Adding live plants to enclosuee

[Mrs.Rocky]

I am wanting to add live plants to my chameleons enclosure. I have seen the care sheets and what plants are safe for them. I understand I would have to change the soil, add large rocks and clean very well the leaves.
I was looking at two plants, schefflera arboricola and the golden pothos. Currently in the closest live plants I have found are the golden pothole and the croton. The croton, love the colors but fear it’s not much branch for climbing just large leaves.
Now my questions would be,
how big should the bottom plant be? Should a long one be better? The golden pothos how is that one used. Do i sit it at the bottom and bring the leaves upwards?
Any advice is greatly appreciated before I jump into purchase plants and not placing them in properly.

Thank you.
Do I need to refill the forum?

 

[Ares05]

You could grab some wood lattice and put it up on the sides, and secure it to the frames with maybe a bit of floral wire or a zip tie. This will make it easy to put up branches and to secure plants higher up. You could also buy some Dragon ledges from dragon strand and place them in the cage, and secure your plants higher up that way.

You can set bigger plants on the bottom but water will tend to pool around the base of the plant. Maybe you could grab some egg crate mesh and set it on the bottom and set your bigger plant on there, so the water could just drain through? Do you have any sort of drainage?

 

[Gingero]

Dragon Strand ledges are a great suggestion from Ares05. That's how I fixate most of my plants. The golden pothos would be a great one to try a wrap around branches as they get longer. I have a croton at the bottom of my panther's enclosure and it has some decent branches. Provides more coverage and humidity then things for him to climb, but since it sits at the bottom, that's not a big deal for me since he doesn't spend much time down there anyway. I have 1 taller plant and 1 wide plant at the bottom of my panter's enclosure. This gives him a way to get up and down with the taller plant (Hawaiian Ti), and also some coverage down low with the wider plant (Croton). Then I have viney plants (Pothos) at the top of his enclosure so that the vines can hang down.

I made a video about plants for chameleons you might find helpful:




Also going to link my enclosure tour video so you can see how I used the Dragon Strand ledges:

 

[Zizor]

I have a pothos, it is more for decoration and holding moisture than for climbing (though still good for climbing), so I have plenty of sticks too. I have a mesh cage so I’ve wired branches to the back. The soil is mostly covered but I wouldn’t worry too much seeing as chameleon hardly ever go down to the ground.