best enclosure for a veiled chameleon

[johnnyc]

Hello to all and great forum btw.

I have a veiled chameleon called lenny and his set up is currently a exoterra 45x45x60 terrarium which i now know is not big enough.

now looking on the net and asking my local reptile shops the advice i get is different in every location.

His new enclosure that i will be building will be 3ft wide by 2ft deep by 4ft tall.

My questionis this,

what are the best materials that i should use (living in london remember)

wood, glass, wired mesh ?

My original plan was to have a glass front/back with mesh sides and top, however due to the climate in the uk i have been advised not to do this and instead build a wooden vivarium with small vents.

due to the varying advice im getting im a little confused on what to build.

any experts on the matter, you opinions great appreciated

cheers

John

 

[Jonas]

Being a fellow european, you wont get any "all screen cage" advice from me.
Wood is a great material, easy to modify if needed.

You can still have a lot of ventilation, but modified to keep the heat and humidity in. I can send you some "blue prints" later if you need inspiration.

 

[laurie]

I was all ready to go into the screen cage lecture until I saw the London part. All I can say is we have lots of people in the UK who will be on soon and give you ideas, sorry I can't help.

I just wanted to say hello and welcome to the forum.

 

[Vampire.queen]

I had my calyptratus in glass enclosure with good ventilation and had no problems with that.
Then I moved him into enclosure made of OSB thingy and I guess this is great material.

 

[chameleon18]

Hey i live in the UK to! and i am currently building my new cage its 2x2x4 ft what i have done is built to sides out of plywood and 2 sides out of mesh i figured that doing it this way would allow for ventelation but would also allow sustainable humidity and temp.

 

[Jonas]

Two open sides is more than ventilation, its basically open. It would be interesting to have something to measure to se the difference betweet, say, that and an all screen cage.

Just for comparison I can say that in regular "european style" terrariums, it is said that apozimately 2% of the total surface area should be ventilation (split into two areas a bit higher up than the middle of the sides of the terrarium) in case of a high humidity cage, 4% in a dry terrarium.

This may sound like very little, but it works great because of "ventilation". I was didiculed in another thread because of this. Most people dont know or use the word ventilation correctly, its just used to say "a lot of fresh air", so to speak. In an all mesh cage, you actually dont have much of the effect that would be considered "ventilation", its more of free flowing air in action.

In european style terrariums the ventilation works because of many different factors, the most basic one being temperature based airmovement, placement etc etc.

interesting stuff...

 

[johnnyc]

thanks for you replies.

i think ill make it all wood with some mesh near the top of the enclosure.

The room temp can drop quite low in the winter here so i think two meshed sides would be too much and wont maintain the heat.

 

[Jonas]

If you can forgive the bad quality of the pictures, I can show you what was sketched in a diskussion much like this just the other week in a swedish forum.

From the side a sloping floor (for drainage) was discussed. All the sides are bolted against a wooden frame of 2x2 beams(?).

The idea is to keep the upper part surrounded with wood so that there is a "cushion effect" where temperature and some humidity can stay better.

 

[Jonas]

Man those are bad drawings, sorry. The blue/purple part was an idea to tilt the front glass to avoid reflections, I dont know how that would work.

 

[johnnyc]

thanks jonas

i like the idea of a sloping flood for drainage,

ill keep that in mind

cheers

 

[elefntkpr]

Man those are bad drawings, sorry. The blue/purple part was an idea to tilt the front glass to avoid reflections, I dont know how that would work.

First off you can simply buy non-reflective glass from a hobby shop where they frame pictures. It's a bit more expensive than regular glass but you're not buying anything special as far as shape or cut so it wouldn't be that bad I wouldn't think. Could be wrong though, I've never purchased it before.

I've also heard of painting framers using a matte finish clear coat on the glass to reduce reflection. You could experiment with this on a spare piece of glass to see if you could replicate the effect.

I like the idea of the angled bottom, might have to use that.

 

[Jonas]

I personally never had a problem with reflection, for one the water in Uppsala is extremely hard - the glass is white in one misting, and I never had a fractured bone...

I have found that reflection can be avoided by experimenting with the position of the light sources.

That non reflecting glass sounds interesting, but is it still transparant as regular glass?

EDIT:
When I think about it, I think that matte layer will work fine as a frame glass, mut Im pretty sure the light get exponentially mor diffused by it the further away you move an object behind it, meaning the inside of the terrarium would become a blur...

 

[johnnyc]

finished enclosure

well its been a while, and i now have some pics of the finished enclosure, living in london i couldnt go for the mesh type as the weather is so cold !!

the top is vented though.


...and he loves the space so its all good

john