MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
- Your Chameleon - Veiled Chameleon, male, around 2 years old, he has been with me for two years.
- Handling - He never lets me handle him It’s always good to work on building trust. https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/building-trust-with-your-chameleon.2396/
- Feeding - For meat I feed him crickets and mealworms and rarely super worms and wax worms. For plants I feed him a variety of things such as strawberries, lettuce, spinach carrots grapes, zucchini squash, bell pepper, blueberries, apple, pears, melon, peaches, and cucumbers. While your chameleon may eat plant matter, he has zero need for it and isn’t able to properly digest it. Additionally, there is a lot of sugar in the fruit, oxalates in spinach and some other greens that bind to calcium and things like lettuce and cucumber have very little nutritional value. It is much better to feed your feeder insects a healthy diet of plant matter and they will then pass the nutrients on to your chameleon. Mealworms aren’t recommended to use as staple feeders. I’m attaching both feeder and gutloading graphics for you. I used to feed them crickets a lot but then my parents decided that it would be easier to by them in those boxes and for me to just put the crickets in most of the time now I use mealworms and fruits and veggies. Monday Wednesday Friday and Sunday. The crickets when I was gut-loading them were eating a lot of calcium food and I sprinkle the mealworms, fruits and veggies with calcium dust which also says it has D3 in it.
- Supplements - The mealworms and such get dusted with Repti Calcium while the crickets were eating Fluker’s cricket quencher calcium fortified. Honestly, the Fluker’s cricket foods aren’t worth much in terms of nutrition not only for the bugs, but for your chameleon. The standard supplementation is to lightly dust every feeding with a phosphorus free calcium without D3. Your chameleon also needs vitamin D3 and multivitamins. There are different ways to provide these. The easiest is to use a good product like Repashy Calcium plus LoD or Reptivite with D3 at one feeding every other week.
- Watering - I spray the cage until it is soaked pretty well and the leaves are dripping. I spray the cage when the humidity maker in the back starts to get low and I spray until the cage is pretty soaked. I use to see them drink quite often but I haven’t seen them drinking lately. Ideal is to mist for at least 2 minutes, twice a day - right before lights go on and right before they go off. At mid day you could either do another misting or use a dripper for about 15 minutes. You want the enclosure to have time to dry out.
- Fecal Description - The color is white and a blackish brown and their poop is mostly solid. And no they have not been tested for parasites we do not have any good lizard vets up here in Alaska
- History - About a year after I got them the one that is alive just couldn’t walk anymore we had no clue why but I made him a new enclosure and eventually he got better. Sadly, he looks to have had mbd.
- Cage Type - Glass sides and bottom and screen top. 18’ by 18’ by 24’ This is much too small for an adult male. The minimum is 2x2x4’ or equivalent. The humidity conditions of your area will be the determining factor of whether glass, screen or hybrid is best. Most however do well with hybrids.
- Lighting - I used to know but my mom made me throw away the thing the lamp came in and for the bulbs I use a white and a blue one a picture of them will be at the bottom. 10:30 to 10:30 in the summer and during school 7:00 to 7:00 except and Tuesdays and Thursdays the light gets turned off at 6:00 because I have judo. The uvb that you have is not able to provide the levels or gradients of uvb that your guy needs. The standard is a linear T5 fixture with either a ReptiSun 5.0 or Arcadia 6% uvb bulb. Then your basking area needs to be about 8-9” below the light for the ideal uvb level. Keeping a 12 hour on/off schedule is perfect. For basking, colored lights aren’t good for sensitive cham eyes.
- Temperature - I don’t know the temp in the cage because I don’t have anything to measure it with but I will get something soon. It’s really important to measure and maintain correct temps. Ideal for a male veiled is around 84-85 at basking area. Having a good temp drop at night is great and veileds can tolerate temps in the 60’s very well.
- Humidity - Normally I try to keep the humidity 60 or higher when school was still in it would drop to like 10 until I got home at 3:30 then I would spray them a lot. I spray the cage a lot but I’m going to get a humidifier so when I go back to school or I’m doing stuff I don’t have to worry about it. Picture will be at the bottom. Veileds need dryer conditions than one would think. Ideal daytime humidity is between 30-50%. You do not want to use a humidifier during the day when temps are high. Heat + high humidity is a big risk factor for respiratory infections. Adding in the decreased air circulation of an all glass enclosure makes that risk even higher.
- Plants - I am not using live plants This is something that you’ll definitely want and need to change. Veileds nibble their plants and it only takes one nibble of a fake one to create a potentially deadly impaction. Live plants will also help to maintain your humidity levels greatly and provide little pockets of increased humidity for your guy. I’m sure it’s also nicer to get a drink off a real leaf than a plastic one. Adding the safe plant list. Pothos is a staple plant and veileds love them.
- Placement - It is located in my room on a nightstand. No. About 48’.
- Location - Anchorage, Alaska
There are some big and somewhat costly changes that you need to make and it’s very easy to become overwhelmed. Just take it one thing at a time. Start with the most important, which is uvb light and supplements. Start looking around at any houseplants that you or people you know have and start getting clippings to grow (pothos and philodendron clippings grow roots quickly when put in a glass of water). Maybe if you are handy and have the tools and access to materials, you’ll want to build an enclosure. Look into maybe starting to breed some of your own feeders, like dubia or discoid roaches (for parents we call them ‘fancy beetles’
). Keep asking questions, keep learning and keep improving on your fella’s set up. 
