Charlie the Lizard update

[chascarpenter1]

I decided to put together a video so that everyone can chime in and make suggestions.

http://youtu.be/4TBLNvN1ThA

Your Chameleon: male, veiled chameleon, age unknown/ sub adult?, has been in my care 2mo

Handling: once every other day for about 5 min at a time, during cage cleaning he sits on a pathos

Feeding: every other day crickets on non feeding days he gets offers a couple of meal worms or a wax worm but never eats them. Crickets are gut loaded with flickers high calcium cricket diet and flickers calcium fortified cricket quencher

Supplement: Rep-Cal herptivite w/ beta carotene one a week, and zoo med reptivite w/ d3 once a week

Watering: monsoon every 2 hrs for 25 sec during waking hours

Fecal: brown and solid, urine white. Both once per day or more

Cage: glass and screen combo 14 x 17x 27

Lighting: repti-sun mercury UVA/ UVB and 75 watt black light
The sun comes on at 730- 1900 and the black light 1200-1600

Temp: top front 70, top back 90, bottom front 68, basking +90

Humidity: 40% front, approx. 60% rear

Plants: ficus Benjamina and pothos

Placement: family room, unused for the majority of the day and in the corner away from the air vent. There is a dealing fan on low most of the time. Top of cage is approx. 6 ft from the floor.

Location: Southern California, Orange County, approximately 8 miles from the ocean

Current problem: none, I just would like a review of my husbandry

 

[nightanole]

cricket gut load is horrible. check the faq's for some diy nice dry and wet gut loads.
Supplements/schedule look good once you get the daily calcium without d3 going.

get rid of the black light and switch to an equal wattage flood light. Also have it come on in the morning as early as the normal lights. You can have it turn off early if you want. His goal is to get warm as quickly as possible and he will goto bed well before the lights go out.

Put big rocks(i use smooth river stone bags from home depot) on top of the pothos dirt to prevent the food from getting in and breeding, and to prevent the cham from getting impaction from eating dirt from missing the crickets.

uv bulb is a good choice.
misting looks good. If hes not drinking you may want to increase the misting duration. Some will only drink during the rain, or only start drinking after a 1-2min shower.


Hes about 4-5 months tops.

He will grow out of the cage fast. Make plans for moving him to the standard 2ft/2ft/4ft cage everyone uses. You will need to do this within 90 days when he is longer than the short side of the tank.

 

[chascarpenter1]

Thanks for the reply; I ordered some new supplements and bug burger, today. Also, I have been struggling with I ideas for the cage upgrade, and I think that I might try to build a custom one out of a some sort of repurposed furniture, but at this point, I'm still in the research phase.

Anyone else, feel free to chime in, all advise and critique are welcome.

 

[ClubFauna]

Looks like a happy chAm

 

[DavidBuchan]

Everything seems ok, once you get some plain Calcium powder and sort the gutloading out. Variety of insects is fun as well, should help with any future food strikes if you have a selection of healthy options for him- https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/sandrachameleon/74-feeders.html
I would say he's around 5 months old, but it is impossible to be certain.

It is very easy to pull a door off a wardrobe, replace it with mesh and add some lights..........you probably don't want advice from me about that though, I just make it up as I go along and it's not very professional....

 

[chascarpenter1]

Well,Charlie is a year old, and besides being a little skittish, he is doing awesome!