Bioactive Vs Regular, Covering Soil?

The Wild One

Chameleon Enthusiast
Why do we tell new members to cover the soil with large river rocks so the chams don’t ingest the soil and become impacted, but in bioactive covering none of the soil is ok? I feel like we might be contradicting ourselves and I’d love to hear y’all a thought on this.
 
Why do we tell new members to cover the soil with large river rocks so the chams don’t ingest the soil and become impacted, but in bioactive covering none of the soil is ok? I feel like we might be contradicting ourselves and I’d love to hear y’all a thought on this.
We do this mainly for keepers of veiled chameleons. Juveniles have a terrible habit of this and I have in fact witnessed with my first chameleon Camo in the act. He was approximately a 4-5 month old male veiled Petco chameleon. Before I found this forum, I had him in a 40x12x19 hybrid screen and glass aquarium with a repti bark substrate. He ate crickets and hornworms like a champ but I would even still witness him eating the substrate at times. Once he even started to choke on some after slinging his tongue on a piece too big for him to chew. So I quickly found this place and realized how little I actually knew about chameleons. Switched over my setup for him completely and now I use that tank for an adult female Leo. Don't worry I took out the bark lol. I've never heard or witnessed panthers illustrating this behavior but than again I've never used a setup for a chameleon like that again after finding the forums.
 
I have had a male jackson try to eat one of the river rocks. It must have been shiny or something. It was bigger than his head so I was able to get it away from him easily.
 
Parsons and panthers will also bite at rocks, leaves, and soil. My Parsons eats chunks of soil still. I don't see anything wrong with them eating some dirt. I think they main thing to cover is anything that could be choked on. My chams would eat the leaf litter too which is probably harder to pass than soil. The covering with rocks thing is more of a safety net saying for newbies that are still finding their direction.
 
Back
Top Bottom