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- Thread starter MerlinX
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MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
Hi and welcome to the forum. 
Somehow I missed your post. Congrats on your beautiful little guy. 
I do hope you’ll be sharing many more pics of him.
If I might, I’d like to offer a little bit of suggestions about your enclosure. Getting it all right can be a process that takes time as we learn more. While I do see some natural branches, I believe I am also seeing either bamboo sticks or wooden dowels. It would be better to replace those with natural branches or something like Fluker’s vines (the puffy foam ones). The problem is bamboo gets very slippery when wet and dowels tend to develop black mold. To exercise the cute mitten feet, have a variety of thickness to your branches too. I use everything from super thin to half the diameter of my wrist.
The other thing is as your plants start growing in, start removing the fake plants. Even though panthers don’t eat their plants like veileds do, many artificial plants can have sharp or poky edges (and then there’s always the chemicals that they release). I always like having a taller center plant, like a ficus benjamina (weeping fig) or schefflera (umbrella plant) and then have lots of pothos to vine everywhere and some pretty accent plants here & there. Neat trick is to have a pothos on the enclosure floor and have it grow upwards. The leaves will become so much bigger than those that grow down.
Anyhow, I’ll shut up now.
I’m so very glad that you’ve found your way here and look forward to hearing more from you.
Somehow I missed your post. Congrats on your beautiful little guy. I do hope you’ll be sharing many more pics of him.If I might, I’d like to offer a little bit of suggestions about your enclosure. Getting it all right can be a process that takes time as we learn more. While I do see some natural branches, I believe I am also seeing either bamboo sticks or wooden dowels. It would be better to replace those with natural branches or something like Fluker’s vines (the puffy foam ones). The problem is bamboo gets very slippery when wet and dowels tend to develop black mold. To exercise the cute mitten feet, have a variety of thickness to your branches too. I use everything from super thin to half the diameter of my wrist.
The other thing is as your plants start growing in, start removing the fake plants. Even though panthers don’t eat their plants like veileds do, many artificial plants can have sharp or poky edges (and then there’s always the chemicals that they release). I always like having a taller center plant, like a ficus benjamina (weeping fig) or schefflera (umbrella plant) and then have lots of pothos to vine everywhere and some pretty accent plants here & there. Neat trick is to have a pothos on the enclosure floor and have it grow upwards. The leaves will become so much bigger than those that grow down.
Anyhow, I’ll shut up now.
I’m so very glad that you’ve found your way here and look forward to hearing more from you.Thank you for the response! Good to know about the bamboo, there is some in there. He wasn't too happy after his trip, so I think I'll let him hang for a few days before making any changes. I did see him drinking already but isn't interested in the dubias I put in 2 different feeders...
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
For some, dubia can be an acquired taste. You could ask who you bought him from if he was eating them before. As much as I’ve tried to get away from crickets, it is the one staple feeder that all of my reptiles will eat…even the really finicky ones. I recently put aside my fear and tried grasshoppers and I think I’ll eventually try breeding my own as all of my critters seemed to enjoy them. https://feedmychameleon.com/collections/feeder-grasshoppers-for-sale
Day 3 with the new guy. Witnessed drinking regularly. 2 feeders with Dubia roaches, but no takers yet. Breeder says cricket hunting is prior feeding procedure but Damn would I rather avoid that.... This guy is pretty amazing and I can't wait to build that bond. Some "enhanced color" pics for your enjoyment 
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A bit of an update... 2 more days of no interest for the dubias. After contacting the seller, crickets are what he's used to. Just got back from the bug store with medium crickets and some hornworms. He went nuts for the crickets and got 7 in about 1 minute. Poor guy was hungry. It took him a bit to grab a horn worm but he took it! I'm not excited about live crickets in the house. Any suggestions on getting him to eat the roaches? He went 5 days without eating. (Feeding dish, branch crawling and wall crawling)
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
Just keep offering a roach along with the crickets and other feeders. Hopefully his tastes will change. An fyi about feeding hornworms - they have very sticky feet and on some surfaces, your chameleon can injure his tongue if they are too well stuck. I only hand feed hornworms, which is a nice way to build and then reinforce trust with your guy.
Was finally able to get this guy out of his cage today. I've only been able to 3 times since I've had him. I put him on a bush in the sun for about 30 mins so I can clean up the cage water plants ect.. I find it funny how all the youtube videos show these guys moving slowly. My guy literally sprints to cover when I try to take him out. Any who enjoy the pics!
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
Gorgeous guy! 
Do make sure to directly supervise at all times though. Besides them being able to take off much quicker than you’d think, hawks and other birds of prey are even quicker.
Do make sure to directly supervise at all times though. Besides them being able to take off much quicker than you’d think, hawks and other birds of prey are even quicker.Was able to "hand feed" today for the 1st time! One of the crickets didn't make it through the calcium shake in the feeding tube. After immediately snagging 2 medium crickets I dangled the 3rd recently deceased from tongs about a foot from his face and just outside his enclosure. He locked on and took it almost immediately! I grabbed a 4th from the feeder to see if he would do it again and he did! Just to add: I think the first scenario will be about the only time I plan on hand feeding... But dang was it cool! Hopefully I can build the bond with this guy.
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
You don’t want to use tongs to feed. Chameleon tongues are much faster than we can release tongs, and many chameleons have gotten tongue injuries, even as bad as losing their tongue completely, from tongs. I’m not a fan of touching some insects with my hands, so for hand feeding, I use only items like silkworms and hornworms. Hornworms are another risk to tongues because they have such a strong grip with their feet to most surfaces…not so much to our skin though.
