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Tree Monitor Care Sheet

By Codey Kopp

Introduction

           Tree Monitors are a species of monitor lizard primarily endemic to Indonesia, with one species found on Mainland Australia. Tree monitors are easily identified by their long, prehensile tails that they use for support and stability while climbing up and down trees. They will even hang from their tails to reach for food.

           As of 2016, Tree monitors have been assigned to the subgenus Hapturosaurus. Previously they were assigned to Euprepiosaurus, which also includes the indicus complex.

           Here is a list of all the known tree monitors, their common names, and the places they originate from:

           beccarii (Black tree monitor, Aru island)
           boehmei (Gold spotted tree monitor, Waigeo island)
           bogerti (Bogert’s tree monitor, Fergusson island New Guinea)
           keithhornei (“Canopy Goanna” Queensland Australia)
           kordensis (Biak tree monitor, Biak island)
           macraei (Blue tree monitor, Batanta island)
           prasinus (Green tree monitor, mainland West Papua, multiple locale, such as Jayapura, Sorong, and Merauke)
           reisingeri (Yellow tree monitor, Misool island)
           telenesetes (Rossel island monitor, Rosel island, Papua New Guinea)

           There are likely many more species that we are unaware of. Three of these have been classified as their own species or discovered in general within the last 20 years (Blue Tree Monitor 2002, Gold Spotted 2003, Yellow Tree Monitor 2005). Very, very little is known about species native to New Guinea. If you’re familiar with Green Tree pythons, you’ll recognogize a lot of the islands listed above, as there are locale of chondros native to all of these places, such as Aru, Biak, Sorong, Misool, and Waigeo. All tree monitors are relatively close in size, with the smallest species (prasinus) staying around 2.5-3 feet, and the biggest (macraei) being about 3.5 feet, with most of their length being their tails.

Diet & Husbandry

Food

           Tree monitors are primarily insectivores, but are believed to also be nest raiders in the wild. Almost all field study research on various species has shown a nearly exclusive diet of locusts; whether that be gut contents from deceased animals, or observing them actually eating. In the United States the closest thing to locusts would be grasshoppers and Katydids. If you do not have access to grasshoppers, Dubias are the next best thing. I primarily use dubia as a filler meal, whilst throwing in other things like day-old quail, or quail eggs (raw, soft, or hard-boiled). These animals put on weight very quickly, so rodents should be avoided outside of reproduction unless you have an animal you believe to be underweight, at which point it could be beneficial to help get to an appropriate size.

           It is not recommended to feed monitor lizards in general any meat like chicken breast. It lacks all of the connective tissue, bone, cartilage, etc, and all of these things are major sources of nutrients. The lack of these nutrients can and will cause calcium deficiency which can be incredibly detrimental to a monitor’s health. Whole prey should be used at all times when feeding noninsects, hence why I use day-old quail. It’s small enough that even tree monitors can eat them after they’re about a year old. When younger than 1 year, you can cut up quail to still provide these essential nutrients. Feeding fish should also be avoided. Amongst other reasons, I will simply leave it at, there are no fish in the trees. lol.

           When feeding insects you should always be conscientious of supplementing, but more importantly, gutloading the feeders. I recommend having multiple types of powder supplements. Some with calcium and d3, and some without. Whilst it’s important to not make them calcium deficient, they can also overdose on d3, which is why I recommend having some with and without. the main 3 I use are Bene-bac plus for reptiles, herptivite multivitamins, and Sticky Tongue miner-all with calcium and d3. Bene-bac is one you would use much less frequently; this is mainly used for fortifying gut flora, which helps with digestion amongst other things. As for gutloading, basically anything orange color is beneficial. Carrots, squash, sweet potatoes etc. but definitely add variety. Avoid feeding stuff like iceberg lettuce to your bugs. It is basically all water with no nutritional value. Collard greens, bell peppers, and most fruits are good. In my house, any scraps of fruits/vegetables from cooking get fed to the bugs instead of being thrown away.

           For hatchlings, I offer food daily, or every other day if they ate a lot the previous feeding, juveniles every 2 days, and sub-adults/adults I will feed every 2-4 days depending on meal size, typically landing on feeding every 3 days. One thing you can do to make feeding less tedious is the inclusion of mounted food bowls, which allows you to fill a cup with dubia, and they will eat as they want over the course of a few days. I personally usually fill a cup once with dubia, wait till it’s gone, then offer quail/quail eggs, then next feeding fill the cup with dubia again.

           For grasshoppers, I recommend contacting Khai Phan (Cali Grasshoppers) and for quail, Adam Slaten (Adam’s Quail)

Enclosure

           Being arboreal animals, they obviously prefer high places, so they do well in tall enclosures. Hatchlings (1-6 months old ish) I start in 3x2x3 (LxDxH) enclosures. From there you can upgrade as you please, but I wouldn’t go lower than 3x2x3 at any point. That size is what I use straight out of the egg; if you are a new owner acquiring a hatchling, my recommendation would be to put them in a 3x2x4 (4 tall) PVC enclosure. this will house them comfortably till they are close to a year old, giving you plenty of time to work on the final adult enclosure. I find this ideal, because this way you are only needing 2 enclosures through its lifetime, instead of possibly 3-4 total enclosures constantly upgrading, or worse yet, leaving it stuck in a small enclosure longer than it should be. They’re highly energetic and active animals and deserve the space to move about. At 6 months old you should start considering their next enclosure and getting it prepared.

           You have a couple routes to go, but my absolute bare minimum recommendation for an adult is a 4x3x4. Me personally, I put my adults in 4×2.5-3×6. I specifically do 2.5 (29 inches to be exact) because like many others, I’m still renting, and need to make sure I can fit these through doorways when I move lol. So I’m pushing the depth to the absolute limits, which is in my opinion what you should do. give them as much space as you can afford to provide. Ideally adults are kepting in 4x2x6 enclosures or bigger, especially for pairs, but if you can offer that extra foot of depth, absolutely do 4x3x6 or even bigger if you can manage the space.

           As with all reptiles, bigger is always better, and the best material to make reptile enclosures out of right now is PVC. There are dozens of PVC enclosure builders online such as Animal Plastics, and C Serpents. Post covid, material is extremely hard to come by to build yourself, especially with PVC, so paying one of these companies is usually the best route to getting a good product. With that said; if you want to do anything outside of the conventional 4x2x4-4x2x6, if you commission one of these companies to do it, the up-charge for adding a foot of depth or height is massive, and at that point much more reasonable to build it yourself. I always recommend my customers purchase their first enclosure for their hatchling from Animal Plastics. They have a great product, and on their smaller enclosures it is very reasonably priced. its not till the adult enclosure is being made that I would consider doing it yourself. In the future, I fully intend to start housing my individual animals in 4x3x6, and pairs in 5x4x8. Can’t happen until I move, but this is the plan. Not going to disparage others for not doing the same, but I think they deserve more room.

           Enclosure walls should be covered with something to make them climbable, and multiple hides provided throughout, (but I’ll cover the hides in a later part). There’s quite a few ways to achieve this. You can just screw cork flats into walls if you want super minimal effort but gets the job done. If you want it to look nice, its going to cost more but looks much more exhibit quality.

           One method is to lay cork flats on the walls, and spray foam them in place. Then you take a knife or razor and carve away the foam to get the desired shape, at which point you cover the the foam in either black, or brown silicone, and immediately apply a dirt mix to it. I’ve done this with a few enclosures, and it looks nice at first, but over time their claws will rip away at the dirt on top exposing the foam underneath, so every couple years this needs to be touched up. The way to avoid massive touch ups is by using up as much space as possible with cork, so you use far less foam. leave very small gaps if any between the cork. This will help it last much longer.

           Another method is to use XPS insulation foam, silicone or spray foam it the walls, and carve away at that to get the desired shape. I use 2 inch XPS. This can be bought at hardware store like home depot or lowes. 2 inch sheets allow you to play around a lot more with depth and get the look you desire. The way I carve the foam, is by using a wire brush with a drill, and carving out grooves at an angle. Once you get the look you want, and you’ve vacuumed up the pink snow this created a dozen times, take a heat gun to the surface of the foam. This will get rid of any leftover bits and loose pieces, as well as tighten up the foam and harden it ever so slightly. This makes the next part a bit easier. Painting. There’s also a couple ways to go about the painting process. You could just do straight Drylok, but that will mean you have to do a lot of layers. Especially for claws like tree monitors have, you’ll have to do at least 5 layers in total, or you could do the first layer in grout, which will harden it up much quicker and save you a lot of time, but also makes it much heavier. Pros and cons. To get the desired color of the drylok, I recommend mixing your first layers in black. You can use Quikrete cement dye found also at hardware stores. there’s 4-5 colors to pick from, and you can mix them lighter or darker so it really allows you to get creative with the look, and if you dont like it, you just paint over it and start over, its never truly ruined, so dont stress if you dont like how it looks right away. When I do all drylok, I do 4 layers of black, then a layer of dark brown, not going as deep in the cracks, then 6th “layer” of a much lighter brown, and then you can do whites, reds, whatever you want. at this point its just highlights that you “dry brush” on. The first layer on a 4x2x6 enclosure will likely take you around 2 hours. The last layer of the dry brush, might take you 15 minutes, so it does get much quicker as you go. Serpadesigns on YouTube actually uses a very similar method in some of his videos. I would highly recommend checking them out if you want a good visual guide on what the process looks like. He also covers the topic of substrate, and the substrate he uses is very similar to what I use. Top soil, coco fiber, sand, moss, orchid bark.

           As a disclaimer here, I have been running a few enclosures that are completely done in Drylok, and have noticed it wears down the monitor’s claws way too much, so I’ve started to dial back the amount of Drylok I use to just 1 wall out of the 3. The other 2 walls I’m doing cork panels, so if you intend to go this route, I would highly recommend only doing 1 out of the 3 walls in Drylok.

           Just like any other species of reptile, it is easiest to set up their enclosures on an automated system. Instead of hand spraying and manually turning lights on and off, I recommend investing in a Mist King system, as well as Smart power strips. Save yourself the money and sanity, and get a Kasa power strip. The Petco ones are just not worth the money. The Kasa strips will allow you to assign each individual plug its own schedule to turn off and on, and even lets you know how much energy each plug uses. Now this topic brings us to ~

Lighting, Heat and Preferred Temps

           For animals housed by themselves, you can provide 1 basking spot and a UV strip across the top of the enclosure. The most reliable brand right now is Arcadia. You want to be careful which bulbs you’re buying because you can cause UV burns if you get too high of a % bulb for too small of an enclosure.

           For Hatchlings and stuff in a small enclosure, you can use a 6% Shadedweller bulb, but adult enclosures you’ll want something like a 12%. Specifically what I use is the Arcadia T5HO pro kit 12% bulb. this gives you the bulb and everthing you need with it. You want to position the UV to cast light over the basking spot, but you want to make sure your basking platform is not too high, as I said they can get UV burns if too close to the bulb for too long. 12-18 inches is the preferred distance. I recommend a 12/12 or 14/10 day/night cycle.

           Example: turn lights on at 9am, and off at 9pm, or on at 8am, and off at 10pm.

           I have started using grow lights from Thrive Ecosystems in all of my enclosures, and these lights have an app with dimmable features to them, so I’m capable of running sunrise and sunset dimming settings so it’s more natural than the instant on/off. Also by providing grow lights, I’m able to do a more natural UV cycle. So instead of using the UV as my primary light source, that’s what the grow light is for, and I have the UV set to run 10am-6pm, while my grow light starts to turn on at 645am, is fully on at 815am. For sunset, it starts to dim at 730, and is off at 9pm. My primary basking spot is set to turn on at 830am, and off at 830pm, whilst the secondary basking turns on at noon and off at 6pm. (This is only relevent to my pairs, as my single animal enclosures only have 1 basking. the rest are all in sync with each other though, so they’re all on identical sunrise and sunset, and UV.) This is to better simulate the peak temperature of the day. I’m sure this is totally unecessary, but I find it fun to toy with these types of things.

           Temperature with reptiles is all about providing a gradient and letting them choose where they want to sit at a given time. Basking spots should be up to 140f at a max. The sweet spot seems to be about 130. I use dimmable fixtures that can be bought on Chewy’s website, with par38 halogen bulbs that can be found at hardware stores such as home depot. If you place your ventilation lower in the enclosure, acheiving this basking temp should keep your higher end heat where you need. this will give the animal places to choose from in the 90s, and 80s. low end of the enclosure should be in the 70s to give a proper gradient. There’s a misconception that these animals are extremely fragile. They can handle, and sometimes prefer, much colder temps than a lot of people give them access to. You still want to make sure you have a high basking spot, and proper high end temps, but you will see them frequenting areas that are in the 70s. if you notice they’re not using the bottom of the enclosure, its likely due to it being too dark, not because its too cold, so that’s something to be aware of while filling in the space in the enclosure. Try not to use a lot of wide flat objects, as it will block light reaching the lower parts of the enclosure.

           Night time temps are fine getting into low 70s, even high 60s. No lower than 65 in my opinion. If your house gets colder than that, I would recommend setting up a ceramic heat emitter or something of the sort to supplement additional heat without light at night.

           Hydration is incredibly important. With the high temps that we’re discussing, it’s very easy to dry out the enclosure. While they are much hardier than people give them credit, drying out can cause major problems, specifically with their tails. All it takes is one bad shed to make the tip of their tail dry out, which can cause it to go necrotic and even start creeping upwards. This is very easy to avoid, just by having the mistking set up that I mentioned. For example, I currently have 6 adult tree monitors. 5 of the 6 of them are missing 2-6 inches of their tail from previous owners not keeping the humidity high enough. I have my mistking set to spray twice a day for 45 seconds each time. I find this is a good amount as it stops my plants from being drowned by still ups the humidity and moisture enough. With Mistkings you dont want to use tapwater. the hardwater will clog nozzles and make the glass cloud up over time. RO (reverse osmosis) is absolutely the way to go. You can purchase RO systems online to set them up at your house, or just go to a local aquarium store as they almost always have RO you can purchase for just a few dollars.

 

Temperament

           Tree monitors are extremely inquisitive and curious animals. Once you can find a way to bridge the gap with them, they are very rewarding to work with and be around. A lot of wild-caught tree monitors have extremely bad temperaments, which is caused by the mishandling and abuse they go through in the process of being exported out of Indonesia. I see a lot of other care sheets online say they’re entirely a show animal that’s hands-off, but that’s really not the case, Especially if you get a captive-bred animal. CB animals will be much more willing to interact with you, and many will even jump out of the enclosure to get to you because of their curious nature. There’s obviously a price difference in purchasing captive bred, but it’s well worth it to have a pet quality animal, rather than something that’s terrified of you most of its life, and that’s aside from the health benefits. A lot of wild-caught animals, tree monitors included, sit in poor conditions while they wait to be exported, which leads to malnourishment, infections, etc. Most come in with ticks, parasites, and a plethora of other issues, amongst them being scared. Again, just go with captive-bred.

           If you’re working with an animal that is scared of you, the best way to begin the process of “socializing” is by #1, placing its enclosure in an area where you frequent. It being able to see you and watch you go about your business will help it acclimate quite a bit. If you’ve just acquired a tree monitor, it’s likely not eating in front of you, so you’re placing food in a bowl or in a hide for it. The next step is going to be to try and work it up to eating in front of you. There’s a lot of sitting around and waiting involved with this, but once it’s willing to eat in front of you, you can start to make real progress with it. Once it’s comfortable moving around with you watching it, place food in front of it, back away from the enclosure, and don’t move till it eats. After a few times of this, it will likely be more receptive to attempts with tong feeding. Then when it tong feeds, you can start placing one hand in the enclosure, and with the other hand that has the food in tongs, walking it towards your hand that’s in the enclosure, eventually getting it to walk on you for food.

           From there you can start backing away from the enclosure once it’s on you. During this time too, you can just set your hand down in its enclosure and let it approach you on its own and check you out. it’s all about allowing the animal to move at its own pace and get comfortable with you on its own terms. You want to avoid grabbing it at all costs if you care about having a social animal. If you can, scoop from underneath it, and don’t restrain it hard. This isn’t just tree monitor advice, this applies to all monitor lizards.

           This could fall under multiple categories in this care sheet, but I’ll just place it here. Enclosures in my opinion should have 2-3 designated hides, that are placed in different temp ranges. I offer in all adult pair enclosures 3 hides. 1 near the heat, 1 in the 80s, and 1 in the 70s. This allows them to temp regulate while also feeling secure. I know it sounds counterproductive to add a lot of hides when you want the animal to be out more, but this really is the route to go. With new animals, they will definitely hide a lot, but if you provide them with comfort, they will eventually come out on their own, and before long will only be using the hides to sleep and will be out the rest of the day. If you don’t offer any hides, the animal will stay scared of you much longer.

           Tree monitors are thought to be communal, although field studies have shown they will only group up during breeding season, and separate afterwards. Tree monitors CAN do well housed in pairs, but you always want to have another enclosure available in case you need to separate them. There is a misconception that they “pair bond.” These animals can and will attack each other if they don’t like something, so you need to be prepared to separate if something happens. Breeding is the main occurrence where they need to be separated. If you don’t separate them, after the female lays eggs there’s an extremely high likelihood that she will attack the male in an attempt to nest guard. This is a quick way to lose an animal. With that said, most do well housed together long term, and just need to be briefly separated for a few weeks starting right before the female lays eggs.

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           Thanks for reading and I hope I managed to answer any questions you had by clicking here! I’m going to leave some links below to sources for things that I personally use and referenced in this care sheet.

 

 

 

 

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