Best feeder colony for hatchlings

[CoolCham]

Hello, I am doing tons of research and preparing for when our Panther eggs hatch, and I am wondering about the best feeder for them.
Obviously we will feed fruit flies for as long as needed, but when it's time to switch to something bigger, what do you recommend? I need something that is relatively easy to keep a colony going, and that provide small enough food for the baby chameleons.
I know we could try a cricket colony and feed the pinheads, but I would rather try something less noisy/smelly. Thanks any advice!

 

[Chase]

Some popular things people have been using recently is bean beetles and mantis ooths. I'm not sure how large the mantis nymphs ate when they come out of the ooth, but I know they do eat pinheads. And with the ooths, you just have them and they hatch and you have hundreds of mantis nymphs.

Chase

 

[fluxlizard]

I usually use baby lobster roaches, baby mealworms, baby superworms and fruit flies and crickets for fresh hatched panthers (and about every other chameleon species).

There really isn't a need to go fruit flies alone. Just as for adult chameleons, variety is key, and at least the impression I have had when I fed all or mostly fruit flies to baby chameleons for a while is that growth rate was not nearly as rapid and babies were not as robust as when I was using a variety of food.

Baby mealworms and superworms are super tiny. Often my chameleons first meals have been baby mealworms, if that happens to be the food item rotation I am on the day that they hatch. It is no problem for them. It took me many years longer to figure out large scale superworm breeding, but I have that in place now and those are super tiny also and I'm thinking baby supers look softer than mealworms- they sure can't eat hardish food items as soon as mealworms such as carrots- another very good choice as part of a variety.

Lobster roaches are easy and babies are very soft and tiny enough for baby chameleons, but they are really hardy and I breed them and feed them only to lizards in my separate lizard building- never in my house because they can survive temps above freezing and breed happily when things are relatively cool (60s and 70s are not a problem for their breeding activity, even when night temps are in the 50s and it warms a little in the day). They also have more odor than some other species of roach if kept in large numbers. Still- if your situation is correct, they can be a very valuable food item.

Lastly, don't rule out pinheads. Even if you have to buy a limited number of 1 or 2 thousand every week or two to get crickets into the mix, they are a great food item.

 

[CoolCham]

Ok, thank you. I think we will buy crickets, and start a colony of some other feeder. I don't want to try lobster roaches as they would be in our house, so would starting a dubia colony be worth it? I'm no it sure how small they are or how long they stay small enough to feed...
i think its between meal worms or some roach, any suggestions?

 

[fluxlizard]

Baby dubia are too big for baby chameleons, but are OK once they are a month or so old. The week before thanksgiving I had baby jacksons born. They started feeding on baby dubia when they were about 4 weeks old. Panthers are similarly sized, but might take up to a month longer depending on your husbandry- not everyone grows their babies at the same rate.

I don't know of another roach that would be any better than lobsters for baby chameleons. Red racers (lateralis) are an infestive species- you don't want those in your house probably. I got some pretty little green banana roaches this past year from Nick here on the forums. Their babies would fit the bill, but have to be sifted from substrate to be used. They can climb anything and are super secretive- babies would likely escape any food dish and hide. Pardalis babies can be aggressive feeders, so if you fed out of a calcium dusted petri dish (coat the dish in calcium powder- makes it a bit more slippery for baby roaches) and fed only enough to be consumed in 10 minutes at a time or something, maybe the banana roaches would be OK.

The problem with most of the "good" roaches is that they are large and the babies are also fairly large.

 

[CoolCham]

Baby dubia are too big for baby chameleons, but are OK once they are a month or so old. The week before thanksgiving I had baby jacksons born. They started feeding on baby dubia when they were about 4 weeks old. Panthers are similarly sized, but might take up to a month longer depending on your husbandry- not everyone grows their babies at the same rate.

I don't know of another roach that would be any better than lobsters for baby chameleons. Red racers (lateralis) are an infestive species- you don't want those in your house probably. I got some pretty little green banana roaches this past year from Nick here on the forums. Their babies would fit the bill, but have to be sifted from substrate to be used. They can climb anything and are super secretive- babies would likely escape any food dish and hide. Pardalis babies can be aggressive feeders, so if you fed out of a calcium dusted petri dish (coat the dish in calcium powder- makes it a bit more slippery for baby roaches) and fed only enough to be consumed in 10 minutes at a time or something, maybe the banana roaches would be OK.

The problem with most of the "good" roaches is that they are large and the babies are also fairly large.

Ok, thanks for the info. Do you think mealworms would work as a main feeder along side fruit flies (for first few weeks) and crickets?

 

[fluxlizard]

Yes. You may want to feed crickets and fruit flies twice for every mealworm feeding, but even 1/3 of the feedings will probably be OK. I just rotate through food items and keep cycling through. For example right now with the baby jackson's I feed lobster roaches one day, mealworms the next, dubia roaches the next, superworms the next, crickets the next, and then loop through again. If I had more feeders ready right now, such as fruit flies, I'd use those as well as part off the loop. Sometimes I'll repeat certain insects to keep the worm ratio down a bit- especially I like the lobster roaches as they are very soft bodied and easy to digest compared to anything else I am offering, so I will sometimes work those in again after the mealworms or superworms. You could do the same with the fruit flies while your chameleons are still small enough for them, and dubia later if you wanted to culture those.

 

[Mike Fisher]

Bean beetles, rice flour beetles, pin head crickets, flightless fruit flies are all in rotation around here. About 80 babies across three species chowing down.

 

[CoolCham]

Alright, thanks a lot, you guys are incredibly helpful!
One last question (just trying to figure out my best options ), would bean beetles be big enough to feed the chams for the first 3 months? We plan to sell them at around 3 months old, so I want to know if bean beetles will last that long or get too small.
Thanks again!!

 

[Mike Fisher]

would bean beetles be big enough to feed the chams for the first 3 months?

Depends on how many bean beetles you can supply, but yeah. Personally I would not limit them to only one feeder. Especially bean beetles because they can't be gut loaded.