Hello all, new here and to the world of Chams!
Bought a ambilobe last Monday and took advice from store with looking after and keeping my chameleon that the whole family have fallen in love with. But we want the best for her so after finding this forum we have a few questions!
We initially used a glass aquarium but after finding out how detrimental this would be we built a wooden and screen enclosure.
The store told us she needed 12hrs lights on and 12hr off but after the sale told us they only have the lights on from 9am-6pm!
And like clockwork she goes to 'bed' at 6pm and I'm trying to train her to get used to having the lights on until 8pm at least. Which leads to the next thing that even with the lights going on at 8am she's wont surface until midday- she's fully awake eyes open and alert but won't move even if food has been offered. Now in the large enclosure she is happy to climb up and down and loves exploring. Maybe the 2 moves in a week haven't helped but when she was in the aquarium she would hand feed and allowed my partner to pick her up by climbing onto his hand under her chin, now in the enclosure she won't hand feed which is annoying because she rarely sees it and we have to strategically place it until she does... And now walks away when we open the door to feed her and now is not tolerating us as she appeared to before.
We are also learning about diet, here in the UK we are feeding her locusts, again this is what we were told she would be fine on alone. We have the supplements to dust them with, but now we are reading about gut loading but no mention of locusts much. We asked so many questions at the store but wasn't told about all this so we have much to learn.
We are using compact bulbs 5.0 UVB and as we told the store we are using a wide glass tank we were worried that it wouldn't be enough so we were advised to use 2... (?!) we have moved her to a tall screen enclosure should we be using 2 ? still seems too much..
We were also told she eats 4 locusts a day but in the whole week we haven't been able to feed her more than 2 a day. She's 8 months old.
It's really cold here at the moment but maintain 80F using a infrared basking bulb 150w. We have the thermostat set at 86F. Temps range from 75-80 and at night are 60-70F humidity about 50% we are using 3 real plants from the safe plant list. Hand misting I'm doing 2/3 times a day. I'm using a spray bottle and wet all the plants and then spray one in particular and she comes over and drinks but not every time.
Wondered if anyone would be kind enough to suggest anything or high light why now she's happier in her new enclosure she's less happy about us!
Bought a ambilobe last Monday and took advice from store with looking after and keeping my chameleon that the whole family have fallen in love with. But we want the best for her so after finding this forum we have a few questions!
We initially used a glass aquarium but after finding out how detrimental this would be we built a wooden and screen enclosure.
The store told us she needed 12hrs lights on and 12hr off but after the sale told us they only have the lights on from 9am-6pm!
And like clockwork she goes to 'bed' at 6pm and I'm trying to train her to get used to having the lights on until 8pm at least. Which leads to the next thing that even with the lights going on at 8am she's wont surface until midday- she's fully awake eyes open and alert but won't move even if food has been offered. Now in the large enclosure she is happy to climb up and down and loves exploring. Maybe the 2 moves in a week haven't helped but when she was in the aquarium she would hand feed and allowed my partner to pick her up by climbing onto his hand under her chin, now in the enclosure she won't hand feed which is annoying because she rarely sees it and we have to strategically place it until she does... And now walks away when we open the door to feed her and now is not tolerating us as she appeared to before.
We are also learning about diet, here in the UK we are feeding her locusts, again this is what we were told she would be fine on alone. We have the supplements to dust them with, but now we are reading about gut loading but no mention of locusts much. We asked so many questions at the store but wasn't told about all this so we have much to learn.
We are using compact bulbs 5.0 UVB and as we told the store we are using a wide glass tank we were worried that it wouldn't be enough so we were advised to use 2... (?!) we have moved her to a tall screen enclosure should we be using 2 ? still seems too much..
We were also told she eats 4 locusts a day but in the whole week we haven't been able to feed her more than 2 a day. She's 8 months old.
It's really cold here at the moment but maintain 80F using a infrared basking bulb 150w. We have the thermostat set at 86F. Temps range from 75-80 and at night are 60-70F humidity about 50% we are using 3 real plants from the safe plant list. Hand misting I'm doing 2/3 times a day. I'm using a spray bottle and wet all the plants and then spray one in particular and she comes over and drinks but not every time.
Wondered if anyone would be kind enough to suggest anything or high light why now she's happier in her new enclosure she's less happy about us!
Im glad you have found us. This is a great community, you can learn alot of great stuff here. I will type things I have learned here, and think are appropriate in red.
