Favorite Melleri Enclosure or Free Range Ideas!

Kat77

Kat77

New Member
All you Meller's lovers, please chime in and give me some ideas. I would LOVE to get a Melleri or two and need some of your best ideas for free ranges and enclosures. I am inclined to free range him/her as an adult, so some ideas for that would be fantastic.
Enclosure ideas would be great too. Let me know what you all think!
 
Okay, go plop him onto the ground, and there you go! He/she will find the perfect spot! I highly recommend letting your Melleri Chameleon living with you, and that means making your house, their house!

Yay!
 
Pashka said:
Okay, go plop him onto the ground, and there you go! He/she will find the perfect spot! I highly recommend letting your Melleri Chameleon living with you, and that means making your house, their house!

Yay!
Click to expand...
Was that a joke? Because if not, that's really awful advice.
 
Pashka said:
Okay, go plop him onto the ground, and there you go! He/she will find the perfect spot! I highly recommend letting your Melleri Chameleon living with you, and that means making your house, their house!

Yay!
Click to expand...

Yeah thats really stupid, what if they crawl somewhere and you cant find it, or if you have a cat in the house or something
 
I think you should go with the basics like how to do the lighting, and keeping the humidity up and such etc... But after that go crazy, meaning just have fun making a safe, fun free range enclosure:D
 
I wouldn't be considering getting one had I not done quite a lot of research on their needs:D. I understand those complexaties as best as I will be able to before I actually own one myself. I just wanted to see some photos of free ranges and/or enclosures that people have set up for their Meller's. But the websites posted above, one of which I am very familiar with, helped quite a lot:)!
 
mary prefontaine said:
how about that six ft tall reptarium they cant get much more free roaming than that lol
Click to expand...

HAH! I think the one you sent me is going to be used for my panther! But as I was telling you, I was thinking perhaps I could use another one of those as part of it, and have plants inside that extend a few more feet out. The reptarium would be used to provide more coverage and privacy when he or she felt like it. Who knows, maybe it's a horrible idea, but thats why I'm asking!
I don't think I want the Meller's inside an enclosure as they tend to suffer from rostal rubbing on mesh enclosures...
 
Pashka said:
Okay, go plop him onto the ground, and there you go! He/she will find the perfect spot!
Click to expand...
Dylan Dutz said:
Yeah thats really stupid, what if they crawl somewhere and you cant find it, or if you have a cat in the house or something
Click to expand...

I didn't have much time when I posted earlier, so I thought I better elaborate on why I thought that advice was bad...

Losing the cham and predatory cats are not even the biggest problems. The worst thing about that advice is that the chameleon will probably not have access to the things he needs most to survive: heat, UV, water and food.

Because of the term 'free-ranging', people tend to associate it with a laissez-faire attitude to chameleon keeping: that the cham is essentially unrestricted in its movements.
But that couldn't be further from the truth. Free-range habitats are very controlled environments that require a lot of thought and planning. Good ones are probably even better thought out than conventional enclosures.
Even without the constraints of a cage, a chameleon still needs access to heat and UV light. So the lighting setup in a free range environment has to be very carefully planned, so that chams have easy access to the lighting, but also so they can't actually get to the lights and injure themselves.
They also need water, and you can easily imagine how much design has to go into creating a watering system that not only meets the chams' humidty and hydration needs, but also doesn't cause severe flooding and general swamp-like conditions: drainage systems in a free-range set up are far more complex than for most cages.
And finally, providing food for a cham in a free-range environment in a way that the cham can find the food and obtain necessary nutrition is also a challenge in really large spaces.

Free-ranging a cham is certainly not the easy option. On the contrary, free-ranging is definitely a choice that is better suited to those who are quite experienced in chameleon-keeping.

To the OP: the links posted earlier are going to be your best bet for a Melleri setup. I also have always like this idea (though I'm not sure it is suited to Meller's): https://www.chameleonforums.com/open-air-enclosure-build-3076/
PS. I see the photos aren't available on that thread anymore. I'll see if I can PM SeanCJ and get him to upload them to this site. It was a really ambitious, but beautiful set-up.
 
Tygerr said:
I didn't have much time when I posted earlier, so I thought I better elaborate on why I thought that advice was bad...

Losing the cham and predatory cats are not even the biggest problems. The worst thing about that advice is that the chameleon will probably not have access to the things he needs most to survive: heat, UV, water and food.

Because of the term 'free-ranging', people tend to associate it with a laissez-faire attitude to chameleon keeping: that the cham is essentially unrestricted in its movements.
But that couldn't be further from the truth. Free-range habitats are very controlled environments that require a lot of thought and planning. Good ones are probably even better thought out than conventional enclosures.
Even without the constraints of a cage, a chameleon still needs access to heat and UV light. So the lighting setup in a free range environment has to be very carefully planned, so that chams have easy access to the lighting, but also so they can't actually get to the lights and injure themselves.
They also need water, and you can easily imagine how much design has to go into creating a watering system that not only meets the chams' humidty and hydration needs, but also doesn't cause severe flooding and general swamp-like conditions: drainage systems in a free-range set up are far more complex than for most cages.
And finally, providing food for a cham in a free-range environment in a way that the cham can find the food and obtain necessary nutrition is also a challenge in really large spaces.

Free-ranging a cham is certainly not the easy option. On the contrary, free-ranging is definitely a choice that is better suited to those who are quite experienced in chameleon-keeping.

To the OP: the links posted earlier are going to be your best bet for a Melleri setup. I also have always like this idea (though I'm not sure it is suited to Meller's): https://www.chameleonforums.com/open-air-enclosure-build-3076/
PS. I see the photos aren't available on that thread anymore. I'll see if I can PM SeanCJ and get him to upload them to this site. It was a really ambitious, but beautiful set-up.
Click to expand...


Don't worry Tygerr, I already understood all of that! This was a great post though, for anyone who wants to truely FREE range their chameleon!
It sounds as though Pashka was joking though.
Some photos of Mr. SeanCJ's set up would be much appreciated, as that is exactly what I am looking for! :D
 
It's not my favorite of the possibilities out there, but this is the ugly free-range I'm using. Pic taken after lights out.
DSC01928.jpg


That was the first day it was used, so I did not cut the drain hole in the back underside of the plastic yet. The entire front curb isn't done until that gets done, as I didn't know how much plastic would be needed. I let a day or two of mist drainage build up so I can cut the hole at the lowest point to ensure it will always drain all the way. A 5-gallon bucket for catching the waste was added when the hole was cut. Also, I rearranged the wires and timers.

The 2.5-g buckets in foreground are full of slip, used as weights on the lamp stand base. One 48" UVB and two heat spots, one 150w and one 75w, so they have choices. That's a 6' PVC folding table that was demoted to use with chams because its top was ruined by fiberglassing. It's inert. I hung green shadecloth for color along the wall, then hung the 6mil clear plastic. They hang from the same points, using wire threaded through the ceiling tile frame. Convenient! There are slanted risers under the plants that direct most of the mist water back to the drainage. Two kinds of humidifiers, but it's not hooked to an automatic watering mist system in this pic. I am in there all day, so it's easy to handwater them. The big green bucket in the pic was the food bucket, to get weight on them at the start. Now I handfeed them.

Total interior size: 8' tall (4' cham accessible) x 6' wide x 3' deep

Everything I build is modular and temporary. You never know when a better idea will strike, or if an animal's needs will change. I've actually used smaller free-ranges (a single tree), but not long-term. Babies should be caged. They are so delicate and easy to overlook in a big room.

One plus to a free-range is that you can get photos and video of their behavior, without mesh blocking your view. Opening a cage door is enough to spoil quiet moments.
restingheads.jpg
 
Kristina, thanks for the wonderful post. I really enjoy seeing different viable methods for keeping these giants! I love the last photograph it is truly AMAZING.
 
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I think it is so weird that everyone keeps talking about melleris having to be free-ranged or you'll have problems. Not that it's a bad idea because it's not but mine woudn't have anything to do with it. He was a w/c, but i'm sure alot of yours are too, but when we put him in the "enclosure" he seemed very nervous. We kept him there a few days to see if he would calm down and he just didn't seem happy at all. So we put him in another cage so we could reconfigure his and he loved it. If fact he is still in it and i have never had a problem with him rubbing his nose or anything. I've got lots and lots of greenery and really thick branches and i think he just feels really safe and secure in there. Go figure. I would love to try to free-range him but i don't know. Maybe i will just have to get another one!



Debby
 
That's great to hear that they can do well in an enclosure too :) Do you have any pics of the cage you have...(I can see the cham in your avatar:))
 
bucky said:
Chamlover,what are the dimensions of the cage, and id like to see a pic too:D
Click to expand...

I second that. If a 260 gallon reptarium would work for a meller's I may consider that as an option. Thats why I asked for enclosure ideas too!
 
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