Monitor or Tegu???

[bsash]

I have a Ornate Nile monitor and a Savannah monitor.

Here is what I feed them every week:
Sunday- Two hard boiled eggs each
Monday- Nothing
Tuesday- Two rat pups each and two dozen roaches each
Wednesday- Nothing
Thursday- 4 ounces cooked beef liver each
Friday- Nothing
Saturday- Nothing

The Savannah monitor is three years old at 3ft. Long and the Nile monitor is almost two years old at 2 1/2ft. Long

I house them both kind of the same, except the Nile stays a little more moist. I keep them both of them in their own 125 gallon tank, the substrate is the excavator clay, sold at reptiledirect.com, or bigappleherp.com, I like that because I lay a thick layer of it down and they can make their own burrows. It holds much better than the half dirt, half sand mix I used to do. I have a typical reptile screen lid on the tank, in the middle I have a 250 watt white heat lamp, then off to the side I have the powersun 160 watt uvb uva heat combined bulb. On the other side of the tank I have nothing, and the temperature stays at about 75 degrees. In the middle with the 250 watt bulb I have a basking tree for the Nile, and a big stack of stones for the Savannah, as she is horrible at climbing. The basking spot stays at 100- 115 degrees. My warm side with the 160 watt powersun bulb stays at 80-90 degrees. I also keep their water bowls (Giant cat litter boxes) on the cool side. I see it this way, in the summer we like to cool off by going in a pool or taking a cold shower right? I do the same for them and leave the water on the cool side so it is at least refreshing.

As for taming them down, Savannah monitors are okay, it is not something that you are going to buy nice. You will need to handle them often, and then still handle them 2-3 times a week even when you got them the way you want them.

Sorry that turned out so long. I also used to rescue monitors, but it is an expensive business so I had to quit it. I know I am probably going to get crap for keeping them in fish tanks, but I believe they need moving air too, but you do need higher watt bulbs in order to keep them in fish tanks, because then otherwise the heat does just rise out of the tank.

Hope this helps!