Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am a first time chameleon owner, I was going to buy an adult Jackson, but to make a long story short, ended up with 3 baby Jacksons. I live in Hawaii,came across someone who was selling them 3 for $10. I realize now that this was not such a bargain considering the care that is required for these animals. That being said, I do have the time, persistence and resources to care for them. I work from home and live very close to multiple pets stores. I have two males and one female. I was told that they are about a month old, small horns have started to grow, maybe they are a bit older (I am hoping). They are changing colors, but not to green as of yet. The bigger male is 3 inches long from snout to tail, the female is a bit smaller. I have had them for 2 days now, very nervous about them surviving but I'm willing to do my best. I bought an 18 x 12 x 20 inch screened cage for them. They have two pieces of drift wood and plastic non toxic plants in there. They are drinking and have been eating pinhead crickets, each one has been eating about three in a row. What I'm finding is that the crickets are hiding in the cage, no telling how many crickets are in the cage right now, which is not good. When will they be able to eat the small crickets? Each one is good at hunting, pretty proficient, although, sort of lost when the crickets go to the bottom of the cage. I've been misting about once every hour, whenever I see that the plants are dry, I was told that they need to be hydrated constantly. On the flip side, I did spray them a couple times and I'm finding that this is not good, and will make a point to not spray them anymore. The temperature in the cage is about 82 to 84, at night time is drops to about 72, 70 at the lowest, we are in Hawaii in summer, the humidity is very high here as well. It has been getting hot, this morning it was up to about 88 almost 90, I was worried and turned on the fans to cool down the room. Currently, they are in a brightly lit room, direct sunlight on half the cage in the morning, but I was thinking that this might not be such a good thing since the temperature did heat up so much earlier. When I woke up two were in the sunny side and once was on the shaded side. I have the option of keeping them outside later on, once they get bigger. Right now, they are not fighting at all, I do realize they need to be separated at some point. How do you think I am doing? I don't know when I should be feeding them, I fed them three times yesterday, I am worried that there are a lot of pinheads in the cage with them, all hiding... Any help would be great appreciated. I don't know what to look for if things are going south...

Um, lots of potential problems here. You won't be able to house them together very long, so plan on building or buying a cage for each cham. Don't free range your feeders. Confine them in some sort of plastic container so the chams get a chance at them before they lose their gutload and dusts (you must gutload the crix with fresh leafy greens, fruit, and cereal grain, and dust them with vit D3-free calcium each day, calcium with vit D3 about once every 2-3 weeks, dusting with herp vitamins about once every 6 weeks). The chams will need exposure to either direct sunlight (not through glass or heavy screen) or a ReptiSun 5.0 UVB tube fluorescent terrarium light every day.

There is a very active cham forum you will want to check out for more detailed info, ideas, husbandry, etc. at www.chameleonforums.com