Welcome! Congrats on the new cham! So,
So he’s a male veiled chameleon don’t know how old he is and he’s been in my cage for five days now and I handle him everyday for atleast a minimum of 20-30 minutes I didn’t wanna handle him to much the first couple days and then I feed him once in the morning and just see how much he eats and then again around 6-7 pm and I gutload my crickets with potatoes and tomatoes and fruits and I dust the food right before I feed it to him with calcium. I also have seen him drink I have a dripper and I must the cage usually 5-6 times a day and I have seen him drink. He’s never been tested for parasites but light brown feces with a little bit of white on it. He’s in a mesh cage that’s 16x16x30 and the cage is usually around 80-82 Fahrenheit and the basking spot reaches around 86-87 Fahrenheit and then at night it usually gets around 74-77 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m not using any live plants and I don’t have a device to measure humidity yet my last one broke. And the cage is in the kitchen near a window on a table up pretty high and there’s a air vent right by it. Geographically I live in the Midwest part of Georgia.
@PoseidonTheChameleon
Handling him so much will stress him out. Try and hold him significantly less. Maybe once a week. You want to feed him twice a day like you've been doing. Both times, as much as he can eat in a 30minute period. But try and feed him again in the afternoon (12-1pm) that way he has more time to bask and digest the food before lights go out.
Cut the tomatoes out of your gut-load immediately. I forget the exact reason why LOL but I know for a fact tomatoes are not a good gutload item. Potatoes are good for hydration. You want to add dandelion leaves, mustard greens, kale, Arugula, carrots, apples, cantaloupe, mango etc. to the feeders gutload diet. Keep away from food items like dog food that contain high levels of protein. This can lead to gout.
What type of calcium do you dust with. Do you have one with d3 and one without? Do you have an all-in-one dust item? Do you have multivitamin supplement? Need to know so we can establish a good dusting schedule for you, and recommend any missing products that you can use so your boy is getting everything he needs, artificially speaking.
How many feeder items do you feed him in a day? What size? Do you offer him variety? Crickets are a good staple. Personally I hate dealing with them. But they'e always a good staple to use. You might enjoy switching to Dubia Roaches and breeding your own colony of them so you don't have to spend so much on feeders in the future. It's really easy and dubia stink less, they don't jump or fly, and are a bit more nutritious for your chameleon if I remember correctly. The most nutritious item you can feed your cham is silkworms. If there's a more nutritious feeder than silkies, someone lmk where I can find them lol.
You'lll want to upgrade to a larger cage size soon in a couple months. Aim for the 48"x24"x24" jumbo sized ones.
Do you mist throughout the day? Have a humidity gauge? Digital? Thermometer? Ambient temp is too high. Basking temp should not exceed 85 degrees and you have the ambient at that temp. I can only imagine how hot it is under his light. This shortens life span over time for your chameleon so lower those ambient temps to the mid to low 70s and get the basking temp stable at his branch, reading 80-85 degrees and you're golden.
You will want to switch to all live plants that are safe for your veiled since they tend to eat leaf matter. It's been some time since I've had a veiled and I don't want to recommend ficus or an umbrella tree, or even Pothos due to them being moldy toxic when ingested. Could cause a real problem if your cham eats the leaves a lot. if not, you might be safe with these plants. Chameleon academy has a good full-on husbandry overview of everything you need to be successful. just navigate their site and answer your own questions lol (that might read rude but what I meant was, literally you probably won't need to ask us too many other husbandry questions after thoroughly studying that site and its modules).
You need a good Digital thermometer and hydrometer, amazon sells a 2-in-1.
https://www.amazon.com/Reptile-Ther...jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==
Several of these to test ambient temps at different levels of his cage, and one near where his basking branch is in the hottest spot so you can accurately gauge the temps and humidity levels in your Chams cage. that way you can make sure everything is stable or if you need to tweak some things around. Live plants will help with humidity and also allow him to hide from higher UVB levels higher up in the foliage at the top of the cage when he decides to thermoregulate. Which brings me to my next piece of advice:
Ditch the coil UVB bulb and get you a T5 Arcadia 6% (I believe) linear uvb bulb, and a good linear t5 fixture for it to go in. With the live plants you'll hopefully be adding you'll want to add some grow lights as well. I use 3 6500K t5 linear uvb bulbs that run directly on top and across the tops of my Chams cage. Plants are thriving. If you add a hibiscus indoors you'll wanna intensify the amount of light a bit more since they require so much direct sunlight. I believe the flowers of the hibiscus have some good nutrients in them for your cham like vitamin A in the form of beta carotene I believe.
My brains a bit foggy I'm sure I didn't touch on a lot.
