Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have no luck with these lizards. my 1st setup was a bird cage with a heat lamp (pet store told me this was the best) Jaksons chameleon

2. 22 gallon reptarium with drip system and pranches abd night/dal lamp/uva/uvb bulb. pair of veiled

3. 10 gallon tank with all of the above stuff (new)pair of veiled

Whats wrong?

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My Ball and Corn rule
Boda 3' normal ball
Snow 15" Snow corn

First, that is the most interesting looking Cham I have ever seen

Ok, now for the serious part: You are going to need to post a little more information. You are saying that you aren't having any luck, can you be more specific? Are they sick, are they dying? What are you feeding them? What supliments are you providing, what lighting (UVB) are you supplying?

Second, you mentioned having a pair of veiled in one cage. How big was the cage? Veiled don't do well together, they are solitary animals in the wild and like to be the same in a cage (Unless your cage is the size of a green house). Also, you mentioned a 10 Gallon tank. Besides the fact that a 10 gallon tank will never be large enough for 1 full-sized vield, any surface that can give a reflection is also back because the cham will think there is another close by.

If your chams (depending on species, I'm going off the veileds) are always brown, that is an indication that they are stressed. Something in the environment is not what they are expecting/what they like.
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1.0 Bearded Dragon (Charlie)
0.1 Corn Snake (Diamond)
1.1 Felines (Blacky and Princes)
1.0 Canine (Skeeter)
2.0 Cockatiels

they where always green and they all ate crickets dusted with reptivive. They where the baby vield chameleons that are at lllreptile.com

The one in the ten gallon was not a pair (sorry)

They where one or two inches head to tail. the reptarium was upright and it was pretty big.

Thanks
dom
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My Ball and Corn rule
Boda 3' normal ball
Snow 15" Snow corn

"I have no luck with these lizards. my 1st setup was a bird cage with a heat lamp (pet store told me this was the best) Jaksons chameleon"
well.....u have no source of uv light mentioned. also, what was the humidity and the temp of the enclosure? what was the diet, how old, and how long did you have it? also, how large of a bird cage? i get the idea you are housing them improperly from all these ?'s.

"2. 22 gallon reptarium with drip system and pranches abd night/dal lamp/uva/uvb bulb. pair of veiled "
a 22 gallon is barely big enough for one small veiled, about 3 or 4 months old. how old were they?

"3. 10 gallon tank with all of the above stuff (new)pair of veiled "
too small and it's a tank.....glass is pretty bad for chameleons. take a look at my website in the care info. you now have the right equipment (i.e. the lighting and drip system) but you need larger spacing. i also wonder about the diet they are given? do you feed just crickets or do you vary it and what are you gutloading with?

sorry if it was long!
my site link

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groups.msn.com/JEChameleons
1.2 Chameleo Calyptratus
1.1 Furcifer Pardalis (Diego Suarez)
0.1 Furcifer Pardalis (Nosy Be)
0.0.1 Chameleo Melleri

One of the first things wrong was listening to the pet shop! We have no info on what lighting you used, what the temps were, what the humidity was, etc. Many people overdose dusts and supplements because they don't know how (or bother) to feed the insects properly for the cham's health. All your enclosure sound too small for the chams you listed. Also, chams are not social, so if yours were handled too much or were in really busy noisy parts of the house with lights on late at night they were exposed to much more stress than they could handle. What I'd suggest is reading about cham care on these sites...they are written by really experienced keepers and you can trust the info there. If they say something, believe it.

http://www.adcham.com
http://www.chameleonjournals.com
http://www.calumma.com
http://www.chameleonnews.com
http://www.geocities.com/ccicenter

was buying chameleons from LLL reptile in the first place. I bought a trio of veileds from them for my first chams awhile back, all were dead within a month even though they had been eating and drinking. Your husbandry sounds a bit off but that probably wasnt the only problem. Next time before you get any reptile, read up on their care and dont get them from LLL. Im sure you'll have more success that way

In addition to what everyone else said: any newbie who buys a cham less that 4 months old was swindled. An adult, healthy cham in the hands of the average newbie has a life expentany of about 4 months. A baby (you said 2" total length?) has a life expectancy of about 2-4 weeks.

(An adult, healthy cham in the hands of the average newbie has a life expentany of about 4 months.)

Hi: this stat you gave scared the living daylights outa me. What accounts for such a short life expectency of a healthy Cham in the hands of a newbie? How do I avoid the usual newbie mistake? I'm shaking in my boots. Could you elaborate on this stat? Thanks-Maggie

I think that it occurs because the majority of newbie cham purchases are impulse buys. They've not done their homerwork. And for the record, I was as guilty of this sin as anyone else. It also results from the fact that pet shops don't know any more about chams than does the newbie. And at shows, unscrupulous sellers tell the newbie things like "just put him in a 10 gallon tank and give him a water bowl." Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Ed

Oh thank you. This was of some reassurrance to me since I did quite a bit of research and haven't yet stopped. I'm not prone to buying from a pet store as it is SOOOO obvious the neglect, and improper care to me even though I am a newbie at Cham keeping. Perhaps with my tendency toward preparation, and this forum I will not fall into that statistic.

Thank you,

Maggie