Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi. i have a one year old male veiled chameleon. he has a huge cage the has organic dirt on the bottom and live plants. recently i've noticed him eating the dirt. he doesn't eat many crickets, or supperworms ( king worms) but he loves his silkworms. i thought maybe i'm doing something wrong. i'm not new to reptiles i know about the proper lighting and temps and humidity and all that. i've just never heard of them eating dirt. he also like to eat the plants which is ok because they are safe for him to eat and i don't mind. anyway if anyone has any suggestions as to why he would do this please let me know. i love my chameleon and i would hate for anything to happen to him. thanx
ps: i took the dirt and plants out and replaced it with newspaper.

Removing the soil was a good move but you don't even need newspaper. What is the cage floor? Is it the standard melamine (or whatever that is). They need no substrate mainly b/c they rarely go down, but it can harbor fungus, bacteria and other nasties and crcikets can hide, die, rot. I have paper towel under the dripper catch basin but the rest of the floor is bare. I wipe it down each night when I remove the basins.

lele
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0.1 veiled - Luna
0.2 felines - Kyndra and Líta
1.0 African Clawed Frog - Skipper
0.5 Mad. Hissers
0.1 Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula (no name yet)
?.? Goliath Bird-Eater Tarantula (no name yet)

They will sometimes eat the soil if there is something lacking from their diet. The feeders sound just fine, are you dusting his food with vitamin and or calcium supplements as well?

Erin
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1:0 Veiled (Gene)
1:0 Sambava Panther (Knoxville)
1:1 Albino Clawed Frogs (Phedre and Jos)
?? Fire belly toad (Harold)
Various cats and dogs