ditch the mealies and crix. Good feeders are snails, rodents, small birds, roaches, small fich (Not Goldfish), silkworms and hornworms. All should be fed live. A healthy monitor that is physiologically ready to eat, healthy and suffuiciently housed will not have problems eating anything live. Make sure the food item is appropriately sized and if you must leave it unattended make sure the feeders have food also. Then again of the monitor wont eat immediately its not hungry or something else isnt right.

I prefer basking spots that use lower wattages in a row rather than one bulb for basking spots. You can use stacks or angled upwards objects to create a basking spot gradient. My basking spots average 140 degrees or more Farenheit. Basically there are three zones warm end, cool end, and basking spot. Warm end and cool end are ambient aka air temperatures while the basking spot is a surface temperature.

Substrate should be dirt that will hold a burrow it digs into it, retain moisture without getting soggy and be something that the monitor recognizes as such.

The cage shpuld be designed to be able to retain humidity. Vents on the warm end down low and up high on the cool end help retain humidity better than venting up high on the warm end, also provides airflow across the enclosure.

Watch the monitor to tell you what needs to be adjusted. For exampe if it tries to get as close as possible to the basking lights you need to increase the basking temps. If it stays on the cool side a large part of the time cage might be too warm, if on the warm end all the time then its too cold. The advantages of higher basking spot temps are less time spent basking, and more efficient metabolization of food. Fat monitors are ones that dont have sufficiently high basking temps. Cool end about 65 degrees warm end about 86 degrees farenheit.

Digby Rigby balboa28279@mypacks.net
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My feeders are cooler than your pets