At a total loss as to what happened (sudden death). Heath / Rosenbergs Monitor.

[Ryan-James]

@Tobe404 hey dude sorry for your loss, I feel for you.
Any chance you can swing us a pic of the last stools from your monitor, brand of supplement and the most recent pic of the actual animal. Let's do a bit of detective work and rule out some of the possibilities and get a bit of closure for you. Also FYI you can choose to ignore content from selected members by clicking on their profile name and pressing ignore

 

[user 43767]

@Tobe404 hey dude sorry for your loss, I feel for you.
Any chance you can swing us a pic of the last stools from your monitor, brand of supplement and the most recent pic of the actual animal. Let's do a bit of detective work and rule out some of the possibilities and get a bit of closure for you. Also FYI you can choose to ignore content from selected members b y clicking on their profile name and pressing ignore

Hopefully the OP will click on your profile pic.. I say that partly because of what you`ve asked the OP to do; you want a photo of faeces that ares now 9 DAYS old at least, in order to try and determine whether it would have indicated the cause of the untimely death, that along with the brand name of the supplements (are you serious)?
Why would the OP want to ignore any member who has offered advise in this thread even if he didn`t agree with their comments?

 

[Tobe404]

@Tobe404 hey dude sorry for your loss, I feel for you.
Any chance you can swing us a pic of the last stools from your monitor, brand of supplement and the most recent pic of the actual animal. Let's do a bit of detective work and rule out some of the possibilities and get a bit of closure for you. Also FYI you can choose to ignore content from selected members by clicking on their profile name and pressing ignore

Hopefully the OP will click on your profile pic.. I say that partly because of what you`ve asked the OP to do; you want a photo of faeces that ares now 9 DAYS old at least, in order to try and determine whether it would have indicated the cause of the untimely death, that along with the brand name of the supplements (are you serious)?
Why would the OP want to ignore any member who has offered advise in this thread even if he didn`t agree with their comments?

Yeah, I agree with murrindindi on this one. If i was going to put up a poo pic I would of done that straight after the Monitor died.
Even then. No guarantee there were still fresh ones in the enclosure.
If you must know. The supplements were URS branded calcium d3 and vitamin powders.

https://rivercitypets.com.au/products/urs-ultimate-calcium-150g?_pos=7&_sid=96f9f7ace&_ss=r
https://rivercitypets.com.au/products/urs-ultimate-vitamins-150g?_pos=4&_sid=96f9f7ace&_ss=r
Thinking about this some more. I honestly probably should have waited until the Monitor was bigger / older before getting it off the breeder.
As mentioned previously. The Yellow Spotted was 8-10 weeks old when I got it. Compared to 5-6 weeks for the Rosenbergs. A fair size difference too.
Yes, different species. But I think my point still stands.

Edit: I also should have put pics up like I did with the Yellow Spotted so I could show the Rosenbergs progress.
I just had it in my head that something would get jinxed along the way if i did. That worked out so well.

 

[Bluetongue1]

@Tobe404, I assume you have cleaned out the cage, hence no chance of a poo pic. A fresh sample is really only required for a faecal float to determine the presence of parasites. Clearly that was not what R-J had in mind. There are other issues that can be identified by a visual examination. Green urates indicate liver issues. A lack of any urates indicates kidney issues. Really excessive water in the urates can also indicate a kidney or liver issue. Blood in the faeces would indicate internal bleeding in the gut. Very pale faeces is indicative of liver problems. That’s all that comes to mind off the top of my head at the moment. R-J might have more. Good on him for considering going down that path. It did not even occur to me. I’d like to blame that on the fact that I have not been very well in recent weeks, although I am currently slowly on the mend. However, the truth is that it probably would not have made any difference. Ha ha.

Given that you followed the instructions of the breeder and that the siblings are fine, I reckon you have a fair argument to ask for a replacement. At worst, given the breeder could not verify what you did or did not do, maybe you can strike a bargain with a healthy discount.

Did you put the body in the fridge or freezer to store it? The vet may be prepare to do a visual post mortem for a reasonable price. It cannot hurt to enquire.

What I initially knew about vitamin toxicity you could have written on a pin head with a tar brush - one of Mawson’s two companions died from Vit A toxicity on their trip back from the south pole, as a result of eating the dead sled dog’s livers; cat and dogs and other mammals are susceptible to Vit D toxicity; I was told by a vet that it also occurs in reptiles.

When researching I could only locate two worthwhile articles on it - the Bearded Dragon article (2009) and, another on Varanus albigulairs (2008). When I am up to it, I intend to have another read and consider the results more carefully. I have yet to read the article on Komodo Dragons. If anyone can point out other relevant research papers in the meantime, that would be much appreciated.

 

[Ryan-James]

It's easy enough to diagnose a vitamin D overdose, a look at the condition of the animal and the amount of urates would rule it out, vitamin D poisoning for reptiles is a slow, drawn out death and they will show signs of emaciation among other things.
Seems like that monitor was a poor do-er from the start, not every egg that hatches is destined to survive yeah and reptiles are food for a lot of critters out there. Over the years ive bred absolutely healthy animals that were always going to do well and also a portion of animals that are culls, they don't do well, have trouble eating or putting on weight, sometimes they eventually come good and can be sold or given away as pets but no point in ever breeding from stock like that

 

[user 43767]

Some harsh words here!

You can argue about cage size, but I've seen plenty of monitors kept in tiny cages and it certainly doesn't cause them to suddenly die! (No, I'm not advocating small cages, monitors are something I've always used large enclosures for and they definitely enjoy/benefit from as much space as possible, unlike snakes).

I've kept multiple generations of monitors with zero UV, never had a hint of MBD, and I've used various doses of supplements including heavily dosing literally every single feed with calcium, D3 and multivitamin and mineral supplements from hatching to several years of age (this is decades ago now, there was no information available at the time, flame me if you want but I don't much care). I failed to cause any identifiable problems even while experimenting in the dark and using extreme doses, so I'm a bit sceptical that calcium or D3 supplements are particularly dangerous.

I'm not sure what happened to this monitor. I'd perhaps guess that it was off to a bad start with stress and slow feeding and just didn't really recover from it, but without seeing what it looked like over time it's difficult to say. If it was indeed a sudden death and not a long-term poordoer which finally fell over, I don't think any of the issues discussed here are likely to have been relevant. Sudden deaths are usually either from poisoning, injury or congenital issues. Parasites and diseases don't cause sudden deaths in reptiles - their metabolisms are too slow and these issues take a long time to develop and show symptoms along the way. Even in mammals it's very unusual for a disease or parasite to cause sudden death without symptoms over some period of time. Rare exceptions are parasites which suddenly block/interrupt the heart or lungs, but I greatly doubt that would be the case here.

Pictures or a description of what it looked like over the three months you had it would help. Looked fine on arrival. One possibility is that it was a congenital issue which was always going to reveal itself once the animal started to feed and grow. This happens to a small percentage of all animals including humans (often referred to as SIDS etc).

Oh, and as for 'whole prey', there's a big difference between whole vertebrates and whole invertebrates, especially in terms of calcium, but there are several types of whole vertebrates which any monitor can eat from the day they first feed. I used to use a lot of whole fish for my monitors, and a hatchling Heath Monitor can get down mice larger than pinkies.

Sdajl: Here you are claiming you overdosed some of your monitors with supplemenray D3 + other supplements for several YEARS claimmg there were no adverse effects, so which tests did you have done on those animals that showed they were healthy in spite of the overdosing which is against the manufacturers advise, precisely because they can have a very serious NEGATIVE effect on health (silly muanuffacturers should have spoken to you first instead of deliberately confusing us)??

To Bluetonhue 1: Hi, I totally agree with this message you responded with to "Tobe404 (see below). .. Unfortunately we must both be wrong, because the member using the name "Sjadl" has "proof" (in a VERY roundabout way) that even after seriously overdosing his monitors with supplementary D3 plus other supplements including muilti vitamins for several YEARS, none of the monitors were negativley affected (you actually believe that)??
If you want to defend him, at least do it because you believe his comments are RELIABLE....
These websites are only as good as the information they offer, I come looking for reliable advise to ensure I take the best possible care of my animals, I also endeavor to make vsure the advise I offer others is that, too...Anyone can make a mistake, Sdajl contradicts himself quite often, that is NOt simply a mistake...Very few members ever question his claims, surely it`s about time they did?

Bluetongue1::

One possibility is Vitamin D toxicity. Vitamin D supplement should be administered at most twice a week. If using a UVB light, in conjunction with feeding them whole vertebrate animals, chopped or otherwise, it is probably not needed at all. All supplemented vit D is absorbed by the body. Excess vit D produces too much calcium in body serum. This excess calcium is gotten rid of by depositing it in organs such as the kidneys, heart and liver, which then stop working. This can be seen in post mortem. They may still be able to pick it up in a blood rest. [ENQUOTE]

 

[Sdaji]

Sdajl: Here you are claiming you overdosed some of your monitors with supplemenray D3 + other supplements for several YEARS claimmg there were no adverse effects, so which tests did you have done on those animals that showed they were healthy in spite of the overdosing which is against the manufacturers advise, precisely because they can have a very serious NEGATIVE effect on health (silly muanuffacturers should have spoken to you first instead of deliberately confusing us)??

Long lives with no signs of ill health and consistently high rates of reproduction.

We've been through this. I don't care what any blood serum test says. If the animal is perfectly strong and healthy in all observable ways at over 10 years of age and is reproducing well, I'm happy to call it a healthy animal which hasn't been harmed by anything. You can call it an 'overdose' if you want, but for me to consider something an overdose there needs to be some sort of actual real world, observable ill effect. An overdose is generally something which happens as a one off, or sometimes over a period of days or weeks. If something is being done ongoingly for years and there's no ill effect, I don't think your description of 'overdose' is in any way valid.

I bred small monitors for many years, many people here probably still remember me selling plenty of babies. I have no reason make up stories, I am not shy about talking about times during the pioneering years when information was not available and things weren't working (before I was using supplements I did have MBD issues with dragons, skinks and monitors, UV didn't fix it, supplements did). I've tried various things with all sorts of reptiles over the last 30+ years, I'm happy to discuss the problems I've had, but I've never had problems with supplements even when I've given them very heavy amounts of them. Perhaps some supplements contain some nutrients in excessive amounts which could cause harm, I'm certainly not recommending people go out and shove as much supplement powder down their reptiles' throats as they can, I'm just openly sharing what I've done and what happened.

It's odd that this makes you so angry. I guess some of us are here to pleasantly discuss reptiles including first hand accounts of their own experience, and others just want to argue, fight or be angry.