distance of lights

I have noticed how happy my 4 month old veiled boy is when he comes out of his 30x18x30 cage and hangs out in a silk ficus tree. The last couple weeks have been beautiful and in the upper 70s in southern california and he very much enjoyed the sun. He seems anxious when I put him back in his cage, so I am wondering if its a good idea to move him back in forth or not.

I ended up testing out a free range set up with two 5 1/2 foot silk ficus trees. I have an end table that is about 2 feet high, and used a long flat storage bin (18x36 or so) and set it on top of the end table and put the plants in the bin. I then put the clamp lamp with 60 watt bulb and the 24" reptisun 5.0 and attached them to the rafters of the garage. I'd say they were about 12 inches away from the top of the tree. My concern is that I do not want him being able to reach the lights... it seems like the needed distance from the UV to chameleon might be about the same distance a large chameleon could reach to, let alone zap with his tongue.

For water, I planned on attaching some screen to the "rain nozzle" set up from MistKing to create drips that would cascade down to the bin and out into a drainage bucket.

So is my only real option to build a screened barrier between the lights and the chameleon?

I appreciate your feed back!
 
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