flap neck not drinking

[elementary pet dream]

Flap neck Chameleon. Baby. Few months. 4? It became part of my life for a month now.
I handle it every day to every two days for 15 minutes max
I feed it meal worms, usually two worms per day, three if it eats fasts. Pet store has been feeding it crickets.
I add REPASHY SuperCal LoD to the soil where meal worms live, I give broccoli leaves and lettuce to the worms to keep them alive until eaten.
I bought a dripper from the pet store. I mist once a day. For the first week, it shoots its tongue to the dripping tube. But for past few weeks, I don’t see it drink at all. Two days ago, it climbed up to dripper, opened its mouth, but for some reason, it is too dumb to catch the water drops. Always a few ml away.
Droppings could be whiter. But looks healthy. Once a week.
Cage is black screen.
Lightings are heat lamp and UV, 12 hours on 12 hours off
Temp 25C
Humidity 20% usually, 24% after misting
Cage is on floor, beside my work desk. I open the window when sunny out.
I live in Calgary Alberta Canada.
PROBLEM how much water should my flap-neck drink? When I try to feed it water, it doesn’t open its mouth. But if, rarely, a drop of water sticks to its mouth, it would then drink it. It doesn’t licks off the fake leaves. Matters not how much I drip, it is just not drinking!! I am worried mad. Sometimes it chills nears the wet leaf, but NEVER consume water off it.

 

[Devokid]

I am not an expert on Flaps, but the one that I had would not drink in front of me very often. Kinda like a Veiled. As long as its urates are white and his eyes are not sunken, you should be good.

However, I would stop feeding him so many meal worms. They are not very good for him and should be used more as a snack than a staple. Crickets are better as well as silk worms, horn worms, and roaches, but I know that some of those (maybe all) are illegal for you to have up there. Additionally, 2 or 3 worms sounds like way too little for him to be eating. My little guys would put down 10~15 roaches/crickets.

Also, I would check your humidity gauge. It seems crazy low. 20% is less than the ambient humidity here in the high desert. If it really is that low, I would add some live plants to bring it up a little bit. (Man, that feels weird to say)

 

[Devokid]

One last thing, I would add a tube style florescent UVB bulb. A reptisun 5.0 would be perfect. I have found them to be much more useful than the coiled UVB bulb.

 

[elementary pet dream]

THanks, DevoKid

I just switched to phoenix worm, they r really expensive...
reason I am not feeding crickets is that the baby ones always get out of the screen cage and jump on my bed, I would hate to take them each out and remove their hind legs

also, after shedding my flap had never turn green again, it's always yellow even when during its sleep @_@

 

[jannb]

Welcome to the forums. Your humidity is very low. I use a humidifier for my graceful. I also recommend a large variety of well gutloaded feeders. I do not recommend broccoli for gut loading and lettuce doesn't have allot of nutritional value either. I would highly recommend longer mistings and drippings to get him to drink. Sometimes you have to mist for a very long time to get them in the mood to drink and then for along time while they drink. After a long misting I move the dripper hose right over my graceful's head and he will sit and drink for a long time. Below is my blog for new keepers. It has some good gut loading tips.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/blo...-keepers-young-veiled-panther-chameleons.html

Here's another good care sheet:
https://www.chameleonforums.com/care/caresheets/senegal/