Fawnmisty
Member
Hello,
We have a female panther cham that we hatched in January. She is thriving and happy, but small!!!! Like REALLY small. At birth the breeder that we got the egg from told us to keep her in a rubbermaid tub. It was about 15"wide by 12" tall by 20" long (this is a guesstimate). Also he told us to feed it flightless fruit flies for a few months and not to handle her. We followed his rules to a "T". We had a 5.0uvb clamp light, also I do not recall the wattage of heat lamp at this time but it was specifically what he provided. He provided everything with the egg. So we followed all of his instructions with the exception of the D3 and vitamins he gave me a list for that to get on my own. Everything else we received as a package deal with the egg. Our girl hatched January 24, 2019. It was a very stressful situation as it hatched later than expected and we were really scared we did something wrong. Once she came out everything was perfect. She was perfect.
About 3 months in she seemed like the fruit flies just weren't enough so we went to the local reptile store here where we live and they gave us soldier fly larva and pinheads. She loved the pinheads, refused the soldier flies. All was going well but she didn't seem to grow as big as others that we were seeing in the reptile store. The man who we dealt with there asked us to bring in photos of everything we had, and he told us we needed to change the set up even though the breeder told us not to do it yet as per the handout we were given. We felt more confident with the reptile expert in the store because he had really started helping us and was just as concerned with her size as we were. I had contacted the breeder multiple times, he offered to come by and look at the set up and see what was going on and then backed out last min. Which made us lose confidence in him.
As recommended by the local reptile store we switched out her cage first off. Moved her into a Reptibreeze medium, got the zoomed hood lamp set up, got a humidity gage and temp gage. Switched to a stronger heat lamp and provided a better basking area. She was thriving and so happy. This was from April 2019- current. She is still happy, and thriving and the vet (reptile store again recommended the vet) says she is just small. I am having a hard time believing that. We really LOVE her. She doesn't get handled much because the breeder told us not to handle her too much to stress her out. We are trying our best to keep her happy.
Here is her current set up, daily routine etc. Can anyone offer any advice? If she is just small that is ok. As long as we aren't making a mistake, I can live with small.
Reptibreeze Med enclosure lights on 12 hours and off 12 hours
Humidity between 70-80% at night when lights are off drops to 65% roughly- Temp is roughly 65 degrees throughout and 75 at basking spot, which is about 10" below lights
Eating roughly 10 small crickets a day
Large pee and Poops
We mist her ourselves 3 times a day Morning, afternoon, night- We have the reptirain (the auto mister), but it seems to keep things too wet even on the lowest setting felt like she was getting over watered. Oh distilled only water breeder said no tap water.
I use the D3 to dust crickets and gutload them on a cricket food that I got at the local reptile store. Smells like apples, you mix powder with a little water and microwave until it becomes gel like and then cool down to feed to crickets.
Here is a mistake I made, I accidentally bought multivitamin without d3 and the first few months in addition to the Vitabugs fruitflies that she was eating she was getting multi vitamin dust instead of d3. I have since corrected this about 3-4 months ago.
What am I doing wrong? She is the happiest little girl. Just LITTLE! I hope that I provided all the information. I have attached a few photos. She loves to explore. One is of her with my son. He is a 12 year old. So you can see the size difference. This is during a cage cleaning. So we do handle her when we take her cage out and clean it. I can't find a pic with the whole cage for some reason. I will keep looking and attach later if I find it.
We have a female panther cham that we hatched in January. She is thriving and happy, but small!!!! Like REALLY small. At birth the breeder that we got the egg from told us to keep her in a rubbermaid tub. It was about 15"wide by 12" tall by 20" long (this is a guesstimate). Also he told us to feed it flightless fruit flies for a few months and not to handle her. We followed his rules to a "T". We had a 5.0uvb clamp light, also I do not recall the wattage of heat lamp at this time but it was specifically what he provided. He provided everything with the egg. So we followed all of his instructions with the exception of the D3 and vitamins he gave me a list for that to get on my own. Everything else we received as a package deal with the egg. Our girl hatched January 24, 2019. It was a very stressful situation as it hatched later than expected and we were really scared we did something wrong. Once she came out everything was perfect. She was perfect.
About 3 months in she seemed like the fruit flies just weren't enough so we went to the local reptile store here where we live and they gave us soldier fly larva and pinheads. She loved the pinheads, refused the soldier flies. All was going well but she didn't seem to grow as big as others that we were seeing in the reptile store. The man who we dealt with there asked us to bring in photos of everything we had, and he told us we needed to change the set up even though the breeder told us not to do it yet as per the handout we were given. We felt more confident with the reptile expert in the store because he had really started helping us and was just as concerned with her size as we were. I had contacted the breeder multiple times, he offered to come by and look at the set up and see what was going on and then backed out last min. Which made us lose confidence in him.
As recommended by the local reptile store we switched out her cage first off. Moved her into a Reptibreeze medium, got the zoomed hood lamp set up, got a humidity gage and temp gage. Switched to a stronger heat lamp and provided a better basking area. She was thriving and so happy. This was from April 2019- current. She is still happy, and thriving and the vet (reptile store again recommended the vet) says she is just small. I am having a hard time believing that. We really LOVE her. She doesn't get handled much because the breeder told us not to handle her too much to stress her out. We are trying our best to keep her happy.
Here is her current set up, daily routine etc. Can anyone offer any advice? If she is just small that is ok. As long as we aren't making a mistake, I can live with small.
Reptibreeze Med enclosure lights on 12 hours and off 12 hours
Humidity between 70-80% at night when lights are off drops to 65% roughly- Temp is roughly 65 degrees throughout and 75 at basking spot, which is about 10" below lights
Eating roughly 10 small crickets a day
Large pee and Poops
We mist her ourselves 3 times a day Morning, afternoon, night- We have the reptirain (the auto mister), but it seems to keep things too wet even on the lowest setting felt like she was getting over watered. Oh distilled only water breeder said no tap water.
I use the D3 to dust crickets and gutload them on a cricket food that I got at the local reptile store. Smells like apples, you mix powder with a little water and microwave until it becomes gel like and then cool down to feed to crickets.
Here is a mistake I made, I accidentally bought multivitamin without d3 and the first few months in addition to the Vitabugs fruitflies that she was eating she was getting multi vitamin dust instead of d3. I have since corrected this about 3-4 months ago.
What am I doing wrong? She is the happiest little girl. Just LITTLE! I hope that I provided all the information. I have attached a few photos. She loves to explore. One is of her with my son. He is a 12 year old. So you can see the size difference. This is during a cage cleaning. So we do handle her when we take her cage out and clean it. I can't find a pic with the whole cage for some reason. I will keep looking and attach later if I find it.