New Babies Today

[Bonnie]

Hi, My name is Bonnie and this is my first post. I have been searching the internet for help! My Jacksons chameleon had babies this morning - 8 lived and 1 died - we desperately need advice on how to care for them! She was pregnant when we got her, and are fairly new chameleon owners. The mom is in a mesh cage and has been doing good but now acts very sluggish. We removed the babies and they are now in a 10 gal. aquarium with an additional wire topper that raises the length. We have paper towels on the bottom. We put one fake leafy vine in there they are climbing. We have no lamp on yet because the temp is about 72 degrees and unsure what watt to use. Also what should we do about feeding..wont bugs crawl out the top? Thank you for any help!

 

[roo_71]

Your setup sounds fine you should probably get a UVB bulb on them such as a zoomed reptisun 5.0. I am not sure about a basking bulb … I am not jax person but maybe a 25w bulb would be fine on one side of the tank, it wouldn’t hurt to have one end of the tank around 75-76 but that may be tough to do with a 10g tank … wait to hear some other opinions on that first.

You will need to get some pin head crickets (http://www.ghann.com/) and some fruit flies and yes the fruit flies will get out unless you put some finer mess on the top but some will get eaten too. The crickets won’t get out though. Make sure you mist them well a few times a day and try and keep the humidity high but at the same time give the enclosure time to dry out in between mistings. Feed the crickets out after you mist or else you will drown them. Also make sure you are gutloading the crickets properly with fruits/veggies and a good cricket gutload (http://www.cricketfood.com/).

This species is sensitive to over supplementation with vitamins so do some research on that however you should be giving them calcium on a regular basis …don’t quote me on that … again not a jax person so get other opinions.

-roo

 

[Pablo]

Hey, congrats on the babies, however there are some things you should change. First the babies should be housed in seperate containers so they cant see each. If they can see each other and are housed together they can get stressed out to the point of death. Next make sure to get some UVB light on them and on the mom as well if she does not have it. I would use a flourescent strip light for the babies so that way it wont put off hardly any heat and you dont have to worry about the babies getting too hot. As for the food i would recommend feeding fruit flies or the smallest pinhead crickets since the babies are so small. The fruit flies can get out so what you can do is get some thin fabric or smaller mesh and place it over the top of the container when you are feeding, that way they wont be able to escape. Make sure to watch them eat and once they are done take off the fabric and put the light back on. Also make sure that your adult is getting plenty of calcium since she just gave birth. Let me know of any other questions and good luck.

 

[jbfromsc80]

there is a great do it yourself baby cage setup made out of milk jugs on the screameleons website, hope this helps!!

http://screameleons.com/portal/alias__Screameleons/lang__en-US/tabID__3467/DesktopDefault.aspx