Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a veiled chameleon and i was just curious on how you other keepers set up your cage. Please post pics!

Ian

this is my cage at the preschool i work at for the kids science center. the plastic that u see was stapled to outside during winter to keep him warm. hope this helps u in any way. its 4'x2'x7' (LxWxH)

-----
1.0. Vield Chameleon(Jessy James)
1.1.3 Sugar gliders(Bonnie & Clyde)
2.0 Ferrets(Butch & Sundance)
1.1.3 Parakeets(Prettyboy,Sassy)
1.0 Doberman (Aries)
1.1 Cats(Riley, Zoe)

this is just the top of my veiled's enclosure. It is 4' by 2' by 2'

Go to http://www.adcham.com/html/husbandry/members-setups.html to see the setups of many expert keepers.
Ed

n/p

-----
Chris Vanderwees
REPTILE SALES AND INFORMATION
E-mail Me
1.2.0 Bearded Dragons
1.1.0 Crested Geckos
1.2.0 Veiled Chameleons
3.4.0 Corn Snakes
1.0.0 Tokay Geckos
1.2.0 California Kingsnakes
1.3.0 South Florida Kingsnakes
1.1.0 Albino Sonoran Gopher Snakes
1.4.0 Leopard Geckos
0.1.0 Green Iguanas

Nice cages, Chris. But there are 3 obvious improvemnt you could make.
1)The cages should be much higher off the floor. The chams experience much less stress and feel much better if they can look down on you.

2)You should get those MV light at least a few inches above the screen. Otherwise the screen temps get VERY high and can cause thermal burns. Even if you only put a couple of metal rods (you can get metal plant stakes at mnost hardware store or garden shops) under the light dome, it makes a space the will allow heat to dissipate and lower the screen temps.

3)I don't see any arrangement for drainage. This dramatically limits how much you can drip & mist. I buy these low plasticunder-bed storage boxes at Target. I place a metal or plastic grate over the sweater box. The cages sit on the grate and all the water drains into the sweater box. I then drill a hole in the sweater box a silicone-seal a plastic drainage tube into the sweater box. The tube hangs in a plastic bucket. Two adult cham cages can sit on top of one sweater box. (About 6 baby cages can fot on one. This means that I can drip 1.5 gallons per cage/day with no problem, no leakage, and only one pail to empty. I still haven't figured out how to attach a pic on Kingsnake but if anyone wants a pic you can e-mail off list (epollak@wcupa.edu).
Ed

1) so far we haven't seen any signs of stress in the chameleons that are kept in these cages...since we attained them all from when they were less than 2" long and have handled them in 15 min sessions 3 times a day...they are all comfortable with eating from a human hand and have grown out of hissing and biting completely. They seem to be very comfortable with their current surroundings and if a sign of stress was observed I would certainly consider raising the level of the cages.

2)Seeing as we do not use MV bulbs and the current bulbs on top of the enclosures are only 90W spot bulbs they keep the hot spot at 97 degrees. The room they are in stays around 78 degrees most of the day and drops to a 72 degrees at night. One change that has been made since the picture was taken is we have added a 6' florescent light fixture that contains 2 plant bulbs (which provide UVA) (of course nobody will agree with me on the following comment but...) we supplement them ever second day with Vitamin D3 and calcium by lightly dusting their crickets.

3) There are sheets of linoleum on the bottom of the cages. I actually don't like to use drip systems...we've had problems in the past with them...(if it works for you, good stuff) but I prefer to give them a good misting in the morning (with a plant compressor sprayer) and if somebody is home during the day they get another light misting around 2 o'clock and every night after supper they get one more misting.

Thanks for the suggestions but I think we've got most of it figured out. The drainage system sounds interesting...if you figure out how to post them up...please do so.

Thanks.
-----
Chris Vanderwees
REPTILE SALES AND INFORMATION
E-mail Me
1.2.0 Bearded Dragons
1.1.0 Crested Geckos
1.2.0 Veiled Chameleons
3.4.0 Corn Snakes
1.0.0 Tokay Geckos
1.2.0 California Kingsnakes
1.3.0 South Florida Kingsnakes
1.1.0 Albino Sonoran Gopher Snakes
1.4.0 Leopard Geckos
0.1.0 Green Iguanas

No UVB?????

And while you may not see the signs of stress you will very likely shorten their life spans.

As for the D3, you're risking some serious liver damage.

And the incandescent's you've got there can cause serious burns whether they're MV or not. Measure the screen ytemps & see. It's now big deal to raise the bulbs a 1/4" above the screen.
Ed

Ed, we've pointed out all these things to him before, and it got everyone nowhere.... I think we're all better off leaving him alone and letting him do his thing. Good advise though.
-----
Tyler Stewart
Las Vegas NV
www.BLUEBEASTREPTILE.com

Don Wells had a line in his e-mail sig. file that would be appropriate. The gist of it was:

Some men learn by listening
Some menh learn by reading
Other men have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

HAHA

Good one, the electric fence thing was on a CKY video

sorry to stray from the chameleon talk

umm...
chameleons are cool
there
now this message wasn't completely pointless after all!

Since the set-up has been like that for over 3 months with no problems...I see no need to change it...as for uvb debates...we're not getting into that again.
-----
Chris Vanderwees
REPTILE SALES AND INFORMATION
E-mail Me
1.2.0 Bearded Dragons
1.1.0 Crested Geckos
1.2.0 Veiled Chameleons
3.4.0 Corn Snakes
1.0.0 Tokay Geckos
1.2.0 California Kingsnakes
1.3.0 South Florida Kingsnakes
1.1.0 Albino Sonoran Gopher Snakes
1.4.0 Leopard Geckos
0.1.0 Green Iguanas

Three whole months? And you can say this with a straight face???

>>Three whole months? And you can say this with a straight face???

Ed,

Haha, you took the words right out of my mouth. This is a case of a someone who would prefer to be cheap then safe. If only you knew all the posts he made complaining about the cost of UV lights and the cost of this and that. Anyone else remember the manuals being sold on how to become rich off breeding veileds in your bathroom? Similar mentality: self proclaimed expert with minimal experience decides he knows better so he decides to cut corners, trying to prove wrong that which decades of experience have shown to be the case, only to, down the road, have drastic results at the expense of his animals. Pathetic...

Chris
-----
Chris Anderson
parsonii_hoehnelii@hotmail.com
Chameleon Care and Information Center (CCIC) - http://www.geocities.com/ccicenter/
Chameleons Online E-zine - http://www.chameleonnews.com/
Captive Chameleon Bloodline Tacking Database - http://www.chameleondatabase.com/

Seeing as the chameleons have been on the supplements for just under 2 years now without any problems and we have been corresponding on a regular basis with Dr. Gary Ferguson as well as some of the herpetology professors and local breeders locally...I would think that you all like to judge a little too quickly.

Since we've all been through this debate a million times and all it seems to do is go around in circles, I will no longer be replying to further comments questioning or ridiculing our methods. And yes the cages have been set-up for about 3 months now...these cages were tested for temperature humidity and foot-candle ratings for about a month before any chameleons were exposed to the cages.

The assumptions on this forum are quite amusing, and frankly I couldn't care less about some of the comments and opinions of others that are posted on here. By no means am I saying everything we do is perfect and everyone should do things just as we do...but this is the way we've done it for 2 years...and another local breeder has raised veileds up in the same methods until they passed from natural causes from the ages 7-11. You have your opinions and I'll have mine. I've done much research on the topic of UVB lighting and supplementation and....well, you know what I'm not even going to get into it...if you really want you can probably scan through the old posts and find it.

Thanks for your unconstructive criticism.
-----
Chris Vanderwees
REPTILE SALES AND INFORMATION
E-mail Me
1.2.0 Bearded Dragons
1.1.0 Crested Geckos
1.2.0 Veiled Chameleons
3.4.0 Corn Snakes
1.0.0 Tokay Geckos
1.2.0 California Kingsnakes
1.3.0 South Florida Kingsnakes
1.1.0 Albino Sonoran Gopher Snakes
1.4.0 Leopard Geckos
0.1.0 Green Iguanas