Another stinkin substrate Q

[Fretfreak13]

I know, substrate is bad...but my goodness (and no offense to anyone!) I can not for the life of me get past having POTS just sitting in an enclosure! Its so unnatural looking. =(

I would much rather do the whole bottom in dirt, plant the plants normally, and just completely cover the bottom with river rocks. Is there any other reason why I couldn't do this other than impaction, which the large rocks would solve? The cham will be cup-trained, and will be a male veiled. It would help with humidity too, wouldn't it?

 

[nick barta]

You can do as you plan, it would solve the impaction issue. The problem I would have is how do you clean the rocks?

 

[Fretfreak13]

I'm extremely picky with dirty stuff and kind of a neat freak. They WILL be cleaned. lol I'll probably have two sets, and when one set gets nasty I'll take them out, soak them, and clean them. While doing that I'll put in the new set.

 

[Jon114]

Obviously it's more trouble than it's worth, but if you're willing to go through with it, why not?

 

[Ulrich]

A lot of us here use the whole bottom covered in dirt to create a better ground condition for the plants as well as for the natural look. It is just a bit more troublesome in terms of cleaning. What I have done to all my cages is to have planted a tree as well as some smaller broadleaves, pothos and passion flower in a diy container below the enclosure. The pothos is covering the whole ground in very thick layers. I myself don't use rocks at all. But I make sure that the setup is done at least half a year to a year before a Chameleon moves in. If you use a full dirt setup, your settling time has to be much longer (in order to create an equilibrium in the enclosure) than if you just buy pots with plants.