setup suggestions

[SimonTheCham]

anybody have any suggestions on how to make my cham feel te safest in her cage? we have this now, and were 90% positive light brown if hernaural color until she gets older. we have the dripper running from 7am-10pm, and we feed her medium crix w/out cup and shes eating and drinking just fine. she is usually wet from the dripper though... is that ok? sometimes the water sits on her head and eye. anyways, suggestions welcome! also we have he dripper running into a large plant on the right (you can also see Zoe ) but it still pools up on the bottom of the cage. any diys or products would be AMAZING

 

[zanethan]

The sky's the limit! I made a custom enclosure as have others. You might want to add a pothos for extra cover. They're about $10 at any garden store. Is your Cham wet because they sit under the dripper? Is it right under the basking bulb. If so you might want to move it.

 

[Juliaf3]

I would add some more horizontal branches and a couple vertically connecting them to the horizontal ones, then buy some fake pothos vine (can be found at petsmart) and wrap it around some of the branches- that would fill that middle area in nicely! also- you have rocks over your soil in the potted plant right?


As for the pooling area- I would not let your dripper run into the plant. That's going to be too much water. What kind of Cham do you have? If it were me, I'd take that plant out altogether. I have a schefflera in my cage. It's hung. I actually have nothing on the bottoms of both of my chameleons cages. I hang all their live plants. As for drainage- I built a stand for my cages. It was surprisingly simple, and put a plastic container under the cage. Once I had the stand built- I took the plastic that came at the bottom off cage, and cut a large square out of it. Leaving about and inch or two of the plastic on every side. Flipped it over, and hot glued screen to it. It's working great! I'm still able to removed the bottom and clean this way- versus permanently making the bottom screen. That would be so difficult to clean properly if I couldnt remove it. I'll go grab a couple pictures for reference in Case you like this idea

 

[Juliaf3]

This picture was side ways so let me try again

 

[Juliaf3]

Here's an example of how to beef up that middle area. Just lots of sticks - when you think you've put enough, add two more. Then just some fake pothos vine wrapped around some of the sticks. There's also a live schefflera in there

 

[Juliaf3]

The stand with container underneath. I used treated wood.

 

[Juliaf3]

Here is my other cage. I'm still working on this one. Going to add about 4-5 more sticks and another fake pothos vine. You can see the sticks better in this one, because I haven't added the vine yet.





Anyway, I hope these pictures were helpful! Congrats on the Cham!