Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[Thomas Shanta]

Awesome set up Lee,your Macreai don't look that shy from the pics are they quite confident,by that I mean do they normally stay out in the open when people are near their viv.

[salvator]

Very nice looking vivs and especially monitors.
Don't suppose you keep Yellow tree monitors- V.Melinus ?

[Bohan]

[LeeWarren]

Scott W Posted:

stunning Lee, I just hope they look that good in six months time once staff have cleaned them with the wrong cloth or the lizard decides to try and climb up the lovely smooth clear front

I looked into this before ordering these vivs, there is a product that I have ordered from the states that clean and protect acrylic, so with some elbow grease I should be able to keep these looking brand new.


jon_g Posted:

Do you intend to breed these?

Im starting a slight reduction in photoperiod with reduced mistings for 6 weeks then increase day lengths and heavy misting. Fingers crossed for 2008.


Thomas Shanta Posted:

Awesome set up Lee,your Macreai don't look that shy from the pics are they quite confident,by that I mean do they normally stay out in the open when people are near their viv.

I have had these for a few months now, at first I was lucky to see them, But after a while with feeding water changes etc they do get used to human contact. Now I can clean their viv without them even flinching.

salvator Posted:

Very nice looking vivs and especially monitors.
Don't suppose you keep Yellow tree monitors- V.Melinus ?

V . Melinus are very simalar to the mangrove monitor, same family I think. The yellow tree monitor you are thinking of is V, reisingeri, basically the same as the green and blues but obviously are yellow. No I dont have these yet.

[arborgoanna]

If I can offer some constructive criticism on these cages..

After keeping members of the V. prasinus complex for several years now, and experimenting with various setups and orientations, I have found that these monitors prefer thick, vertically oriented tree limbs and trunks, rather than horizontally-oriented branches and logs. Of course some horizontal branches would be fine, however I think that you should add a bunch of vertical trunks in there (of greater than 4" in diameter). Your monitors will likely make better use out of these trunks than your current orientation.

There is an excellent V. beccarii terrarium in the following thread, which will give you an idea of what I am talking about, and might even give you some new ideas for improving your terraria.

http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=1438124,1438495

Best of luck to you with your captives!

[Sean]

Great stuff Lee, nice acrylic vivs easy to clean and maintain. There's chap I know in the Czech Republic who uses something similar with is prasinus and he as about 100 prasinus so hopefully your well on your way to success with those vivs.

[LeeWarren]

Hi Arborgoanna.

I am waiting for some cork branches to be delivered to put in there, then the cage will be complete, Here are my experiences from the following enclosures I used for 2 pairs and a single male:

I setup 3 different enclosures before my macraei arrived.

1: was fitted with the hollow cork bark.

2: was fitted with vertical branches and cork bark.

3: was the plastic bin idea from the tree monitor website.

Out of all 3 the cork bark enclosure seemed to work the best, the animals started eating straight away and have been problem free.

The second enclosure with the vertical branches did work but the animals were very shy and constantly stressed, I only overcome this when I replaced the branches with tubes.

Now the 3rd I used was the plastic bin idea which turned into a nightmare, feeding and changing water was a challenge without trying to disturb the animal and cleaning was a mission, the animal never fed while in this setup. I replaced this setup with a small plastic molded shed from Argos £69.99, kitted it out with cork tiles and cork tubes and the animal thrived until he went into his new enclosure.

I will get some more updated pics of the enclosure posted soon.

I would advise cork tubes are a MUST for Macraei when acclimatizing your animals.

[arborgoanna]

Hi Lee,

Forgive me, as I failed to mention the importance for hiding spots within the enclosure. Of course without ample hiding spaces, these highly skittish monitors will be stressed, and unlikely to adjust well. In the link I provided, the keeper uses cork flats and tubes mounted to the walls of the enclosure to provide numerous hiding spaces, in addition to the vertically-oriented limbs. I was not suggesting that you remove any hiding spaces, I was simply suggesting that vertical tree limbs would be more appropriate climbing and basking positions for the monitors themselves.

As for your experimenting with 'setup #3', I am having a difficult time understanding how cleaning and feeding this setup was difficult for you? While it has been a while since I have read my article from the website, I believe that I mention providing a drain at the bottom for easy cleaning. While using a bucket or other large, offensive object to re-apply water to the basin can be stressful to the animal, installing/hooking up a hose into the enclosure to refill the bottom is about as non-invasive as you can get, in my opinion. With an external valve to drain the enclosure, and external valve to fill the enclosure, you can clean it out without the monitors themselves even seeing you. Also, I am not sure how a water basin at the bottom would affect feeding behavior, provided that all other cage furnishings remained constant between each experiment.

I apologize for the confusion in my post; without a question tree monitors need ample hiding spaces. In my own experiences, as well as Simon's (the poster of the linked thread), cork flats and narrow cork tubes mounted to the walls offer excellent hiding areas which are readily utilized by the animals. Not to mention it increases the usable surface area when compared to just cork sheeting/tiles.

Cheers!

[LeeWarren]

Arborgoanna, are you Bob from the tree monitor website?

I constantly use the site for reference. Probably the only good site for prasinus etc.

Regarding the drums as enclosures and cleaning. I cant just rinse the bottom of a cage, I need to disinfect it. And reaching into one of them drums when they are kitted out with logs etc is very tricky.

I have a thing about keeping things clean, to the point of obsessive cleaning.

When it comes to cleaning im a bit like Monica off of Friends.

The plastic shed from Argos worked very well, if you ever get the chance to try one, do - they are very good.

[arborgoanna]

Ah, you are referring to the quarantine enclosure article; for some reason I thought you were referring to the substrate-less enclosure article also on the website.

I agree in that the garbage can quarantine enclosure is not optimal for this species. While in theory, hosing it down and keeping things sanitary is easy, it does prove difficult and can be invasive when you are entering the enclosure in from above. I have since abandoned that type of quarantine setup, and have implemented a front-opening enclosure similar to my permanent enclosures, although basically containing the same components as the garbage can enclosure.

To answer your question, yes treemonitors.com is my website. Sadly, it has been a while since I last updated the website, in fact I discontinued it a few months back. I had to reinstate it more recently so that I could retrieve some information and photographs from it when my old desktop pc containing the originals crashed and lost the files. I am not sure what future of the site is, funding two non-profit informational websites is getting expensive!

I have since moved on to create a new informational website http://varanidae.org , which hosts the IVIG and the varanid journal Biawak. This new endeavor occupies most of my time these days, so I'm afraid there isn't much else I can do for treemonitors.com. I am not sure if anybody here is able to understand German, but Daniel Moldovan has created an excellent German counterpart, which can be accessed at http://baumwarane.de.

Cheers!