pygmy chameleon ..... keeping males together.

jojothefirst

New Member
I am aware that male pygmys should not be kept together, and I except that and don't do it.
Buuuuuuuut.
I'm just wondering why?
I assume they may fight but I can't find anything out about this.
So would like to here from people who have experience with this if possible rather than from other people assuming why as well.

The main reason I ask is because they are v hard to sex sometimes so I or others might have more than 1 male in together without realising. So what signs should I look out for?
 
They don't necessarily have to go at each other for it not to work. Just the presence of another male in sight stresses them out and they will try to intimidate one another so much that they'll be too stressed to do much else, like eat sometimes. And long term stress is not conducive to any long term health (as anyone with a crappy job will tell you ;)). I'd watch for them squaring off to each other with their 'party colors' on. That can be indicative of stressful situation with any gender combo. Or not eating, hiding all the time because one dominates the other.
 
It is true that that males can fight and cause each other stress. The only way around this that I know is to have a large tank, 30 gal or more, VERY heavily planted so the males don't have to see each other. Sexing pgymy's isn't too hard. For me I go off the shape of the body. Looking from the side males go pretty much straight back from the head, and have along tail, where as the females look much rounder on the top and have the shorter tail. Hope that helps.
 
Big enclosure and you're good. I kept two males in a 40 or 50 gallon tank and it was okay. One was obviously the 'alpha' pygmy but they never fought or even got dark. Sometimes they would bask together under a 15 watt lamp even though there were two different basking sites.
 
Cheers for the info guys.
When you say party colours, what do you meen? Iv had the male chasing 1 of the females and he's gone compleatly different colours to normal. But assumed that it was trying to attract her colors
 
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