About the light; we went to a breeder in tampa and he told us that the bulb he sold us, which was like $60, has Uvb and heating elements and that is the bulb he uses for all of his terrariums. I may have just got took by a good sales man. Is there such a bulb or do you have to have two separate bulbs no matter what?
What was the brand of bulb and type (cfl, incandescent, or tube fluorescent)? It matters, as many brands don't produce the correct part of the UV spectrum. A couple of the so-called combination heat/UVB bulbs are PowerSun and UVHeat. I have never used either.
We also spray his tank twice a day with a water bottle and we have a fogger for humidity.
Still, the cage could be drying out a lot faster than you realize depending on temps and air flow. There is very little live foliage in your current cage so this could well be part of the problem. You do need to measure humidity with a good quality digital hygrometer.
The substrate we have is not dirt, i am pretty sure it is coconut fibers and the breeder also recommended that to us.
Was this breeder a cham breeder? Most keepers do not use substrates in cham cages because they can pick up pieces of substrate on their tongues and ingest it. Constantly wet substrates also cause mold and bacteria problems.
We are also worried about him falling on bare glass or just paper towels, what do you do about that?
The chance that he hurts himself by falling the height in a typical cage (less than 5') is very very low unless he has severe MBD. Chams fall off of trees a lot in the wild. They can inflate themselves to protect from injuries. If there is a good network of branches and plants in the cage he can break his fall anyway.
We read that bamboo is an okay plant to have in the tank with a chameleon, should we take it out and/or just get some other plants as well?
I have read that so-called "lucky bamboo" can be toxic to ingest, and veileds often decide to chew on their cage plants. I think I would remove it as there are better options. You want plants that hold lots of water droplets long enough for him to reach and lick. The longer the foliage holds water droplets the longer the cage will stay comfortably humid. Bushy plants such as Hawaiian schefflera, Ficus, Pothos, and Hibiscus, or even a dwarf citrus tree are all good choices.
We are open to changing anything or all of our tank. We dont know much about chameleons but have come to love this one and want to make everything great for him...
Yeah, its pretty easy to fall in love with a cham! We know exactly how you feel! We can help steer you onto the right track. In case you hadn't seen it yet, there are forum pages describing basic care and setups that you should read. They may help make his life better too.
Thank you so much for the response to all of the above.
