Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Thanks you guys for your advice. But b4 I could tell Tony your advice, he went ahead and bought a pair (luckily, the guy at the pet store did say they came from two different breeders, and they were 2.5 months old). We put them in a 10 gallon cage with MANY plants and hides for them. The male is a beautiful turquoise, and the female is a grass-green usually. Never opened their mouths or hissed so far, and the girl fell asleep on my hand last night!!!

So he got them night b4 yesterday, and I don't know if either has eaten anything yet. We have pinheads, but... Today we are going to get fruitflies from Tony's mom (her sugar-glider is surrounded by them, and they eat excellently!) by an orange slice in a small plastic container... Any advice on making sure they eat?

I have the pinheads in a cup for them on the side of the cage (about 1.5" deep max, with some food in the bottom and a piece of wet paper towel. And we're ordering more pinheads tonight for them... we'll see what happens, I guess. But any ideas? and how do you hand-feed? I do have human-tweesers that I've used before with a sick iggy, but would that work with 1/4" crix? I'll put up pics soon.

Oh, and we are going to get those hanging mesh cylindrical cages for them when they are a month or so older and we don't run the risk of not being able to monitor them... Thanks alot everyone!

Buggzter
2:1 collared lizards
1:1 VEILED CHAMELEONS
1:0 fiances
0:1 toddlers

There's nothing you can do to "make sure" they eat other than providing the appropriate environment for them, appropriate size food source, and not stressing them out by too much direct(in their face) observation or handling. A stressed chameleon, especially a stressed baby, may not eat.
Simply keep a constant supply of food available for them during the day and they will eat when they are hungry and only when they feel comfortable enough in their new surroundings.
*Remove the crickets, even if in a feed bowl, at night. Even pinheads can significantly scar baby chameleons by chewing on them while they sleep.* Its happened many times.
Make sure they get plenty of water via a drip system or by misting them several times a day for several minutes.
Dehydration will do them in before lack of eating.
I would put two containers of food in the enclosure so they don't have to travel too far to 'find' the food. Make sure they can see the crickets/fruitflies from their perches. You can do this by placing the feed cup slightly below their favorite places to perch. Once they get comfortable and a bit bigger you can move the feed cup each feeding so that the chameleons have to 'exercise' to get to their food. Chameleons can become complacent and lazy and if the food is always in the same convenient spot, they will not move and therefore not get enough exercise.
But, for these babies, do all you can to make it easy for them.
Again, do not handle them too often. "Falling asleep" in your hand is not really a good thing for your baby. Its great for you and warms your heart, but its not a natural thing for these lizards, so I would not recommend this practice.
Good luck with them.

Ok, so we tried something again - put the two into a KritterKeeper with a fake plant and a dozen small crickets (1/4 or thereabouts) (and cat food for the crix), and at least one of the two ate because most of them were gone! We are thinking about maybe trying free-ranging the crickets and putting the two into a different home to sleep (lots of leafy stuff to hide in)... Any ideas/suggestions for this? They seem to be doing well right now, lots of exercize. I'm about to get things set up for silkworms too, or should I try mealworms instead (for breeding and feeding)? my collared lizards don't like mealworms one bit... Thanks everyone!

Buggzter

To me wax worms are better because they don't have the exoskeleton that the mealworms have which can be hard for them to digest and it might get stuck on the way out. It you are going to feed them wax worms or other things like that make sure the insects aren't too big because the little cham might bring it back up.
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Meg