Mellers coloring

[chefbill]

My Mellers was brightly colored for about two days straight a beautiful bright green almost could not see his/her stripes this started the day before cleaning. Mel was drinking well and eating like a piggy 20 or more crickets per day almost thirty the next day. My crickets are gutloaded with the gutload recipe I found in one of the links here on the forum Julirs I believe with kale, beet greens, carrots and sweet potatoes. Poop was fine nice and white not runny. Thought maybe light bulb 90 watt might be to high switched to 76 and hung the UVB over both cages with a little more height. UVB is a coil 10 exo terra definately not the best choice for Chams I did read where it might cause eye damage but on the UVB site it seemed that the UVB level is less with exo coil bulbs than competitors reading so I just keep it higher up from the cage. I also have grow lights on each cage GE full sun. Today mel is back to normal coloring and in a good mood. Could these be breeding colors? Female?

 

[Carlton]

Check the coloration information on The Melleri Discovery. A bright green without contrasty yellow bars or black spotting is a relaxed color similar to sleeping colors (at least what I've seen in mine). Gravid coloration is more black, white, with little if any green. Reactions to heat or brighter light should show bright green with yellow bars too I think.

 

[Chameleons Northwest]

I would ditch the coil bulb.

About the colors- it is so difficult to know. All of our Meller's have displayed broad ranges of coloration from week to week and month to month.

We have 1.2 now. Two weeks ago the male and one of the "females" were sporting yellow and black male breeding coloration. They were both the exact same colors. So we started to think we must have 2.1 Meller's. Turns out they were breeding together (caught them in the act). Male and female. Why the female wore yellow and black, I don't know. Normal breeding color for a female is green on green, with little difference between the shades, almost a solid green color. Like you describe. She is now gravid coloration. Meller's are a very tricky chameleon for keepers.

So, like I said, they're very hard to read. The color change could mean anything...or nothing.

 

[Courtney]

a pastel version is also receptive...with melleri you never know....i miss my melleri that i rescued then traded for a female ambilobe..My melleri now lives in a large green house!!!!!