hey guys how's it going it's me Josh halter owner and founder of the bio dude you can visit my website to buy oh do calm if you're here in Houston and surrounding areas definitely come and check out my retail outlet shop the hours of 8:00 and 4:00 Monday through Friday the course subscribe to my youtube channel and today you can see I have a pretty big chameleon cage in front of me and I'm going to talk today about a new way to keep communities with utilizing a deep substrate and a screen cage and I'm going to go over briefly over the husbandry for a Jackson's chameleons really excited to get this cage built today this is an 18 by 18 by 36 the zoo Med rep Tabriz on the top I do have one of my 22 inch LEDs for plant growth now the plants that I'm going to be utilizing for the chameleons or trees because in the wild and that's what they live in I'm going to be providing a deep layer substrate I'm going to explain the benefits of the having a deep layer substrate so to get started inside the chameleon cage I have what I like to call my chameleon tree pouches now what this is it is essentially it's completely round and we put the substrate right inside here and then we plant the tree and you can see how tall it is and how it has handles this can be cut and manipulated in any way that you want so you don't have a big lip over your cage so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get the chameleon pouch in here now initially you are going to you are going to have gaps here on the side as your substrate gets filled in these gaps are going to go away if you continue to see gaps simply take a safety pin and just take a safety pin through the screen into here backed out through the screen and attach it no more gap the only type of pain that could that you could run into something like this is once in a while the feeder insects the crickets things like that could get down into the crack however as long as you're making sure that it's sealed or you can stuff it with spag moss or you know just feed your chameleon from a cup which a lot of keepers do to make sure they're getting the vitamins and trance and stuff event that can also be avoided so the substrate that I like to use for that I use for chameleons is my terra firma and I will use this from us all chameleons on with excluding like carpets and pygmy chameleons you know and with a firm is good because it retains all cuddles and currents so one of the benefits of having a deep substrate for chameleons is old-world chameleons which means chameleons that lay eggs almost all of them can just develop the eggs throughout their life and they'll retain those eggs regardless if they if they have the opportunity to debris and don't hope to have the opportunity to breathe and there are times that if they do not breathe they will retain those eggs for too long that they over calcify and cause something called egg binding which is very very common with again that your veiled chameleons y'all even Panther chameleons unfortunately and a lot of times that does not lead to them surviving when you provide your chameleons with a deep layer of substrate especially your old-world chameleons you will notice a big difference you know in your girls especially around breeding season because you give your girls opportunities to be able to dig deep layers and since the Terra Firma retains all tunnels and burrows al-sharia they are able to tunnel and create the dens necessary for them to lay their eggs I don't have enough in here yet so as you can see I have a pretty deep layer but since I'm going to be planting a tree in here I'm actually going to go with a little bit more and I'm going to open up the second bag up arm up and then I can show you guys the tunneling ability so not only does it provide your girls a place to lay their place to lay their eggs it also provides them the ability to dig in reach higher humidity levels within the substrate and they are having trouble shedding or if they get dehydrated which is a very common issue with a lot of your chameleons because Nick because of physiologically they are not meant to get like their bodies cannot handle being dehydrated for a long time which is why a lot of your wild caught chameleons have so many issues and why you really have to take the initiative as a keeper to make sure that you're providing them the humidity while providing the proper aeration in their cage unfortunately if it does become too stagnant they are prone to getting fungal infections upper respiratory infections things like that because they're tweet tree to 12 rep titles so you can see I have two biodegradable zin here I have some maple leaves and some spag moss and I am going to add them but first I'm gonna add my daughter shot so I got a 36 court shot right here for the one big bag of Firma what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna mix that in there and since I only use 12 quarts out of that bag I'm actually only gonna use a little bit out of here a little bit more so guys I know this doesn't look like much but this bio shot pretty much it is packed with archaea my Corozal as well as organic a fertilizer which has a 4 for 4 & PK ratio which essentially helps create more Mak nutrients for your plants I eat your trees so that way when you plant them in a soil it doesn't have anything in it yet doesn't it helps prevent them from getting shocked in having issues like that and when you're planting trees having a deep substrate also helps prevent and prevent them from becoming rootbound which almost all chameleon keepers that don't have that haven't been able to try this yet will tell you that their trees in their pots they typically don't last that long because the roots just end up getting crumpled in there so I'm gonna hit the tree planted and then I'm gonna add in the spag moss and all that other good stuff now there are some chameleons that in the morning they will eat the leaves off of trees veiled chameleons are a great example of that since they since they're in biomechanics something that they all readily do Jackson's Jackson's chameleons I've never seen them eat any foliage or anything like that that doesn't mean they don't got never seen them do it since they are from East Africa the Jackson's they are montane species which means that Jackson chameleons like to have their their overall temperature and their tank be relatively cooler while providing a hot spot of around you know eighty-five to ninety degrees and and that allows them to properly thermoregulate help with digestion things like that so I got the tree ready to go and then I'm gonna dig all the way to the bottom and again this is why it's so important to have such deep substrate for the tree and now I see how much substrate I have left over I'm getting out a little bit more and of course in all of my chameleon kits which I'm working on adding many more soon with this method on my website will give you just enough Pharma to do this you might have a little bit left but as the firma gets settled you'll be able to have a pretty good a pretty good implication you know of how much you need to add and I'm gonna add a little bit more by shotting here so I added another 12 quarts a little bit too much okay my next step to help raise humidity as well as provide nutrition for your soil is I'm going to add in some of the biodegradable sphagnum Moss and to do that I am simply gonna get it open and then I'm going to add some water to it the general rule of thumb is you want to get this and that way it's wet but not dripping and you can see my bags that I packaged everything in cold water space it's super convenient you turn it and just go right like this then I'm gonna take my wet but not dripping bag moss you're gonna plop it right on top the Surma now a lot of people ask me Josh what happens if your chameleon ingest some of the skies most what happens if my chameleon ingest some of the leaves or some of the substrate and I will tell these people chameleons while they are very sensitive animals they they do have very complex digestive systems because they're constantly eating huge you know huge insects things like that because they're opportunistic hunters and typically sometimes they'll stay in the same vicinity for days just waiting for something to come by so as long as your chameleon is healthy and you are keeping them with the proper husbandry and their immune system is not compromised I do not foresee anybody having any issues I have Kemet I have kept my chameleons like this for years my female veiled chameleons lived for a very very long time I believe that almost eight which is great for your so I have my lair firma on the top I see my layers bag bolts on the top of the firma nabob of shot the next thing that I'm gonna actually add is I'm gonna add on the eeprom le add at the bottom now I don't know if these guys would ever come across from le ants in a wild however I'm putting them in here because I'm gonna show you these bromeliads have axles that hold water so I offer bromeliads in here because it gives your chameleon options so if they do go into the ground they might be able to find water fresh water in the axles which again helps with hydration which is extremely important the reason I'm able to plant these these bromeliads is because they're already rooted and they're in an extremely good soil that drains effectively if you would plant them in a soil such as straight coconut fiber they're just gonna rot away in about one or two weeks so I so I got the base here I got a tree that's gonna grow very very quickly with with the bromeliads in here planted directly in now I'm gonna add some climbing so I do have a piece of grapevine Here I am expecting this grapevine to mold a little bit especially down here at the base because it's going to be quite humid and that's okay you know if anything is going to make a huge difference to through helping with the with the Jackson with the Jackson to have more opportunities to climb and things like that and then we have some sorted I have some assorted sticks and things like that but I'm going to put in here I want to try to give them as much different climbing opportunities as I can The Closer that they can get to the UVB the better it's also important that you you know give them lots of different places to go so they can properly thermoregulate and blend in with different time with with the different times of the day yeah I'm going to be centralizing the heat bulb right here the mist King is going to be hooked up right here in the front and then of course the UVB is going to be going across the top and as you can see I'm really concentrating up here because I want I want to encourage them to kind of come out in the open especially when this gross because all of this will get covered up and provide even more opportunities as far as a water dish and all my years of keeping chameleons I've never used the water dish Jackson chameleons I'm going to be running a Miss King again double nozzle that's gonna go off for about 45 seconds twice a day there in lights would be automatic twelve hours or twelve hours off and then as far as feeding goes I will be doing some free feeding but if we are using like dubia roaches they will be put into a cup and dusted and gut loaded with the appropriate product so the one I got load the crickets and insects with is the bug grub which is really important because not only does it provide the carotenoids for them to break down these vitamins it also has the vitamins in it and it's 100% organic ingredients and then of course I will be dusting the crickets when a rotation schedule between the pink label in the blue label for the heating I will be using the Nano dome with of the 35 watt halogen to provide them I would say if they decide to bask right here should be about 85 degrees and then there are some other things that you can add so for the UVB I will be providing the rectus Suns by coin oh I like these fixtures because they last about eight months until you have to replace the bulb and it would fit it's going to fit right on top here and then as far as other accents we can add in you know moss vines and things like that but last thing that I'm going to do is I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna add we're gonna add some leaf litter now you guys can cut microphone ax in here absolutely your springtails and isopods you guys are gonna notice that I didn't and the reason that I didn't is just because it is a screen cage and it's one of those things that puttin up the live shot in here with a deep enough soil it'll be doing it will be running its own course pretty quickly hopefully these bromeliads put on some size sooner than later you know that's always what we go for so that way that provides different drinking opportunities and last but not least and I am going to be introducing here any beautiful so they're there there's two types of Jackson communities that I know of there is this locale from East Africa and then there's the locale called the Mount Meru Jackson's chameleon which I've seen once there about letting 70% of the size of these guys as adults and they get blue an intense blue on their sides and they're just absolutely beautiful these guys are sexually dimorphic in the aspect of female jackson chameleons do not have the florence the male which acts and chameleons do have the horns and they use them for fighting other males in the wild and i'm also sure they use them for you know potentially self defense towards predators but i you know I've never seen that it is very important with these guys that you always keep up with a very diet chameleons like I said are opportunistic hunters so they get they eat whatever they can get their little paws on and it's one of those things like it's really important to provide a great assortment so that way they can continually get the nutritional needs that they require since they are a little bit more of a delicate species now I'm really happy with how this turned out it's pretty empty up here and you know I honestly did that did not because this tree is gonna really quickly and you know I always try to provide space for looking ahead for the life that's in there and again guys my name is Josh halter owner and founder of the bio dude you can visit my website the bio dude calm dude abides