New habitat for new chameleon

[Cod105]

Hi, I posted here a while back, my panther chameleon passed away a few months back I got him from back water reptiles. He came full of worms and didn’t make it. I cleaned the whole enclosure out . I recently just got a new baby from kammerflage kreations, he is a nosey be. I just had a few questions about my set up, my hood is a t8 zoo med with a 5.0 ubv bulb, my heat lamp has a 75 watt bulb and I have a jungle dawn led light bar for the live plants. My cage temp is only at 70f I know that’s too cold but his basking area is at 83f. And humidity is around 70, I also am using a mist king system Here are some pictures. One thing I know I messed up on is the substrate on the bottom of the enclosure. I am going to take it out once he gets more comfortable. Any recommendations?

 

[Beman]

Hi, I posted here a while back, my panther chameleon passed away a few months back I got him from back water reptiles. He came full of worms and didn’t make it. I cleaned the whole enclosure out . I recently just got a new baby from kammerflage kreations, he is a nosey be. I just had a few questions about my set up, my hood is a t8 zoo med with a 5.0 ubv bulb, my heat lamp has a 75 watt bulb and I have a jungle dawn led light bar for the live plants. My cage temp is only at 70f I know that’s too cold but his basking area is at 83f. And humidity is around 70, I also am using a mist king system Here are some pictures. One thing I know I messed up on is the substrate on the bottom of the enclosure. I am going to take it out once he gets more comfortable. Any recommendations?

So your cage temp is actually correct. You want an ambient of low 70's. Basking is fine as well. Humidity however is too high. You want the ambient level to sit more at 50%. It can spike after a misting session but then it needs to come back down.
The UVB you want to replace with a T5HO fixture and a 5.0 or 6% UVB bulb. With a baby you want to lift this fixture up off the cage 4 inches so when he screen climbs he is in safe UVI levels. Then you want a few branches below the fixture 5 inches from the screen.

For sure pull the bark as soon as you can this is an impaction risk.

The enclosure as a whole looks good. I would add more vines however. You can anchor these to your screen using floral wire but make sure the sharps of it are on the outside of the cage. Flukers makes a good variety of fake vines in many sizes. I would get small and medium.

 

[Decadancin]

I agree about the T5 HO, but if it is very close to the spot your chameleon spends most of it’s time, you may want to use a second piece of screen for the first few months.

 

[Cod105]

So your cage temp is actually correct. You want an ambient of low 70's. Basking is fine as well. Humidity however is too high. You want the ambient level to sit more at 50%. It can spike after a misting session but then it needs to come back down.
The UVB you want to replace with a T5HO fixture and a 5.0 or 6% UVB bulb. With a baby you want to lift this fixture up off the cage 4 inches so when he screen climbs he is in safe UVI levels. Then you want a few branches below the fixture 5 inches from the screen.

For sure pull the bark as soon as you can this is an impaction risk.

The enclosure as a whole looks good. I would add more vines however. You can anchor these to your screen using floral wire but make sure the sharps of it are on the outside of the cage. Flukers makes a good variety of fake vines in many sizes. I would get small and medium.

Thanks for the information, yeah my mister just went off that’s why the humidity was on the higher side, I am getting the t5ho and will lift it off the screen as well as more vines! Thanks

 

[BleuSaphir]

Your temperature is good. Don’t go on the hot end. My Veiled showed me he doesn’t like hot temperatures either. Turn off the basking light if it gets too hot.

 

[Beman]

Thanks for the information, yeah my mister just went off that’s why the humidity was on the higher side, I am getting the t5ho and will lift it off the screen as well as more vines! Thanks

Your welcome. Let us know if you have other questions as you move forward in your cham journey.

 

[Cod105]

Your welcome. Let us know if you have other questions as you move forward in your cham journey.

So I have the new t5ho fixture roughly 5-6 inches off top of enclosure and his branch is roughly 5 inches from the top at the highest point, any recommendations on hanging the light? I have it set up on blocks right now lol and my ceilings are too tall to hang it

 

[Beman]

So I have the new t5ho fixture roughly 5-6 inches off top of enclosure and his branch is roughly 5 inches from the top at the highest point, any recommendations on hanging the light? I have it set up on blocks right now lol and my ceilings are too tall to hang it

So that is going to be lifted too much. You want 4 inches off the top. The 5 inches at the highest point from the screen inside the cage is fine. But you need these distances to ensure UVI levels are correct. This would be with a 5.0 bulb though. If you got the 10.0 bulb the distances would be different.

As baby grows and stops screen climbing you can drop the fixture to the cage top and then the basking branch in the cage would drop to 8-9 inches from the screen.