varranus storri or bearded dragon?

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Okay, I'm not sure why you woke up so early in the morning to get angry about things I never said, but take a breath and let's put your mind at rest.

I've certainly never said that I have produced more monitors than everyone else put together. I never said that I had any signs of overdosing. I said that if I ever had such an issue I would have immediately stopped. This never happened. I never contradicted myself.



I didn't say that UV is never of any benefit. You're creating a strawman and getting angry about your own creation. I actually pointed out that I never did any experiments with dragons (which obviously includes Bearded Dragons). I suspect the results would be similar but I can't say because I haven't done it.



I don't know everything, I just know what I know, and when two different claims are mutually exclusive, I'll always go with empirical evidence over theory.



I wasn't encouraging beginners to experiment. I said that in the 90s and 00s I experimented out of necessity because I was having bad issues, there was no available information, and experimentation was my only option. All keepers back then were pioneers. I generally admire people who experiment as long as they do it within reason, but I don't recommend complete beginners to experiment with anything extreme. Again, you're attacking your own strawman here.



This may be the case. If so I'm somewhat surprised, but as I have already spelled out, I have never experimented in a way which would demonstrate this specific point one way or the other. Short term laboratory studies looking at serum levels would not show it meaningfully either. To test this you would need to raise the animals from eggs with and without supplemental D3 without UV with a D3 deficient diet, and you'd need to do it long term. As you say, D3 is stored in the body, so you can't just go and grab monitors which already have stored D3 and expect to see a difference when you give them D3, especially if they are able to get it from other sources. I am not making a specific claim either way, but I'm not sure if appropriate studies have been done. If such a study has been done formally and published I would be very interested in reading it and would appreciate a link to it. I've only seen flawed studies.



Nice monitors. Pictures of monitors all kept under UV do not show that they need or benefit from UV. You can't demonstrate that anything is needed without showing that something suffered from lack of it.

I haven't kept any for years now, but back when I was breeding them I used to sell them in good quantities, sometimes I'd advertise on this very site, and I wrote husbandry articles on them. The first time I bred monitors (it was Varanus gilleni) several people begged me to come and take pictures of the hatchlings because at the time it was considered a huge achievement. I wrote articles about breeding small monitors for herp magazines, and amusingly, the VHS asked me for a care sheet which around 20 years later is still passed around a lot (honestly if I knew it was still going to be passed around and I'd be hearing about it decades later I'd have spent more than 30 minutes on it!). I wasn't surprised it was popular at the time but am surprised they want to keep it there at all now.

I hope the rest of your day puts you in a better mood than you were in at 5AM this Sunday (or whatever time it was if you're in a different time zone).

I haven`t shown monitors all kept with access to real or artificial UVB, they are a mixture. The species I keep/have kept previously are medium to very large sized and all received a mainly vertebrate diet, which as I mentioned can make in difference in the blood serum levels (as in many snake species).
Varanids that receive a mainly invert (specifically insect diet, which is what so many keepers offer to the smaller types) DO benefit from UVB, in fact because there are other benefits to using UVB, it`s reasonable to suggest those will be helpful to ALL species.
I am currently living across the world from home (U.K) the times I post are usually early to late in the evenings. I was not angry, I was a bit sad to see someone with some genuine experience and a bit of knowledge (YOU) promoting methods from 20 to 30 years ago, who seems not the slightest bit interested in updating the advise you offer?
If a short term study showed significant differences why is that not reliable? Last time; supplements for the most part are pure guesswork, UVB exposure has a number of benefits other than to help maintain the blood serum levels in varanids and Bearded dragons (and possibly in other species within the agamidae family). I`ll link to a couple of studies, I believe both are clear in the results obtained... Supplementary D3 has little to no effect on blood serum levels...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...-nijboer.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2dpv6clnwXhswUunQsNN-x

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...na_vitticeps&usg=AOvVaw0uPY6oONEfEtoO9H8v8W7A
 
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