Meet Rocky

[JRock]

Hi everyone!

I'd like to introduce Rocky and myself. I've been lurking these forums for nearly two months preparing for this little guy and have to say this has been an amazing experience so far. These forums have been a great resource so thank you! This post is my first step to giving back a little bit and hopefully helping the next person. I have previous experience with iguanas, snakes, and sugar gliders even, but let me tell you this has been something else. I hope you all enjoy the photos and please ask me anything. We've had Rocky for two weeks (as of tomorrow) and since then we've already seen some green and yellow colors developing around his really pretty teal bar. He's also developed quite the schedule already. He's up with the lights at 7am, eating breakfast at 8:30, basking for a few hours, some laps around the cage, and tucks himself in around 4-5pm.

Leave the food and close the door human...

I caught him doing some Mission Impossible maneuver here and he straight up froze like he was guilty caught...

Some pull ups to stay fit...

Exploring...

Getting ready for Halloween...

Yum...

Chameleon Info:

• Your Chameleon - Rocky is a 4 month old male Panther and has been in my care for two weeks now.
• Handling - He ate from tongs the day after I brought him home. Since then I have fed him from tongs most days. I haven't tried at all yet to pull him out with a stick or by hand. Even though he will eat from tongs it is clear he doesn't like me opening that cage door. He'll usually start to turn away from me until he spots the grub.
• Feeding - I am feeding him small locusts and as many as he wants. I've tried dubias and worms as well. He did eat a few dubias the first week but stopped eating them entirely (wondering if one bit him or something). Some days he eats as few as three locusts and the day after shedding he actually ate nine locusts and one accidental worm. The locust must have been climbing the worm because they came in a combo meal. Lights on at 7am and he generally eats around 8:30 am. Occasionally he will go back for seconds around noon. I am gut loading them mostly with vegetables and EarthPro Insect Fuel.
• Supplements - I am dusting the feeders daily with Arcadia EarthPro-A and biweekly with Arcadia EarthPro RevitaliseD3.
• Watering - I have a Mistking and Big Dripper. I am following the chameleon academy hydration cycle guidelines. The Mistking runs for two minutes at 1:00am, 6:30am, and 7:30pm. I turn the dripper on around 2pm for a couple of hours. I have seen him drink off leaves occasionally but not every day.
• Fecal Description - I have only seen one and it was a week ago. He's being sneaky about where he goes. It was solid and the urates were a healthy white. He hasn't been tested for parasites to my knowledge.
• History - I purchased him through a local pet store and they got him from a convention in Germany the week before. All I was told about his history is that his sire was wild caught.

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - X-Large ReptiBreeze; 2x2x4; I did add a black shower curtain on the back and partially on the sides.
• Lighting - Arcadia Jungle Dawn LED and an Arcadia T5 6% (7:00am - 7:00 pm); Arcadia Solar Basking Floodlight (100w, 7:30am - 3:00 pm)
• Temperature - The temperature range during the day on average is around 70-86 (bottom-basking) degrees fahrenheit. The lowest overnight temperature has been 64 degrees at the bottom of the cage. I measure the temperature with five DS18B20 sensors wired into an Arduino Nano running a custom script. The Nano sends data to a Raspberry Pi where I have another custom script, Prometheus, and Grafana running. Additionally, I am monitoring the basking branch/controlling the heat lamp with a HabiStat Dimming Thermostat.
• Humidity - Humidity will get down to around 60% in the cage during the day and branches are dry before I turn on the dripper. At night, I've spot checked it at ~90%. It is already fairly humid here (average annual: 78%) and the Mistking adds to that. I have a few cheap digital hygrometers that I dotted around. I intend to wire in a sensor to the main monitoring system soon.
• Plants - I have four live plants in the cage. A Ficus Benjamina, a Wandering Dude, a Pothos Ivy, and a Hibiscus. They all seem to have taken well. I planted them in the cage about a month before I picked up Rocky. I think I will add a climber to the large bottom branch I have across the middle to help Rocky navigate it. All the branches are Oak from a nearby estate or the sticks that came with the plants for support. I strung some fake ivy outside the cage on the curtain just to give the scene a backdrop.
• Placement - The cage is located in our living room and I added a floor heater to help keep the room warm enough. Regarding traffic, my fiancé and I live alone and my desk is set up to the right of Rocky where I work all day. The curtain and Wandering Dude block his line of sight of me, but he has come to the top of the plant and I spotted him looking down at me. We are doing our best to let him be but we are obsessed! I find myself analyzing his every move. The top of the cage reaches 7' 6", it stands on a custom box I built.
• Location - We are in lovely Ireland.

Future improvements include...

• Graphing out the humidity
• I need to find a less invasive method for refilling the dripper and opening the dripper valve. It bothers him when I get up there. I am going to start with putting the dripper on a piece of wood to stabilize everything a bit better, but I may just add a floating shelf above/behind the cage.
• More plants!

 

[Sonny13]

Hi and welcome with your cute and handsome Rocky. Love your introduction and the way you started your adventure, one for the books .
Enjoy your time over here as a non lurker and enjoy even more your time with Rocky and how’ll grow and earn your trust.

 

[MissSkittles]

Hi and welcome! Looks like all of your lurking has really paid off. You’ve even set up bioactively I see. Kudos!
Looking thru your husbandry, I want to comment on just a few items. The first is that it’s important to build up trust to make needed handling more comfortable for both of you. This is a great blog on doing that. https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/building-trust-with-your-chameleon.2396/
For feeding, some chameleons can be picky about dubia. You can try to sneak them in with other feeders. Having a good variety of feeders is ideal. For being four months old, he really should be eating a lot more than that. Are the feeders small enough for him? Anything larger than the space between his eyes is too big. It’s better to give feeders that may be a bit small than too big. Also, do not use tongs to feed him. Too many accidents have happened while tong feeding in a split second that ended up costing the chameleon its tongue.
Lastly, it’s always a good idea to have a fecal check for parasites.
Oh…also it’s mandatory that you continue to share pics and info about your little cutie. Yeah…it’s a new rule…uh yeah…it’s so new that no one else even knows about it.

 

[GrannyK]

Welcome you and little Rocky to the no longer lurking side of the forum! we all start there and then just jump right in and get addicted. He is a handsome little guy for sure and looks like you guys are off to a great start.

 

[JRock]

Thanks Sonny13, MissSkittles, and Granny K! My arm is already tired thinking about that trust building . Regarding how much he eats, I am going to buy out all the smallest hoppers I can find and see how that goes. I obviously didn't realize that about the tongs though. Potential emergency averted there! There will definitely be more pictures on the way...


Here's Rocky, feeling fabulous wearing his Pothos leaf coat...

 

[elizaann2]

Hello and welcome!!

 

[iPwnedMSCS]

I measure the temperature with five DS18B20 sensors wired into an Arduino Nano running a custom script. The Nano sends data to a Raspberry Pi where I have another custom script, Prometheus, and Grafana running

I'm considering starting into an automation project of my own. How are you getting the data from the nano to the pi? Are you sending it via serial or using one of the other busses?

 

[Beman]

Welcome to the forum. Your lurking has paid off!
Only two points of feedback... Don't tong feed. It is really dangerous and I have seen too many tongue injuries when people do this even a few amputated tongues due to tong feeding.

Might add a few more branches in lower down. Really try to utilize as much of the space as you can.

 

[JRock]

Thanks for the advice @Beman, he's been eating out of my hand every day for about five days now. I will definitely add some more branches and I have another climber to add front and center that I plan to wrap around the main large branch so that should be a massive addition.

Yo @iPwnedMSCS, you definitely should build it if you are interested and you don't even need a Nano + Pi. I just plan on adding more to the Pi in the future and didn't want to dedicate it to the temperature monitoring. You could do it with just the Pi or just an Arduino (probably not a Nano though). Ya, you are spot on, I am sending the data via Serial to the Pi. The Nano is also powered by the same.

Here is the hard wiring

Regarding software, If you decide to go with an Arduino and Dallas Temperatures, then this should get you started with retrieving the data and pushing it out the Serial port.
https://github.com/milesburton/Ardu...ry/blob/master/examples/Multiple/Multiple.ino

I had to adjust the output formatting quite a bit to make it simpler for the script (Prometheus Exporter) running on the Pi to receive and project the data to Prometheus.

Anyways, I'd be glad to help out! I work in this Operations + Site Reliability Engineering field for a very large software company so I have lots of experience with Prometheus and Grafana.