New Chameleon Owner

J0SHUM

New Member
Hello my name is Josh! I am 17 Years old and im Getting a Chameleon. So first i should say that this is NOT my first reptile/Amphibian(I know Chameleons arent Amphibians :p), i have had geckos and Snakes and Frogs. So im looking at getting a Chameleon. I have done Lots of research and became familiar with what i need to know to keep my chameleon living well! So what i have so far: i have Ordered a Heat/UVB lamp for my chameleon and i have Mealworms to feed my Chameleon, I also have a Large Ficus tree and a Pothos for my Chameleon. Me and my Dad have also Built a Cage for my Chameleon. It is 4'x3'x2' and it is Screen. I am ordering my Veiled Chameleon from LLLReptile and i am getting one that is "Medium" which is 7"-9", i am also ordering Vines for my chameleon and 500 Crickets as well as Supplement( Calcium with D3 and Calcium Without D3). I dont have a Dripper/Mister System i will jsut be Doing that part manually with a spray bottle/Cup dripping setup i made. Please let me know if i am doing this right and anything i should know. Thanks! -Josh
 
good research!

Remeber your tempature gradient and when the habitat is setup make sure you have shady hiding spots. Crickets are good but you need a good gut load. There are plenty of vids on youtube to make your own then just freeze it in a ice cube tray. Plus you need a few other feeder throughout the month like worms and roaches a variety is necessary. Now your vits are close to spot on. But you need a multi. I use herptive with d3 and one without phosphorus and a simple calc spray and you need to chart up a feeding dusting schedule. Good luck and welcome to the hobby
 
I would keep the meal worms as a treat only, they are certainly not the best feeder, harder to digest. I would say no more than one a day if that. You should look into switching to silkworms, a good variety would be crickets as the main staple with Dubai roaches, silkworms, horned worms, wax worms on occasion. We actual do not feed meal worms to our chameleons at all, only to our dragons and geckos, but that's simple by choice. Sounds like you guys are on a good start, calcium dust your feeders with D3 no more than twice a month, we use calcium on nearly ever feeding and use a multivitamin with D3 twice a month. Also make sure you create a good temperature gradient in your enclosure, our veiled seem to be happiest with a basking at mid 90's but at 6-7" You might want to look at 87-90 degrees and a cool area at 78-80 degrees, this is just what works for us, the care sheet on this site for the Veiled chameleon is what I would suggest you follow. Veileds can be feisty little buggers and they are so much fun, I absolutely love the feisty ones, the meaner the better, even our meanest ones are puppy dogs once they chill out. your certainly going to find a new found love, we keep and breed a slew of different reptiles species and by far the most rewarding and fun is our chameleons, that why we are the crazy ChamZoo, lol.
 
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you shouldnt use a ficus with veileds. They are known to munch on their plants and ficus's are toxic to them, not only that but when the branches break the sap in them irritate chameleon skin and is a ***** to get off. Make sure you have 2 thermometers and LOTS of branches EVERYWHERE. Put one thermometer at the top most branch (the basking spot) and one near the bottom. Ambient (near the bottom) should be around 75 degrees, the basking temp depends on the age/size of the chameleon you have. Check out the care sheet here
https://www.chameleonforums.com/care/caresheets/veiled/
This should help you out a lot with everything you need. Remember a vitamin chart will help out a lot. On most smartphones there is a calendar built in, Just set up reminders everday for plain calcium, 2 sundays a month for herptivite, and the other 2 sundays for calcium with d3. Those 4 sundays you do not need to dust with calcium as well. So basically every monday-saturday is plain calcium and sundays are the other vitamins. At least that is what worked for me. I set the reminder to go off at 9:30 every morning because my lights would come on at 9 in which that would give him time to wake up and move around and get him some water before feeding him.
Good luck with your new cham an hope everything works out well =)
 
We use hibiscus in all enclosures, both Veiled and Panther, the Veiled Chams eat the leaves, usually just the females though for what ever reason, but they seem to love them and have never had a problem. I have not heard of Ficus being poisonous for Chameleons, I know a lot of Cham owners use them, I have personally never used them and will look into that for sure. But our Veiled's do love the hibiscus. We are just starting to add Pothos to the enclosures for the first time, so still new to pothos myself.
 
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