* Bio: I have a male Veiled Cham, he is approximately 4 months old; I have had him now going on three months. I feed him every evening when i come home from work, it either consists on 4-6 large crickets, or 8-10 small crickets. (whatever the pet store has in stock at the time. I keep his crickets in medium sized vivarium with water and Zoo med cricket care food. Henry (his name) occasionally gets one or two hand fed to earlier in the day. For supplements I have calcium dust, that i use for the crickets that he is given on Mon, Wed, and Friday. He is misted 4 times as day once in the morning usually right before i go to work that way he has been up for approx 45 min basking in the heat. I use warm water in the mister approx. 80 degrees. He enjoys in most of the time just closing his eyes. He is the misted around 10 or 11 am before my fiance leaves for work, again at 3 pm and finally around 7 pm usually 1 hour or so before lights out. He will at one point during the mist go to his drinking corner as i call it and will let me drip water into his mouth for about 3 or so mins before he moves away. I try to gauge his reactions to things as to what he wants. His most recent defecation was a little watery and did not eat that entire day. He had crickets in cage that he did not touch. He has only been handled twice, once when he arrived at home and one other time 2 weeks later.
Cage Info:
* His cage is a medium screened in enclosure approx 36 in tall and 24 in long and 24 in wide. He has three sources of heat, one 60 w natural color spectrum bulb, one CFL UVB bulb, and one ceramic inferred bulb (i live in an old house it is needed in winter). Lights are on at 8 am and are off at 8-9 pm. There are plenty of vines at different heights as and temperature is usually around 85 near the heat source and 70 near the ground of the cage. Humidity levels fluctuate between 35-80 percent. I have had to mist him more this winter as i have had to run my gas heater in my house more and it drys out the air. Plants unfortunately are all fake, i did opt and buy an semi-life like vine that holds water and acts like real. I got him for an early Christmas gift for us and unfortunately out of season for plants. I do plan on buying real plants for his cage when they become available in stores here. His cage is placed in a semi-high traffic area, i say that because he is in the kitchen off to the corner but it is only me and me fiance living in the house with no other pets. His cage is on a two foot table so that he is when at the highest branch 5 ft above the floor. I live on the Coast of North Carolina.
Problem:
I have noticed a regressive behavior in him, I stated above that I have only handled him twice, well that's because that is all he had let me. I understand that he is an animal that is more of a no touchy, and is all fine and dandy. However i have noticed that i has stopped letting me hand feed him as of late, when i approach him with food, almost always from below as his food is kept under his cage that he Gapes and hisses either at my hand or the food now. This is recent as in the last week, before that he always without hesitation moved to the opening of the enclosure when he sees food in my hand. More recently he has started to gape and hiss just when I get near the door to the cage, even with it closed. As well i have noticed that he has not been eating. The day before last he actually sat in the spot with the crickets in the corner all day just watching them, didn't eat them, thankfully he did eat them at some point the following day. I am not sure when you start to make the switch from feeding everyday to feeding every other day. So the question I am having is this normal behavior (is it the dreaded terrible teens phase), and is this when i make a feed schedule switch? Please feel free to give me any adivce as well thoughts
