What Kind Of Screen????????
- Thread starter rcagosto
- Start date
roo_71
New Member
I like PVC/Vinyl coated hardware cloth from Home Depot. It’s heat resistant and the coating makes it easier on the chams feet – VERY durable stuff too. Super easy to staple onto the wood using a heavy duty staple gun with stainless steel staples. However the hole/mesh sizes it comes in can easily allow for escapees for many feeders such as crickets. So I can free range feeders such as silk worm and horn worms but have to cup feed others.
Others things to consider are “pet cloth” from Lowes which is heavy duty window screening which is similar to a reptarium AND unfortunately can block a fair amount of UV from the bulb (don’t know about heat resistance). Or you go with the typical aluminum or plastic/fiber glass mesh which IMO is easy to damage and a pain to work with.
I really like the hardware cloth and I know many people frown upon cup feeding b/c of the potential “lazy tongue” effect but if you position the cup/feeder jug correctly you can force the cham to make a long distance strike and keep the tongue healthy. Free ranging the silks and other feeders also accommodates the chams need to hunt.
Here is a pic of my veileds cage with .5" coated hardware cloth ...
-roo
Others things to consider are “pet cloth” from Lowes which is heavy duty window screening which is similar to a reptarium AND unfortunately can block a fair amount of UV from the bulb (don’t know about heat resistance). Or you go with the typical aluminum or plastic/fiber glass mesh which IMO is easy to damage and a pain to work with.
I really like the hardware cloth and I know many people frown upon cup feeding b/c of the potential “lazy tongue” effect but if you position the cup/feeder jug correctly you can force the cham to make a long distance strike and keep the tongue healthy. Free ranging the silks and other feeders also accommodates the chams need to hunt.
Here is a pic of my veileds cage with .5" coated hardware cloth ...
-roo
FaunaBgirl
New Member
Hey roo..... I was checking out your set up... and wondered why the mister and the humidfier has blue solution in them? What's the dimensions of your cage? And what are all the buckets underneath doing. I only have one bucket underneath the catch runoff from the stainless steel bowl (with center hole). My cage is all mesh and sits on the steel bowl. I made the Bill Strand open feeder for my guy that I read about in this forum.
roo_71
New Member
The water isn’t blue, it’s just the reservoir for the humidifier that’s blue and it has nothing to do with the mist system. From the humidifier the mist goes through that blue pool hose into a PVC structure that sits on top of the cage - it has small holes throughout it. The humidifier is on a timer and when it goes on the mist comes out the small holes in the PVC and into the cage.
Checkout this article (and the whole site while you are at it) for directions: http://www.chameleonnews.com/humidifier.html
The two buckets below: one is the reservoir for the mist system's water and the other collects the run-off from the mist system. If you look at the front right underside of the cage you will see a little yellow funnel and a tube that leads into the drainage bucket. Under the cage, in the center is another funnel that collects water from the center of the cage. I put the yellow funnel in after I figured out where water wanted to pool in the cage but water still goes out the center blue funnel so that wasn’t for nothing.
Just above each funnel, I used a hole saw to cut out an appropriately sized hole out of the plastic cage bottom for each funnel and glued some aluminum window screen to keep debris and feeders from getting out of the cage. It’s rock solid and that cage was built over 2 years ago and still hasn’t leaked (knock on wood).
I know the cage is 4’ tall roughly 30” deep and I think just under 4’ wide.
-roo
Checkout this article (and the whole site while you are at it) for directions: http://www.chameleonnews.com/humidifier.html
The two buckets below: one is the reservoir for the mist system's water and the other collects the run-off from the mist system. If you look at the front right underside of the cage you will see a little yellow funnel and a tube that leads into the drainage bucket. Under the cage, in the center is another funnel that collects water from the center of the cage. I put the yellow funnel in after I figured out where water wanted to pool in the cage but water still goes out the center blue funnel so that wasn’t for nothing.
Just above each funnel, I used a hole saw to cut out an appropriately sized hole out of the plastic cage bottom for each funnel and glued some aluminum window screen to keep debris and feeders from getting out of the cage. It’s rock solid and that cage was built over 2 years ago and still hasn’t leaked (knock on wood).
I know the cage is 4’ tall roughly 30” deep and I think just under 4’ wide.
-roo
