Substrate for Chams!

[reyesjoshuacruz]

if you do this, you need to keep a close eye on things and make changes as needed.

not only female chams mess with soil, dont forget males also have some instincts that make them consume soil for unknown reasons. so yes they live in trees, but they have that instinct, and they can also swim, makes sense that they would have had to come in physical contact with soil before hitting water.


anyways you can figure out where most of the water is falling, IE 80% of the water from misting falls into this particular spot in the soil, once you know that you can find a plastic container with an air line coming out of the bottom side out of the cage somehow, put the container in that spot that gets the most water, and burry it in soil, every once and a while if needed you can siphon or just drain the water from the container out the tube.


that way you dont have to find a huge container, and if excess water builds up you can easily take care of it.

 

[lanceman]

couldnt a person cover all substrate with golf ball sized stones some nice smooth ones.
that way cham couldnt get to any of the ingestable sub. may cause problem with feces though not geting through to decompose.??

 

[reyesjoshuacruz]

thats a good idea, but it cause problems with prey hiding.

 

[dodolah]

use plastic canvas instead of rocks.

 

[opihiman]

Sorry but I am fairly ignorant. What are spring tails?

OPI

 

[Dyesub Dave]

Sorry but I am fairly ignorant. What are spring tails?

OPI

Copied from the net ....

A springtail 5-6 mm in length can jump 75-100 mm and floating springtails can even jump on water! Many springtails are beautifully colored (white, gray, yellow, orange, metallic green, lavender, red) but, because these insects are so small, this detail goes unnoticed by the general public.

The usual habitat of these small insects is in soil of woodlands, in decaying vegetative matter, or on the surface of stagnant water. For the most part they are innocuous creatures and are seldom even noticed. Most soil-inhabiting springtails feed on decaying plant material, fungi and bacteria, and thrive in an environment that is moist or high in humidity. Because springtails infest decaying organic matter, they can infest soil of potted plants and become a nuisance in greenhouses or mushroom cellars. They do not injure living plants.


I've also found several other interesting posts on soil ingestion by chameleons on this forum !!

As noted by others, eating of dirt, bark, small stones, dead leaves, etc, is not uncommon in just about all chameleon species that we work with. As it seems to be normal, I have a hard time substantiating such claims that the "chameleon is looking to fix a deficiency in its diet", or it is to be prevented or avoided, etc. As such a commonly observed behavior by many keepers in an abundance of varying conditions, I think advice such as that is often to assume too much. However, if this is a normal behavior, it does warrant a look to be sure that we have also provided a "normal" environment in which this behavior would not be tripped-up by an "abnormality". Such things would be artificial or non-common items in the dirt (vermiculite or perlite, plastic debris, etc), or an excessive amount of bacteria causing conditions (fecal matter, dead bugs, etc) which are concentrated in cage environments (vs. in the wild) which could also increase concerns of parasites in addition to excessive bacteria. The best remedy that I know of is to keep the surface of the dirt relatively clean, removing such things as noticed. You may also want to replace the top 1" of dirt weekly.

As mentioned, we do not know why chameleons do it, or what the long term effects are of not letting them do it. It is also something that will likely vary from animal to animal, husbandry to husbandry. My own belief is that it is a beneficial part of their wild existence, and if we can safely maintain their ability to do it in captivity, we should.

Concerning soil....I am beginning to come to the conclusion that for whatever reason.... they need it. Kitty eats it regularly and not by accident. He goes specifically to it and has a "dirt snack" almost daily.
He has plenty of water and variety of feeder insects available but insists
on including soil in the menu.
To this end I have made a great effort to provide him with fresh, organic, sifted soil and have seen no ill effects so far.
I worried like crazy about impaction after the first time I saw him eat dirt (he was about 6 weeks old) and tried various ways of keeping it from him.
He has been very good at thwarting these efforts....even to the point of pushing away rocks and digging out landscape fabric to expose the soil.
I finally decided that if he wanted it that bad he must need it and I should be providing the safest soil for him rather than trying to keep it from him.
I have thought that rather than causing blockage ... it may be a source of fiber which would have an opposite, more beneficial effect.
I don't know...but this is what I do now.

-Brad

Jim,

I do think that chameleons are trying to fix some mineral inbalance. Pica in humans, or the eating of non-food substance is linked to multiple things but predominately pregnancy and iron-defiency. Lots of animals from chimps to macaws will eat dirt from certain areas to get the minerals that they need, iron usually is one of the top ones they are after. In herps many spieces of geckos will eat sand to get calcium carbonate (limestone), iron, and other minerals. Since most of our pets are fed between a couple and several different types of food I can see that there is room for missing some trace elements. Your a breeder, on the average week how many types of feeders do you offer? In the wild they maybe be eating a different type of feeder insect everytime they eat, feeding on spiders, flies, and bugs of all sorts. Those bugs are all going to have slightly/highly different nutriotional values and among those values is going to be trace elements and minerals. Of course the chameleon is not eating a fully balanced diet all the time, wether do to food availibity, preference, or whatever other natural circumstance happens. Trace elements are not life threatening but they certainly hurt the chameleon's body to function. So nature gave the chameleons a little back-up security plan, if you can't get the nutrients in your food, get them from the soil. So yes chameleons would be eating soil if they had deficiency, though it maybe an instinct just to go down and grab bite every once in a while.

Danny

I'm only recently back on the boards here so others may have more current info for you.. With that disclaimer, I'll note that its more common than not for chameleons to eat dirt on occassion, and noone seems to have answered the "why?" definitively. Intuitively we might suspect there are micronutrients and/or minerals in soil that are important, nutrients that a free ranging chameleon striking free ranging insects would likely get. Last year, faced with the same ??, I learned a little bit about humic acid, which results from decaying matter and gives soil its brown color and has a major effect on how molecules move around living systems. I got a bag of organic composted leaves from the garden center and put about a tablespoon in a small jar lid on the bottom of each of my three chams' cages. It wasn't ten minutes before one of them was on the cage floor eating big mouthfuls of it -- just like a ravenous dog -- and the second was striking big gobs of it from the lowest available perch. The third seemed entirely disinterested. Not sure what to conclude from that but now they all get a helping of leaf compost 2x per month (I sift out any debris -- tiny twigs, etc. -- that pose any risk of impaction). Personally, I'd love to see soil analyses from the various cham species' home ranges -- it is high/low in specific trace minerals? Maybe some of the folks who collect the WCs or lead the trips to places like Madagascar (e.g., Bob Love) could fetch some soil samples back with them some time. Meawhile, if you're topsoil is free of debris, chemical fertilizers, etc., then I wouldn't worry.

So it seems that the ingestion of the soil isn't too much of a concern as long as there is no large debris that can also be injested.

Dyesub Dave.

 

[ciafardo 4]

go for it dave you obviously have researched this topic to no end hell you have covinced me