Plant Dilemma

[racerfreak]

Here is my dilemma. My baby panther chameleon is coming in 2 weeks. I bought a Arboricola Trinette (gold umbrella plant) at Home Depot. Well it turned out to be 5 plants or stems with roots. It seems to be in pretty crappy condition as I have removed about half the leaves due to mold or death. It was the healthiest I could find. It is coming back to life but I feel it needs a year to get back to health. IDK if it is in good enough condition and I'm considering buying a fake tree at Michaels, as I have a 50% off coupon for next week.

 

[brooklynelizabeth]

Here is my dilemma. My baby panther chameleon is coming in 2 weeks. I bought a Arboricola Trinette (gold umbrella plant) at Home Depot. Well it turned out to be 5 plants or stems with roots. It seems to be in pretty crappy condition as I have removed about half the leaves due to mold or death. It was the healthiest I could find. It is coming back to life but I feel it needs a year to get back to health. IDK if it is in good enough condition and I'm considering buying a fake tree at Michaels, as I have a 50% off coupon for next week.

next time always rinse the plant off with a hose outside, and then let it get some real light exposure for a few days, but bring it in at night, unless the climate in your area is sufficient. The unfortunate part about Umbrella trees are the fact that they are usually pretty expensive (for a decent size one). You should try hanging some pothos and streaming them throughout the cage. a decent size one usually only runs around $10 and the vines are quick adapters and growers. If your Umbrella is producing mold its most likely picked it up at the store it came from, and it would be bad to introduce that into the chameleons enclosure, being as you will be misting often and depending on the basking light to dry things up, being as you said you are getting a panther in a few weeks it must be a baby, so you might not have a basking light (or if you do it will be a very low output basking light) so mold will be able to grow and spread, and that would be no good for the air quality. So it looks like your out of luck with that umbrella plant, but try a wallmart, lowes or other green house type store and see if you can find another suitable live plant. Fake plants work, but always hold the risk of being eaten and causing issues.