Hi

I've kept a lot of snakes over the years, but am buying my first chameleon in a couple of months-and I know they're a totally different ballgame! Obviously, I've bought a lot of books and done some internet reseach-but there are contradictions which have left me somewhat confused. Does my basic set up (below) sound OK?

Cage: Mesh-2ftX2ftX4ft. Containing live hibiscus (with sterilised soil)and some artificial plants/vines/perches.

Temp: Incandescent bulb placed outside of cage provides a hot spot on perches of 90 degrees. The ambient temperature in the reptile room varies between 70 and 75 degrees in the daytime with a 5-10 degree drop at night.

Humidity: A dripper system, dripping onto leaves of plants provides drinking water. I am also planning to spray cage (not chameleon) twice daily, as I suspect the mesh cage is going to be a nightmare humidity wise. Is this too much spraying?

Full spectrum lighting is to be used.

Diet: I will get as much variety in as I can and will try fruit and veg as well as insects. However, I suspect that the majority of the diet will be crickets. Supplementation sounds a bit tricky. I am planning to gut load the crickets with veg and 'vit-all' and dust the crickets with 'miner-all 1'. Are these supplements ok? Miner-all 0 is designed for animals kept outside and miner-all 1 is designed for animals kept inside. I've gone for miner-all 1 because the full spectrum lighting will not be anywhere near as intense as sunlight would be. But could this result in an overload of vitamin D3? How frequenty should I dust the crickets? Some authors suggest dusting at every feeding, whereas others at the opposite extreme suggest not more than once weekly. It seems to be a fine balance between vitamin deficiency and vitamin overload and I'm worried that i'm going to get this totally wrong-so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry about the length of this post-just wanting to check everything's basically OK

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Josie

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Hide Replies ]