Hey guys,
I joined this forum a few weeks ago and have been trying to learn as much as I can about Chams. I will probably be purchasing one here shortly and I want some honest opinions on:
1) How labor intensive are Chams really? (Well I'll tell you my schedule. I've simplified it the best I can but it still has some tweaking since I just got my cam 2 1/2 weeks ago. I live in California, work from 3 p.m. to about 1 a.m. come home cook dinner, fall asleep around 3 or 4 a.m. Then I wake up every morning at 7 a.m. Take about 8 crickets that I keep in a separate bin to gutload for 24 hours and feed them to willow along with 3 silk worms and 1 or 2 superworms. Then I wait about 30min for him to finish eating and then I mist his cage for about 5 min. Go back to bed, wake up around noon, make sure he's all good and mist his cage again, then one more time at about 2:45 before I go to work. Everyday I do this. I also make sure to check is poop so that I know if he's getting enough water cause I know the pig is eating enough. I replace his towel under his cage with a more dryer one even though it doesn't get that wet with the drainage I have. Clean out all the dead crickets when I come home for lunch, which is lights out for him. Then I make sure to give his cage a good cleaning once a week along with the cricket bin.
2) Is free ranging difficult? Do you mean his food or the Chameleon Itself. As for the Cham I wouldn't recommend it. In the food department for me it wasn't difficult, I got my Veiled Cham from Mike at FLChams and he free ranges all of his Chams so for me it was the best way to go right off the bat. Willow took a look at his feeder cup the first day and said nope so I quickly got rid of it, he really likes to hunt for his food.
3) Can you have dogs with Chams or will the dog spook them too much? No way, no cats, dogs, bunnies, gerbals, bats, or even other Chameleon's. Chameleon's are high stressed when it comes to them seeing something bigger than them that could possibly devour them for a snack. Now that doesn't mean you can't have any other animals, just as long as they aren't in the same room as the Chameleon. You want to keep your Cham in a low traffic environment.
4) How much should you really hold your Cham? In the 2 1/2 weeks I've had Willow, I've held him maybe 3 times and for no longer than 30 seconds. I really try to not hold him as much as I can. He's extremely territorial and does not like anything in his cage but his food.
5) What are some of the things you guys regretted after purchasing your Cham? I would have to say, not thinking of a better drainage system before hand. At first I used the towel method, I found with a dripper running 12 hours a day that was a horrible mess. So what I did was take a small rubbermaid food container, about 1 inch in height, placed it right side up on top of another container. Drilled a hole in the bottom and placed a 1/8" tubing in it that leads out of the cage and drains into a bucket. With this setup I only have to replace the towel once every couple of weeks instead of a soaking wet towel every day. My dripper hangs right over my Shefflera and the water falls from the leaves right into the pot which goes right into the container then down the hole, into the tube and out the bucket. It's a very simple setup but it works and keeps everything else dry which makes me a happy camper. Other than that I don't regret anything. I did 4 months of research for about 2-3 hours a day before I got Willow so I felt really comfortable with everything when I got him and even until now I can sense whats wrong with him and why from all the reading. I noticed today he wasn't as hungry as usual so I figured maybe he was due for another shed. Sure enough when I got home for lunch he was showing his light colors which he did about 15 hours before his last shed 1 week, 1 hour after he arrived. So if you do enough research, read everything you can, especially the information on the forums here than you should be prepared enough in time.
Thanks!
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