It’s a teeny little green iguana, but aparently with proper care can eventually grow up to six feet from tip to tail, and live between 15 and 40 years.
Inspired, I would very much like for my pet to have such an extended lifespan. Does anyone here have an iguana, and could tell me what to watch out for?
Are they susceptible to diseases? What foods do they like best? I understand the males can be tempermental. If ours turns out to be male and grumpy, how to make it like us?
Anyway, any iguana tips anyone has would be appreciated - especially concerning ways to make the house iguana-safe.
My best advice? See if you can get your money back and save up for a Bearded Dragon or a Royal/Ball Python or some other friendly critter.
Iguanas are nasty, ill-tempered beasts (regardless of sex). The vicious brutes are a menace to society and should all be shipped directly back to Guatemala or Nicaragua (whence they were stolen) immediately.
Since you probably think that I am exaggerating and will not follow my best advice, I will favor you with my second-best advice.
If you do not know who Melissa Kaplan is, you must bookmark the following site: http://www.sonic.net/~melissk/
Once it has been bookmarked, you must go back to it on a daily basis until you are familiar with its contents. (This extended site cannot be digested in one sitting.)
Next, go to your local (or e-based) bookseller and order/buy the following books:
Green Iguana: The Ultimate Owner’s Manual
James W. Hatfield III
Dunthorpe Press, POB 80385, Portland OR 97280
ISBN 1-88346-348-3
$32.50 (+$4/US, $6/Canada for S/H) (pricing may be out of date)
Ph: 503-635-8222 Fax: 503-635-8405
Prices updated 5/28/98
Iguana Iguana : Guide for Successful Captive Care
Fredric L. Frye
Krieger Publishing Company;
ISBN: 0894648926
$39.50 ?
The first book is the current best work, but the second book includes tables of specific food varieties and the daily nourishment reqirements they provide alnog with other easily tabled information that sometimes needs to be dug out of the text of Hatfield’s book.
One thing to recall is that they will, indeed, get to at least four feet in length. A “large” fishtank/aquarium is simply not large enough for their needs, so you are going to have to provide some sort of large, permanent shelter as the nasty beast gets larger.
Immature iguanas will supplement their diet with crickets and mealy worms, but they are vegetarian and should not be fed cheese or meat table scraps. There are iguanas who have been trained to nibble on pizza, but they are generally not healthy iguanas.
Do not get a second iguana or put any other creature in your iguana’s cage. (I am not exaggerating, here.) They are very territorial. (Stuff your pet shop can get away with while they are 14 inches long will not continue as soon as the beast begins to grow.)
Don’t forget to wash your hands immediately after handling the creature.
Peace,
mangeorge
I’ll largely second what tomndeb said, with one exception. Not all iguanas are nasty. Some are quite mellow, even “affectionate”. But a significant number are mean - One of the worst bite scars I’ve seen was caused by an iguana. The fact of the matter is that they seem to be highly variable in temperment and I’ve never been able to pick out the rhyme or reason of it. It may be that like Boa Constrictors or Texas Rat snakes, that the wild population they derive from circumscribes the temperment somewhat. But there are so many breeders of the things that those genetic factors may have become hopelessly jumbled. Dunno.
At any rate if you aren’t unduly concerned with having to handle your pet a lot, this isn’t a major concern ( although it will make cleaning the tank a bit more involved - And beware them when they’re young, if they’re skittish they’ll jump out and flee and wind up breaking fragile toes ). If you are concerned with handling them, I’d second tomndeb’s recommendation of a Bearded Dragon, which seem to be sweet-natured and calm 98% of the time.
But I’m not sure about the Ball Python, if you’re inexperienced. They can be finicky and tricky sometimes and may occasionally require force-feeding. Although if you do get one a neat trick you can do ( neat to me 
) is to get a large earthen-ware flower pot, pack it densely with dirt, wet it a bit, then bake it in an oven. Then drop the solid earthen mass in the tank. The Ball Pythons like to live in termite mounds back home and they’ll actually burrow into the mass. Or so a friend told me. Never kept them myself, as I was more a Elaphe ( Rat Snake ) person back when I still kept reptiles.
- Tamerlane
I am looking at my dear, sweet iguana Attilla as I write this. He is 1 year and 8 months old and currently measures a little over 3 feet long. He is not nasty, very funny, and brings endless joy to our lives. I play with him almost every day. However, previous posters are correct in saying that iguanas can be a lot of work. Attilla currently lives in our bedroom in the largest aquarium that I could find. He will outgrow that soon and we will have to build a custom cage for him. My advice:
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Be VERY careful of the iguana’s diet. You must read the links and books suggested above. Commercial iguana food is absolute crap and will eventually make your iguana sick and die if that is all you use. Iguanas are vegeterians and need a carefully controlled mix of green leafy vegetables and fruits that can be a little tricky if you do not know what you are doing. Stay away from spinach and do use vitamin powder on the food.
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Play with it as much as you can. A good iguana will be energetic and even a little skittish when you but should not bite.
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Learn to use reptile nail clippers. The object is just to blunt the end of the nail instead of removing it. If they bleed, you have taken off too much nail. If you don’t use clippers, an excited iguana can make you look like you wrestled with a barbed wire fence and lost. With trimmed nails, you can handle an iguana even if it gets excited.
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Give the iguana a bath at least once a week (lukewarm water, no soap). They love to swim, it helps their skin, and it cleans them.
I just knew that someone would claim they actually owned friendly iguanas. (Iguanas actually have limited psychic powers to project memories of “good times” onto their owners so that the owners forget just how horribly vicious they truly are.)
The advice of the three previous posters is excellent. Definitely learn how to blunt the tips of your iguana’s claws. The more you interact with them, the more they will accept interaction. (My wife’s was “rescued” from a woman who had decided she just couldn’t handle her any more. Lioth came with an infected leg and I got to hold her while my wife doctored the injury every night, so our interactions did not get off to a good start. Lioth generally allows my wife to move her from place to place while she has administered numerous wounds to my arms.)
I have never seen an iguana actually try to bite someone, but their claws are more than adequate defense, and once they are larger, you should always be aware of their tail. A four-foot iguana can leave a nasty bruise–and sometimes break skin–using their tail as a flail.
mangeorge is right. I would also note that you should be very careful about all iguana (or any reptile) sanitation. Washing the food dish or bathing the smaller iguana in the kitchen sink is a good way to leave salmonella around to get on your food dishes. I’d suggest washing with bleach, then rinsing thoroughly so that the iguana does not encounter bleach or soap residue. (Keeping the iguana-washing to the utility tubs near the washing machine helps avoid contamination.)
Well, I’ve been lurking on these boards for a while now. I guess it took a pet related question to get me out of the woodwork.
Listen to tomndebb. Mellisa Keplan’s site is the place to go. The books mentioned are a good start as well.
Enclosure:
Start trying to figure out what room in your house you want to sacrifice now while you have time. To be humane about it, the iguana enclosure needs to be huge. Mine was 6ft tall, 8 ft long and 4ft deep. No, that wasn’t too big and my guy was only a little over four foot when he had a fatal accident. (crushing injury, please don’t ask)
The enclosure needs to be kept warm. Iguana’s need a temp of about 85F in order to digest their food. Keep it warm and moist, but not too warm. 105F is too warm. My enclosure had a space heater inside connected to a thermostat. Worked out good. I also had exhaust fans connected to a separate thermostat that would turn on if it got too warm. Had full specram lighting on a timer as well. The automation really helped out. That way no one would “forget” about the heat or lights.
Food:
(chop up all food into little bits suited to the size of the iguana) About once a week I would chop up a huge pot of veggies and keep it in the fridge. Green beans, carrots, squash, parsnips, etc. I would serve him a bunch of that on top of some greens, kale or something. Gave him a little nibble of diced fruit on top and sprinkled the whole mess with vitamin power. I would also keep a bird cuttle bone (for calcium) around and scrap some of that onto his food too. Calcium is a big thing for iguana’s. A lack of it can cause all kinds of horrible conditions. From deformity of the skull to paralysis of the hind limbs.
I hope you and your little guy do well. Spend time around him and he will probably turn out well. Dandilion greens work wonders. My guy would always overcome his shyness for a handful of those.
Start making up stories for all the horrible lacerations you’ll get on your arms. My guy wasn’t mean, but when he climbed on me or tried to get away from me, those claws were brutal. Vilocerapters come to mind when I think about those claws. It was all I could do to convince my coworkers that I wasn’t trying to slit my wrists or something. I still have scars.
Keep those nails trimmed!
Welcome to the board, Theios.
Thanks for all your advice, people. I’m more or less prepared for the claw scratching, but wasn’t aware of them having such a vicious temperment. All the iguanas people I know have have always seemed to be slow moving and friendly creatures. Is it possible that this was the result of training?
I would dearly love to have a python, but Janelle would not stand for it. An iguana has legs, which is apparently the key issue for her…
At the moment I don’t have full spectrum light (yet. will pick up a bulb tomorrow). I do have a heat lamp, and the room it is in is fairly warm. I plan to let it swim in the tub a couple of times a week (advice from another iguana owner). I have a thermometer in there. Actually, the temperature seems a bit low, so I’m thinking of picking up a heating pad. It doesn’t seem to me like a cutoff would be necessary if I just leave the pad at a reasonable temperature, right?
The varied diet will be a bit more complicated. I’m a vegetarian and I don’t eat that many greens 
(tend to get lazy and eat a college diet of pasta and vitamins).
As for the spinach, since spinach leaches calcium, keeping them away from it certainly makes sense. Is giving them scrapped cuttlebone sufficient though? Apparently an area vet has his own iguana food preparation, was wondering if I should get a supply.
About the house though. I don’t intend to leave it in a small cage for long. I in fact plan to give it free reign of the house, starting a room at a time (washroom first).
Aside from the obvious things like scrubbing the place down, keeping the toilet seat down, keeping all cleansers locked away, does anyone have any tips about what to watch out for?
One more thing. I was thinking about the claws… Yes, the iguana would probably be more sure footed and happier with a reasonably sharp trim, but is there any actual harm that would result from rounding the claw tips?
Do you have some magic way to buff down the claw tips each few weeks that will not make the iguana more crazy than simply clipping them? I know a lady who uses a buffer on her Dremel® drill to do “pedicures” on her dogs, but I’m not sure that a lizard would be really happy to have a Dremel® running noisily near it for several minutes. You’ll never succeed with a nail file.
Clipped or buffed round, the claws will coninue to grow and will need to be “made safe” every few weeks. If the surfaces on which he will climb are sufficiently rough-textured, he will not need sharp claws to climb, but he will need claws. My wife wrapped her iguana’s climbing pole in jute so that she did not need sharp claws to grasp the wood.
The heat lamp may be sufficient for digestion as long as the primary perch is warmed to 85° or more. The entire room does not need to be a sauna, but the critter has to be able to get somewhere to warm up to digest food.
As for “free range.” You may want to consider providing some limits. An older iguana has no qualms about dragging its body through its (really runny) stool. If it knows where you prepare food, it it quite willing to go look for its own forage if it does not think you have fed it enough. You may be less than pleased to find your stool-basted lizard belly up on your cutting block or food counter. (Mature iguanas can jump over a foot vertically and I have seen my wife’s jump onto a chair, up to a table, and onto a counter. Several bloody lacerations later, I was scrubbing the table and counter with bleach.)
They will taste anything to see whether it is edible, but I am not aware of them eating really harmful things. We do have to watch the dog food (since Lioth will eat it but it is not suited to iguana diet).
Other than that, climbing curtains and getting up on tables (knocking over everthing in sight) are the biggest problems with free range. They can be sort of toilet trained, but if they are not in the mood to head for “their” corner of newspapers, they are quite willing to dump behind the couch or anywhere else.
Lioth is not permitted complete free range–provided the kids remember to close all the appropriate doors.
Do NOT use a hot rock. Iguanas tend to be immobile for long periods of time, and remaining on a hot rock will eventually burn and scar them.
DO use a heat lamp. If possible, fix a branch at an angle leading up to the heat lamp, so the iguana can adjust how hot it gets by crawling up and down.
Hm. Do not feed Iceberg lettuce. Romaine is good.
Mine, (Liz, named after the lizard in the Magic Schoolbus books) likes grapes. But you have to squeeze them so she can smell them. I’ve been bitten by Liz only when feeding grapes. A bit overanxious, and grape-jusice covered thumbs strongly resemble grapes. Liz also likes auto racing, as the speakers are near her cage. Let’s see. Do give your iggy baths every so often, keep the cage clean, plenty of room, mirrors are good.
Watch out for the tail. They can crack it like a whip. LOTS of muscle in that tail.
I guess that’s about all off the top of my head.
Well, I wouldn’t consider iguanas vicious beasts. They are more of indifferent beasts who would prefer that you left them alone. Most of the clawing and tail whipping comes from them thinking you are some kind of threat. No real malice in it, but it hurts just the same.
Taming wise, just spend time hanging out around the critter. If it will let you pick it up without too much of a chase, then do so. Move very slow. Quick movements tend to upset them. Swooping down from overhead tends to remind them of preditory birds. Pick them up from underneath. Gentle scratching during shedding time was much appreciated (or at least tolerated). You probably aren’t going to get a loving pet, but at least you won’t have one who runs away or whips you all the time.
For free range iggies, the basking area works. Make sure it can’t actually touch the basking light’s bulb. It may actually try to, so take precautions. Maybe you can make a crude wire cage for the lamp out of hardware cloth (thick, heavy screen like material made out of woven wire) Heat rocks and heating pads can be dangerous. Iguana’s tend not to realise they are getting too hot until they are already burned. Also, there used to be these odd little heating panels that you could use for a basking area. They worked on infrared or something (can’t rememebr). Anyway, they were not hot to the touch, so no burning injuries. The iguana would just bask near it to warm up just like it does in the sun. I wonder if those things caught on? (or if they were safe)
Be aware that they will climb everything. Bookshelves are kind of dangerous. They try to climb up the books, but end up pulling the books down on top of them. If a book lands hard on that beautiful long tail, it could lose some of it. Speaking of the tail. Don’t grab it. They are prepared to detatch it to escape a preditor. It will sort of grow back, but the new one will be pretty ugly. None of the pretty colors that it had before.
I don’t know about the mirror thing. Mine always saw mirrors or pictures of other lizards as a rival that needed to be driven off. But maybe that depends on the iguana. Mine was always a little skittish.
odd factiods:
Did you know… That funny off color scale on top of their head (between the eyes) is sort of a third eye. From what I read, it can’t “see”, but it can tell differences in light levels and shadow movement with it.
Also… The males have two hempi-penises(sp). They only use one at a time, but both are functional. (eat your heart out guys)
I am truly sorry Kyberneticist. I hope you didnt have to pay for it. I once owned an iguana. It was given to me for free. It only took me 3 weeks to understand why I received this ‘pet’ for free. I named him Turk, and he was the meanest creature I have ever encountered on this earth. I should have named him Houdini, because he had mastered the art of escape.
I had to turn of his heat rock and lamps to cool down his temp in order to handle him and clean his cage.
I can vouge for the little bastards bite as well. Turk once bit my thumb he caught my knuckle and bit twice, all the way down to the bone. I did keep that cuddly little guy for about a year. I was then able to give him away to another lucky fellow.