Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi All,

Couple questions about plant setup for a veiled chameleon. The cage is a 2'x2'x4' all screen cage....aluminum screening.

I am going to set the cage up for a veiled chameleon and want to know what the easiest to keep live plant is. I like the ficus trees are these a good choice?

Should I use vines as well?

What size/brand heat/basking bulb do you recommend?

Scott

I like Ficus alli rather than Ficus benjamina. It is sturdier and less prone to breakage. Also a Hawaiian schefflera is easy to find and a pretty hardy one. Get plants bigger than you think you need, prune them and wash them thoroughly to remove excess sap. Repot in perlite-free sterile potting soil to get rid of pesticide residue. You won't want to let any leaves grow too close to the basking spot, use bare branches there or your leaves will get burnt. Be sure the pots have good drainage so excess spray or dripper water doesn't drown the plants. Put pebbles or broken pot pieces in the bottoms of the pots. As for basking bulb, you can go 2 ways. If you decide to try the heat/UV incandescents be ready to keep close track of the surface temps on the basking branch with an accurate non-contact temp gun so your cham doesn't get a burn. It is hard to recommend lights by wattage, as the resulting temp depends so much on the temp in the room, the humidity, your setup, etc. It is safer to start at lower powers and adjust the distance of the bulb. To reduce the heat from any size bulb you can adjust the distance away from the cage top. If you decide to use a tube UV like the ReptiSun 5.0 you can add a regular house light bulb for heat. Just make sure the cham can get within 18" of the UV bulb as it basks. This light will need to be on at least 12 hours a day. Get your cham outdoors in sunlight as often as weather permits...it helps so much!

Hi,

Thanks for the info, I am going to have to start looking for these plants now so once I get their cages made I will already have the plants and have then good and cleaned by then as well.

Thanks also for the advice on where to find pics.

Scott

In the picture I posted below of my cage that is a Schefflera. Definately make sure that the soil can drain well. My plant looks really nice there but the soil held a lot of water and now it looks pretty sorry. They like to dry out.

Carlton, what's wrong with perlite?
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~Melissa
1.0 Ambanja Panther (Diesel)
0.1 African Hegdehog (Kaimah)