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Housing a gecko and chameleon together?

imationkarl Jul 16, 2007 04:54 AM

I have a seperately housed Geyhra vorax gecko and a veiled chameleon in my house currently. I'm moving out of my parents house in the next month and only have the option of bringing one cage along. I can't decide which one to give to my aunt, who owns a pet shop.

My question is, can I build an arboreal screen cage about 4.5ft tall with 2 ft widths to house both animals?

The gecko is nocturnal, so he would only come out when the chameleon is asleep, and vice versa. I would design the cage with a heated hiding spot on the floor, and many arboreal bark hiding spots along the walls. It would have a daytime heat lamp/UV light, and a night time purple nocturnal heat lamp to keep the heat up through the winter months.

For feeding I currently use crickets for the chameleon and yogurt for the gecko, even though the gecko loves crickets, it doesen't work to feed them in his current cage. In the new cage I could easily drop in 20-30 crickets, let the chameleon eat his fill during the day, and let the gecko finish them off at night.

Would this work?!

ps. sorry for the wall of text heh

Replies (8)

crocking Jul 16, 2007 08:21 AM

No, 2 different locales and 2 different species increasing the risk of passing on disease and housing the two together will stress out both. Why can you take both cages?
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Center for Reptile and Amphibian Conservation

Reptiles

1.0 Uroplatus phantasticus
2.0 Uromastyx malienisis
0.2 Eublepharis macularis
1.0 Chrysemys picta dorsalis
0.1 Physignathus cocincinus
0.0.1 Hemidactylus turcicus
0.1 Lepidactlyus lugrubis

imationkarl Jul 16, 2007 03:14 PM

I'm moving 12 hours away and just won't have room to bring 2 big cages. One is pushing it already. I was just wondering if this would work by any means.

Thanks

AndrewFromSoCal Jul 16, 2007 07:18 PM

Is the care for both somewhat similar?

olstyn Jul 16, 2007 11:59 PM

Would it be possible to build your big cage with some sort of divider in it so that they can't directly get at each other? Unless a vorax is just a huge variety of gecko (I'm not familiar with it), I would think that the chameleon might try to eat it. Even if they are the same size, they might well fight; nocturnal/diurnal doesn't mean they'd never bump into each other, just that they'd mostly not bother each other. I guess to me it just seems risky, especially with what I've heard about chameleons being very vulnerable to stress.
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0.1 Albino Leopard Gecko - Tigger
0.1 Crested Gecko - Pooh-Bear

imationkarl Jul 17, 2007 03:25 AM

They are two totally different animals, with two different sleep patterns. That's why I'm wondering if it would work.

ginebig Jul 17, 2007 07:56 AM

As olstyn mentioned, Chameleons are VERY suseptible to stress. I don't own Chams, but everything I've heard about them suggests stress can kill them eventually. Simply being in sight of another Cham can stress them out. Not worth the possible loss to me, but if you try it, know you may lose one or the other. JMHO.

Quig
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Don't interupt me when I'm talkin' to myself

aero_tiff Jul 19, 2007 11:42 AM

IMHO:
NO. Will not work. I won't reiterate all the good points already made. I have a marginata (the one everyone thinks is a vorax) and a Melleri, one of the most sensitive chameleons. They shouldn't even be in the same line of sight. People say how "hardy" a veiled is, but that's only as far as chameleons go, it's still very easily stressed.
Keeping all the good points made in previous posts in mind: These guys are territorial, and each will claim the cage as his or her own, and no separate sleep schedule will change
the fact that they can smell each other.

I very regularly travel between NJ and Miami and move about once a year with 2 collarded lizards, 2 g marginata, a melleri, a greybanded kingsnake, a thayeri kingsnake, and soon to come, a transpacos ratsnake. I use travel cages. I used to do this in a 98 cavalier coupe, now i do it in an 06 accord coupe. The permanent cages are constructed in such a way that they break down easily for storage. So long story short, it can be done if necessary, but if you can't pack em up, don't pack em together. Never worth the risk of the animal's life for the owner's happiness.
(Stepping off my soapbox)
~Tiff

>>As olstyn mentioned, Chameleons are VERY suseptible to stress. I don't own Chams, but everything I've heard about them suggests stress can kill them eventually. Simply being in sight of another Cham can stress them out. Not worth the possible loss to me, but if you try it, know you may lose one or the other. JMHO.
>>
>>Quig
>>-----
>>Don't interupt me when I'm talkin' to myself
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"Were the diver to think upon the jaws of the shark, he would never lay hands on the precious pearl."

nile_keepr Jul 26, 2007 01:26 PM

A friend of mine from southern california was keeping a community tank that had a situation much like this taking place.

Within the equivalent of, Id say, a 50-75 gallon aquarium turned to maximize height (it was a custom built cage, but was about that volume) he had approx. 3 pacific tree frogs (wc), a whites tree frog, a gold(?) tree frog, a madagas. day gecko (approx. 3-4" ) , a bumblebee poison dart frog, 2 anoles and, most important here, he also had an adult golden gecko (decent sized) and a veiled that was approximately the same size as the golden. He HAD designed it quite well, and it had one of the best gradients Ive ever seen in a cage (both in terms of humidity, temperature, and arboreal/terrestrial ratio).

While I found this setup irresponsible at best, he enjoyed it and i didnt want to make an issue of the matter. From what he told me, and from what I saw for that matter, they all seemed to get along quite well. The biggest problem he claimed to have was that the tree frogs had a tendency to, from time to time, bunch together near the vieled when it would go to sleep (something it apperantly didnt appreciate). Even so, the cham would simply open its eyes, stand up or move slightly, and all the frogs would leap away and stay away from it- we guessed they were trying to make use of the cham's slightly higher body temp and were surprised when their 'warm rock' started moving.

The geckos and the chameleon never had any sort of problems, though I would like to note something- not all species follow a 100% set time schedule. For example, I have a number of pictus geckos which are primarily nocturnal- yet, due to my houses location, there are often times when I come home and find my geckos active during daylight hours; especially during rainy/dim weather. As such, its not really 'safe' to assume that a supposedly nocturnal species will get along with a supposedly diurnal species on the basis that they have different sleep patterns.

Whatever the case, in the long run, the chameleon ended up drowning due to a design flaw in the water feature (had large flat rocks coming from the water, which the cham liked to sit on; yet could only barely hold onto). Over a span of about 1.5-2 years, I was never told of nor witnessed any sort of aggression within that cage between the captives. While I understand that it still likely caused them some stress- they gained size, were feeding well and showed no signs of illness or stress. During that time, he had successful breeding of both the anoles and the pacifics.

For all intensive purposes, its something you SHOULD avoid.

But, if youre really, REALLY cramped for space/money; it can be accomplished with careful cage design. Using visual barriers and different feeding locations, I think you could manage something like this- at least for a little while.

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