Erm, water monitor makign me angry lol

Okay everything has been smooth sailing so far with Monet (my baby water) until the last weekish. Usually he gets crickets/supers and a few roaches a day, with a hopper every once or twice a week, wekk ive noticed he has not been eating his insects, i mean not one. I always count everything i put it, and of the last 30 supers, 20 roaches and 50 crickets, i have pulled everyone out of his cage. yet he is hammmmmmmmmering the mice. Should i just switch him over to mice only? i dont have a problem doing that, but what would his feeding schedule be then? He is really healthy, and i can see him keeping/gaining weight and length, and he is shedding nicely. Im just kinda stuck with the stupid feeding thing :confused:

any advice?

I would not give mice or rats as a daily food item, it could cause them to get a fatty liver. Try not offering them to your water monitor, until it starts eating what is better. I know my monitors won't look at crickets anymore, is it still eating the roaches? I have found when I started giving roaches they didn't eat much else. If not, just stop giving the rats and mice for awhile, the monitor will eat again, they can be fussy sometimes.

Feed him mice. Appropriately sized, one or two per day. Or small rats, depending how big he is. My ornatus is eating 2 medium rats, 5 days a week. At two years of age, in August, he'll go to every other day.

If proper housing is provided, he will live long and healthy.

I had a Nile monitor eat rodents its ENTIRE life and he lived to be 16.

Fatty livers develop if there is no room for activity and/or basking temps are too low.

Water monitors are garbage cans and will consume everything, but yours seems to have a preference. Give it to him.

Chris

thanks mumps. He is about 18" and in a 5 x 2 x 2 so im pretty sure he has enough room to exercise and run around. He is completely active too so i wont worry about that.


As always, thanks for the help

Hope I helped.

Keep me posted on how Monet is doing. Take lots of pics, it's fun to compare them later on...

Chris