screen cage

owowsedthecow

New Member
so i just recently purchased a huge 4ft tall cage. i have yet to get a chameleon but when the time comes ill be purchasing a baby panther. so as you know a 4ft cage is entirely too big for a baby ...so my question is does anyone have any good ideas on how to make a seperate smaller upper level to keep him for the mean time?!?! ...any suggestions appreciated. =)
 
so i just recently purchased a huge 4ft tall cage. i have yet to get a chameleon but when the time comes ill be purchasing a baby panther. so as you know a 4ft cage is entirely too big for a baby ...so my question is does anyone have any good ideas on how to make a seperate smaller upper level to keep him for the mean time?!?! ...any suggestions appreciated. =)

Actually keeping him in his adult cage already would be fine as long as you cup feed him, so he is able to find his food.

You can also just raise the pvc base tray to make the cage smaller...
 
You know thanks for posting this, I've been pondering on the same thing.
I have a 100 gallon flexarium all set up with plants and stuff, originally anticipating getting an older, or at least not very young baby. But now I've been thinking maybe baby, so I've been wondering about how to deal with setting up a baby cage inside the big cage. My original thought was to just buy a smaller cage and prop it up on a footstool or something to boost it up inside the flexarium. Then I could utilize the existing plants in the big one to retain humidity and provide some privacy around the outside of the smaller baby cage. The outer outer cage would help hold humidity in too.
The problem I saw with that is that then the lights have to work through TWO screens to get to the cham.
Maybe a stronger uvb bulb would be in order in this case??
But anyways, then I started thinking like you, how could I just kind of block off the bottom half? I thought of just propping stuff up so the plants are higher, but if not sort of solid, won't the bugs just crawl down to the bottom half?
Like I thought about some sort of plastic shelving system, you know sometimes you can just stack several short ones? then if they were like a slotted (or with holes in it) kind, you could kind of fasten some screen or net type material over it to try and keep the crickets in the top half better. Then put a drainage pan rubbermaid thingy or whatever underneath like on the second shelf? To catch the majority of the water from misting. A lot of people do something along those lines outside their cage, underneath it, I'm just kind of incorporating that idea on the inside.
I would say just put a bin with screen over it on a shelf but then you wouldn't want to place your plant pots on it, cause then you'd have to move all those wet plants every time you had to empty the bin, and unfasten the screen from the bin to scrub it, and all that stuff. It would especially suck to have to move the plants if the chameleon happened to be perching on that one at the time.
Obviously it's not totally bug-proof, but well you could just reach down to the bottom periodically and scoop up the strays and plop them back up in topsville.
I haven't entirely thought any of this through, lol, and I'm really really handicapped in the craftiness department. But those were the types of ideas I was coming up with.
Anyways, heckle away crafty pro's! We're both looking for better (but in my case only requiring the tool-using skills of a 5 year old!) ideas for this situation. :D
- Melissa
 
won't the bugs just crawl down to the bottom half?

In the time I have had keeping chameleons, bugs such as crickets or roaches always gather in the top corners/edges of the cage. Ive found it's pretty rare to see feeders that will stay in the lower half of the cage.
 
With a screen cage it should be pretty easy to put "supports" in the wire all around and then relocate the bottom, as Michael Ryan suggests.

I did want to mention something on the feeders staying at the top. I'd sort of thought that was a given but recently I got a bunch of black crickets at the reptile store. I found them scary and won't use them again, but I noticed that they spent a lot of time on the bottom. I only mention it because it's possible that in some areas the new black crickets are more common.
 
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