Spiny Tail Monitors / Ackies - Varanus acanthurus

Ackies are a great lizard species to keep, they have a small overall size (20"), are normally tame enough to feed from your hand and are tough. They are also very entertaining animals with great characters and intelligence. 

How we keep ours  - We keep our monitors in 1.1 pairs or 1.2 groups, we also have one group of 6 animals, however you decide it is important to get the group established while they are still young, immature animals. The older they get, the harder it is to get a group to settle down. Ackies can be quite vicious to each other and have been known to kill cage mates. You must keep an eye open for signs of dominance in the group that is causing suffering to less dominant animals (signs would be; one very shy animal, never appearing for food, covered in bite marks, always in the cold end of the viv etc). If this happens, you will need to separate that individual.

We keep our set ups quite simple, the vivariums are 3ft by 30" by 18" high. We use an inch of corn cob granules as substrate, we have a basking platform under a 60watt spot bulb and then a UV tube mounted 6" from the floor (we use a repti sun 5.0). In each vivarium we have a 6" water dish and a 12" deep tub filled with damp peat. This allows for a high humidity hide and an egg laying site (this is kept at the hotter end of the viv). We provide a basking spot of 130f (top shelf of basking platform) and max cage temp of 80f. All heating and lighting is on for 16 hours per day, with just ambient room temps at night (max 77f, min 60f). All heat lamps should be on dimming thermostats, it is also best to use a spot bulb that is a lower wattage, so that it is on full power for longer, rather than a high wattage bulb that heats the cage up in minutes. This means the thermostat kicks in to turn down the power and therefore eliminates the basking site. Heat pads are also NOT recommended for monitors!

We feed them mainly on locust, dusted with nutrabol and defrosted pinks and fluffs. They are fed daily on the insects and twice weekly on the rodents. Ackies can become quite fat, especially the dominant animal in each group, if this is happening, try to distract it to allow the others to feed. Water is provided at all times. It is interesting to note that ackies will sometimes leave pinks / fluffs in the vivarium untouched for a day before eating them (by which time defrosted rodents are bloated up and look like they will explode!), I have noticed this with most of my monitors. I would think that it's natural for monitors to eat rotting carrion in the wild (if they are lucky enough to find it!) so I don't worry about them eating these 'bloated' pinks.

If you have created a vivarium set up that provides the monitors with what they need, food, shelter, security, nesting site etc, you will find that the monitors need NO further encouragement to breed and can lay multiple clutches each year.

Ackies can really be that simple to keep and breed...however, if you have an incompatible pair and the wrong husbandry techniques you could find them to be the most frustrating of lizards!