My new female panther chameleon and temporary habitat - what do you think?

ldarmo

Established Member
Hi everyone,

I'm pretty new to the forums. I'm excited to find so much great advice and experience here.

I'm a biologist with a fair amount of herp and tarantula experience, but not too experienced with chameleons. I've done a fair amount of lurking, research, and making a pest of myself before jumping into chameleon keeping.

I got this female panther chameleon from Nick at Canvas Chameleons about three weeks ago. I’m very pleased with her. She was hatched in February, so about 8 months old. What you see is a temporary habitat I put together, as I am getting a Dragon Strand Clearside Medium Atrium later this month. Any comments/suggestions about how she looks, or my setup? If this enclosure were a little wider and had more than top access I would love it.

Current habitat is 30” w x 12” d x 24” h, screened on 4 sides, front is glass, bottom is open (used to be glass) and set on a 12” deep planter box (Keter Urban Bloomer) organic potting soil and play sand. Live and artificial plants and vines. Arcadia 6.0 and daylight HO T5 and 50-watt basking bulb. 12-hour photoperiod. For now, manual misting 4x per day and little dripper at least 2x per day. I have a Mist King for the permanent cage. Crickets dusted with RepCal (no D3 or Phosphorus) every feeding, 6 days a week. Repashy Calcium Plus every two weeks, Herptivite every two weeks. Once I have feeder cups, I will have a greater variety of insects to offer.

I want to be sure I can provide for a chameleon in the right size habitat before getting another. What do you think, so far? Looking for any input so I can do better.
 

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Looks good and welcome to the forums. Cannot wait to see the final cage. Be warned that once the "temp" cage is empty you may be tempted to put a new Cham in there. This hobby is addictive.
I'm already thinking about more! But I want to be sure I can give proper care to the one, first. I do have four eggs from Matt Vanilla Gorilla incubating. :) I work at a company where I have access to all kinds of feeders. I am fortunate to have a pretty spacious office where it is not a problem to keep my tarantula collection, aquariums and now a chameleon.

I would really be interested in trying to keep some of the pygmy chameleons in the future, but don't know anyone breeding and need to do more research on their requirements.
 
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