Need help with Food options in Hawaii

[Leviathan770]

I am new to Jackson chameleons in Hawaii. I didn’t realize how scarce the food option was. Crickets and meal worms is basically all that’s available. I need hawaii Chameleon owners to point me in the right direction. Im currently gut-loading crickets, but they’re pretty expensive if I want to feed 3 Jacksons. Im looking for somewhere on Oahu where I can buy me some chunky worms (like hornworms or silk worms). Shipping worms here is illegal.

 

[MissSkittles]

Hi and welcome! I’m not in Hawaii, but can offer some suggestions that I’ve gotten from other’s posts in the past. I guess you have quite a good amount of native insects. Some have suggested catching wild grasshoppers and roaches and starting to breed them. I see that Surinam roaches are native there. Those are quick to breed and are smaller sized. They are fast and very good climbers, so you’ll need a bin with a gasket lid and smear something like Vaseline a couple of inches before the top to keep them contained. They like to burrow in soil so it’s best to give them a couple of inches of soil substrate. Here’s a bit of info on them. https://www.roachcrossing.com/for-sale/roach/all/surinam-roach/
I don’t know how to breed grasshoppers, but other members can probably help you out with that. @SauceGandhi breeds/sells grasshoppers and maybe can offer you basic instruction.
From previous posts, you can probably obtain silkworms or their eggs. Some mentioned Petland Kahala, but those posts were over a decade old. Since silkworms basically can’t survive/reproduce without human intervention, they should be legal.
If you can find some hornworms in someone’s garden, you can let them mature into chrysalis - hawk moths and then breed your own hornworms. Unfortunately the wild diet of hornworms makes them toxic and is why you can only breed them and not feed them off as is.
Even if all of these feeders were as available to you as a trip to a pet store, it does get expensive feeding 3 little hungry mouths. Breeding your own feeders - even crickets - is a great way to keep costs down and brings a strange satisfaction that’s kind of fun and interesting. The how to’s are readily available all over - I like YouTubes how to’s.

 

[jamest0o0]

Great advice above^ I’d see if you can breed something you can find there locally, whether it’s catching tropical roaches/grasshoppers/crickets/beetles/etc or buying stuff at the store. Surinam roaches are probably the easiest roaches to breed given some deep moist substrate and a little heat. They’re also soft and small, good for Jackson’s that do better with smaller sized feeders(temporal glands prone to infection from larger feeders). They do climb once numbers get high and tend to get everywhere that there is soil, but if they’re native you probably have them all over the place already(in soil, they won’t be running around your house).

It might be fun to find some other unique native critters and try your hand at breeding them. If you do, post here and maybe we can try to figure out how to breed them if possible… there’s also invert forums and groups out there that know a lot about breeding random things you wouldn’t normally see.

For the time being, crickets and mealworms are fine…. Give them some excellent food on a regular basis and they should be fairly healthy.

 

[HawaiiChameleions]

I am new to Jackson chameleons in Hawaii. I didn’t realize how scarce the food option was. Crickets and meal worms is basically all that’s available. I need hawaii Chameleon owners to point me in the right direction. Im currently gut-loading crickets, but they’re pretty expensive if I want to feed 3 Jacksons. Im looking for somewhere on Oahu where I can buy me some chunky worms (like hornworms or silk worms). Shipping worms here is illegal.

I’m new to this app so forgive me if I’m doing anything wrong but if there’s anybody reading this that is on the island of Maui I am selling Surinam roaches on Craigslist. I had the same problem with my chameleon and I had to sell him. But that was around a year ago and ever since then I’ve been breeding roaches and I’m finally ready to start selling! Just go on Craigslist and search up “feeder roach” or “chameleon” and mines is “pesticide free reptile feeder roaches” if anyone is interested!!