Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, I have an all screen cage I bought about 2-3 years ago.I originally bought it for a crested gecko but never got around to getting one. The cage still has all the furnishings I bought with it. I was just wondering if it would be big enough to house a baby veiled? The dimensions are 20H X 12W X 18W. Heres 2 pics for you.

Yes, it's big enough.

Most people say that you need a 2x2x3' cage for an adult female, 2x2x4 for a male.

But then I've heard 2 or three places that a decade or so ago (I can't remember all the details) that most breeders used 2x2x2 for adults successfully (maybe even smaller!) without the adults being stressed.

I would ALWAYS go for the bigger cage. An adult human could live in a room that's 6'x6'x6' easily, but we'd go nuts! Even with a 15x15x15' room, if that's all we had we'd likely still go nuts without tons of stuff to do within it.... In the same way, a cham needs space to do what he needs to do.

A cham needs to thermoregulate - that means enough space to have the mid-70's in one part of the tank and 90's in another. Plus hiding space, plus room for feeders and water.

your cage will work until the cham is likely 6 months old - maybe less, maybe a touch more. But that's only 3-4 months of you owning it. Most pet stores have babies that are 2-3 months old. One I know of has neonates about 3-4 weeks old, tho I wouldn't buy one at that age if it were anything more than $20 (so likely to die from stress). So 5 months if you're lucky - that's how long the cage will be used.

Or you can find a smaller species that you can provide proper temps and humidity for, that can live in such a cage for it's whole life. Veileds are about the easiest chams, tho. Good luck!

I don't think its big enough for any of the commonly available chams once they are adult. It will be hard to provide the range of temps and humidity chams do best with, and it also won't be big enough for the better live plants you would need to have in the cage. A healthy, sturdy, decent sized Ficus, schefflera, or pothos will get too big and/or tall for this cage pretty quickly. It's a nice cage, but plan on something twice the size for a cham.

Fine for a baby. Insufficient for an adult.
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Sandra
BC Canada