Baby free range switching to cup feeding...help!

[Xd Panther]

Hello! Obviously, I am new here, but not new to the Chameleon district of the herp addiction.
I took delivery of a baby boy last week. He is a Panther X 50% Ambilobe x 50% Blue Barred Ambanja.
Everything is well, except I figured out relatively quickly that he has no idea how to cup feed.
I have a small betta bowl suspended in the vines for him to feed from.
Turns out, and I should have asked, that the breeder free ranged the crickets.
I do not mind, except that I cannot monitor the food intake of the baby. There is feces, less crickets, and he shed a couple days ago, which are all very good signs.
I have a 65 gallon reptarium, and without going into so many details, the plastic liner at the bottom ripples and the crickets hide there. There is no substrate on the bottom, and I even cut part of the liner so the crickets could climb the walls.
Either way, this is pretty annoying, and I do prefer cup feeding for many reasons from monitoring, to variety of food.

- How do I transition this little guy to the cup?
- Any other suggestions for this little dilemma? (aside from pitching the Reptarium

Thanks
Nick

PS - the reptarium is only for the next year, I plan on building a large screen enclosure with live plants down the line.

 

[Kevin1873]

I just got my Veiled Chameleon, 4 months old, male, yesterday from Mike. I know that he doesn't cup feed but like you I wanted to do the cut feeding route so i could monitor his food intake, He drank, but didn't eat a single cricket or worm. So today I re-arranged his cage and just just let the crickets free roam. I saw him eat 1 cricket off the leaves cause he snagged it 2 seconds after I put it on the leaf so I know he doesn't want anything to do with cup feeding. I even put him on the cup and all he does it walk around it and uses it for something to sit on and he won't even look down to see the crickets inside of it so I gave up on the cup feeding adventure. I had the same problem you had, all the crickets just hide in the plastic lining so I took it out, placed a towel under the cage and the plastic lining under the towel to catch the drainage, put in 10-12 new crickets and that solved it for me. They no longer hide on the bottom cause there's place for them to hide so they immediately climbed the sides of the cage up toward the top so my Chameleon can see them. He still won't eat in front of me so I just had to leave him alone and let him do his own thing and eat when he wants. He had his first poop today, and looked good, no signs of not eating or dehydration so I figure he's eating, just not when I'm around. I would suggest skip the cup feeding route, configure your cage bottom and just let the food free range. I know it's hard to keep track and make sure the Cham is eating them all but I figure since there's no where for them to hide now if I see fewer and fewer crickets then he's obviously devouring some of them. Cham's are avid hunters and if they are use to hunting for their food don't change that. Just make it easier for them to get in eye sight of the chameleon.