Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My brother bought a veiled and is having alot of trouble getting it to eat anything that has been coated with calcium. He just wanted me to ask the folks on here if mixing the calcium powder into the water that is used to spray the enclosure would work similar to the cham injesting the powder by eating it? Could someone please help before its to late...

No, dont do that. You dont want it in their eyes. You don't want it to dry on plant leaves and coat them white.

Take some crickets, put them on to a surface that is wet. Then put them on a surface where calcium has been spread out. The water will make the calcium stick to their bellies where the chameleons cannot see it.

Only tip I can think of right now...
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CANADIAN CHAMELEONS

Or you could attempt to feed your crickets well so you won't need any supplementation.

Kinda what i thought that was why i told him not to cause it would not quite do what he thought that it was going to. I just thought that i would check with you guy's just to be certain. Thanks folks.

I find this works, but I simply press the crix down in the dust in a bag rather than try to get them wet. It does fool the cham, but again, if the dust coating is really thick they may spit the bug out once they taste the dust. As was said, you don't need a thick coat. The best way to get nutrients into a cham is to gutload the feeders really well. Dust is extra insurance.

in calcium dust - they should be "dusted"

I put my crickets (or any feeder) into a quart size deli or yogurt container, put in about 1/4 tsp dust, gently twirl, then I put a strainer over the top, turn over and shake out any excess dust.

How old is the cham? He does not need to dust everyday and he should also be using a good multivitamin dust (Rep-Cal herptivite is one) but not at the same time. Set up a regular schedule so he can stick to it. There can be trouble in OVER supplementation as well. The older the cham gets, the more you should rely on properly gutloaded crickets as veiledbrian pointed out. The dusting is not the magic bullet to keeping the cham healthy and well fed feeders insects are important. Chamnews has some excellent article on supplementation you might want read. Go to this link and look under NUTRITION section.
ChamNews

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Chameleon Help & Resource Info

0.1 Veiled Chameleon - Luna. She's now hanging from her big jungle gym in the sky
1.0 Beardie - Darwin
0.2 felines - Kyndra and Lita
0.1 African Clawed Frog - Skipper
0.1 Mad. Hissers and she is on the loose!
0.1 Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula - Rosa Leigh
0.1 Goliath Bird-Eater Tarantula - Natasha
?.? Pinktoe Tarantula - no name yet

Yea i knew about being able to over calcium. The cham is only about 3months to 4months but when he purchased it I think that it was already pretty deficient. He was not really sure what he was looking for. I myself have one and she's at most 6months and she's doing fine (both chams came from the same litter at the local pet store so i'm not so sure that the pet store takes all that good care of them) but his never really grew at all. Then later started to get pretty ill.

Well the little guy has passed on. HE was obviously to sick to be helped. With a little more reasearch prior to getting another cham hopefully he will have better luck. Next time tho he's going to get one from a local breeder that we found out about. Thank's for all of your tips and help tho guy's. It was greatly appreciated.