Let's talk about fogging chameleons in captivity! Petr Necas is back for part two of the interview where we turn our attention to the situations facing people who would like to implement fogging in captivity. Petr leads the exploration of fogging with chameleons so it will be educational to catch up with his latest thoughts. We also touch on Petr's ideas on over-hydration. I am still evaluating that concept myself and so I present to you this interview so that you can hear his logic. Whether you agree or not, the only way to be able to make a decision or be able to look at the evidence is to understand the thinking behind it in the first place. I invite you to take a listen and think on the concepts. And I would like to take high level view of this. The one thing that will make us strong explorers of chameleon husbandry is evaluating reasonable ideas and making decisions after careful contemplation. Even ideas that do not, in the end, turn out to be accepted are valuable in that they allowed us to practice deliberate critical thinking. The act of evaluation strengthens us.

Let's take a closer look into fogging as a hydration technique for chameleons. Petr Necas has been a vocal proponent of fogging not only as a hydration component, but as primary hydration source. And so, I am bringing him and and we are going to be talking about the experiments he has done to show how fogging can be used. Today we focus on how the idea to fog came up in the first place.

Properly hydrating your chameleon is one of the most important parts of chameleon husbandry. Life in the trees presents us with a challenge when we are trying to figure out the best approach. I will be giving an overview of chameleon hydration, the methods used, and what more we need to figure out.

Chronic stress us why chameleons appear to just drop dead. They are not fragile when cared for properly, but they do hide stress very well. And that stress can accumulate to the point of being deadly. This podcast episode will explain it in detail so you will be able to explain the dynamic to others.

This episode is a re-telling of episode 158. Stress is a topic which must be reviewed on a regular basis! To listen to more podcast episodes on Youtube just look for the Podcast playlist on this account or click here

Keeping chameleons together is a way to shorten their lives. Chameleons are not creatures that enjoy the company of their own kind and we need to respect this. But we also need to understand why this is. In today's episode we review the reasons.

This episode is a re-telling of episode 107. Cohabitation is a topic which must be reviewed on a regular basis!

You can keep and breed roaches in a bioactive environment with great success! They are living creatures just like our chameleons and benefit from natural surroundings. Summer Winston from The Shap comes on and shares her experience breeding roaches in a bioactive environment.

The Brookesia Stump-tailed chameleons are some of the most cryptic and fascinating of chameleons! Michael Nash joins me to discuss what he has learned by breeding a number of species.

Is misting dangerous? Should chameleons drink from water cups instead? There are may ideas bouncing around the internet. Some are good and some not so good. But it can be hard to tell the difference. Today I go over a way that we can evaluate ideas and decide to embrace them or move on.

Learn how to keep plants alive! We chameleon people love our plants, but are not always the most successful with them! Today I bring on Elizabeth Vasquez from Propagated Perfection, a small business that specializes in propagating house plants or finding that perfect specimen plant for your chameleon cage!

My trip to Madagascar helped me better understand chameleon husbandry. There is something about being there and feeling the environment that cannot be substituted by just looking at numbers. This podcast and post is about what I learned by going to Madagascar, seeing chameleons in their natural habitat, and pondering how what I observed could affect how i kept chameleons. I invite you to come along with this very special episode. This episode was written from my bungalow in Andasibe, Madagascar while I watched a cyclone drop its rain on the forest.

This is an episode for educators, admins, breeders, vet offices, and influencers that would like to use the new 2022 Yellow-Crested Jackson's Chameleon Care Guide in their outreach. There is a story behind every number and graphic on this care guide and, in this episode, I go over some of the background and even controversy. To effectively serve the newcomers to the community it is good to understand why the parameters were selected and how to effectively adjust the concepts to fit unique situations.

I talk about what newcomers face when coming into the community and then review the dangers breeders face in today's social media world. The major platforms are hostile towards breeders and I discuss the options of how you can protect your business if your account is removed unexpectedly.

Dr. Rachel (IG/TT: @exotic.pet.vet)comes on and discsses her paper which shows the parasites present in outwardly healthy reptiles at public reptile shows in Texas. We discuss her findings and what they mean for our herpetoculture.

I am joined by Jonathan Hill of iPardalis and we are talking about setting up baby chameleons in small cages. You can use the same environmental conditions as adults, but you have to execute it much differently!

I am joined by Cohost Mike Tytula and we talk about laying bins and my approach to a quarantine cage. But, the highlight of the show is that I promised Mike that I would introduce him to a very cool new species of chameleon that might be available as captive hatched in the next few years! For that we bring on breeder Tim Marks from Leap Habitats who is pioneering the establishment of the Canopy Chameleon (Furcifer willsii) in captivity. This is an amazing chameleon and I think I did good fulfilling my promise!

Today I talk about breeding panther chameleons. It isn’t that hard to get babies, but it is not easy to raise them properly. And selling them is a task all to itself! Hang tight because I am going to go over an overview of the entire process!

The world of parasites is complex and presents us reptile keepers with much to consider! Join me for a thought provoking discussion about parasites and reptile husbandry. 

We want to give our chameleons the best life possible and I go over five simple ways you can make a huge difference with you chameleon!

Isopods are one of the most common invertebrates used as clean-up crew in a bioactive environment. Today I talk with Rus Wilson from Aquarimax and he introduces us to this new world!

Reptile photographer Ferdy Timmerman joins us to talk about his approch to bioactive naturalistic environments.

Setting up a bio-active environment is just the first step. Now you have to maintain it! Today I talk with John Courteney-Smith MSRB about the ways that a bio-active environment could get in trouble and how to prevent that!

Walter Tanpondjou returns to the podcast after defending his PhD thesis and shares the studies he is involved in.

It is common to hear people in the chameleon community say that chameleons need to be in screen cages. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case, but there is no black and white in chameleon keeping and the answer becomes clear once we learn the nuances. So, today, we are going to learn about screen cages.

Today we talk about keeping baby and smaller chameleon species outdoors. I lay out the benefits, the challenges, and some techniques. 

Bioactive envronments have given us success with the rarer species and is a next step for the dedicated chameleon herpetoculturist.

The core of the bioactive system is the substrate. And this wouldn't be the Chameleon Academy if we didn't ask the questions as to what this means! In this episode, Josh Halter, the BioDude, shares with us what we should look for. Josh built his entire business on substrates for the bioactive vivarium! And in this episode he explains what is important when is obtaining or making an effective substrate.

I review the latest updates in Veiled Chameleon husbandry! This is taken off of the newly updated ChameleonAcademy.com care summary that can be downloaded for free from the Veiled Chameleon profile

UVB light is critical for chameleon health.  In this episode we lay down the ground work to understand the basics of what you need to know to create an effective and safe UVB gradient within your chameleon cage.

A chameleon’s eyes are one of the most obvious ways of telling when something is off with our chameleon. Today I go over the most common chameleon eye issues and how to figure out what the problem may be

Water is the key to life. Today, I’ll explore the concept of hydration and how we can develop an effective strategy for our chameleon husbandry

Welcome to the new series where I talk to chameleon community members and their personal chameleon projects! Summer Winston is part of our TikTok community and shares their home cage building projects on the podcast!

A full Jeweled Chameleon Care episode! Michael Nash joins us to give us a husbandry review of Furcifer campani, the Jeweled Chameleon.

Should we be including a cool down period for our chameleons? Before we consider that we need to understand what the dry season is! Today, Euan Edwards shares his observations after spending years in Madgacascar working with chameleons.

Dr. Chris Anderson returns to discuss how we can apply scientific critical thinking to our chameleon husbandry. There is still so much for us to figure out, but it takes discipline to find the right answers instead of the easy ones or the ones that make us feel good. 

Dr. Chris Anderson joins me for a frank talk about chameleon keeping and conservation. We talk about the way international trade is set up and the laws surrounding it. Dr. Anderson explains the benefits and detriments of trade. He talks about when the system works and when it doesn't. There are no black and white answers, but listen in and you will understand the major issues surrounding chameleon keeping and conservation.

Welcome to the Outer Fringes where we explore another reptile that we chameleon people will love! Today we have Eddy Garabito, Father Blue, who works extensively with Blue Tree Monitors. 

The Carpet Chameleon is one of the best chameleon keeping candidates. When captive hatched they are hardy and easy to keep. Frank Payne, of Living Art by Frank Payne, joins me to discuss what he has learned about caring for this wonderful chameleon species.

I bring on experienced chameleon breeders to share different approaches to raising chameleon hatchlings from hatching (or birth) to about three months of age. All three individually raise their babies. Included in today's episode is

Jonathan Hill from iPardalis

Chris Young from Kaizen Chameleons

Sean Mcneeley from McZoos Exotics

They answer my questions and then we all answer questions from our live studio audience.

Today I bring on Jonathan Hill of iPardalis to offer a breeder's perspective on the practice of selling eggs. As an educator I come at this new trend differently than a breeder who is responsible for figuring out what the right products are there for them to sell. It would be much easier to sell eggs! So, should today's breeders switch to egg sales? Jonathan says no. Watch to hear him explain the lay of the chameleon land!

If you are active in the chameleon community you know how it is when you answer the same question over and over. Is it worth it? That is something we need to answer for yourselves and today I discuss how I look at it.

We need more chameleon keepers with good husbandry having fun on social media and just being visible! As for me, I am going to experiment for the next four weeks with a new format for the Chameleon Academy Podcast!

Today we are going to talk about the kind of special care a female egg laying chameleon needs.

My name is Bill Strand and my job here is to help you learn the latest in chameleon husbandry techniques and philosophy. Welcome to season seven of the Chameleon Academy Podcast!

What if there was a test that you could buy that would tell you what locale your panther chameleon was? Jonathan Hill and Ben Morrill, PhD are creating just that test and I have them on to explain how this works and how we can make this a reality!

There are a few books that are prized by chameleon keepers. And my pick for day 12 is two of the best! Both Chameleons of Africa by Colin Tilbury and Mader's Reptile Medicine and Surgery by Divers and Stahl are excellent parts of a chameleon keeper's library! They are high end books so chances are that the chameleon person in your life may not have picked them up yet! You can check them out here.

Today's pick is the Chameleon Forums 2020 Calendar which is made up from pictures of chameleons from our community! These are chameleons that you read about day to day on the Chameleon Forums. If you are not familiar with the forums then I encourage you to check out the Chameleon Forums and find a community that has been thriving since 2003!

UVB is critical to the health of our chameleons. Since we cannot see UVB light, the best way to ensure you have the right levels in your cage is to have a UVB meter. The Solarmeter 6.5 is the industry standard and is widely available. The Solarmeter 6.5 is a prized tool for any serious chameleon keeper and this makes an excellent gift for the chameleon person in your life!

Fogging is a new chameleon hydration technique for many people and is worth setting up. You don't have to change anything else about what you do to presently to give it a test run. But fogging is a great gift for the person wanting to explore chameleon husbandry at a deeper level.

A well lit chameleon enclosure makes for a happy chameleon and makes a beautifully planted cage possible! My pick for day 8 is the Arcadia Jungle Dawn LED bar which gives you that extra light that has allowed me to do crazy things like grow and bloom passion flowers in my chameleon cages!

The question commonly arises - how can I mount horizontal branches and live plants to the sides of my chameleon's screen cage? The Dragon Ledges were designed specifically for us chameleon keepers for that purpose! They consist of a brace that attaches to the aluminum screen frame and a "ledge" on the inside that transfer the weight to the brace and to the frame. The Dragon Ledges allow you to create a floating garden style cage interior that provides for your chameleon's needs!

If you have a chameleon or reptile enthusiast in your family then they may be difficult to shop for. Here is an easy solution! Ask them what their favorite YouTuber or Podcaster is and see if that influencer has a merchandise shop. You could find branded T-Shirts, hoodies, and coffee mugs that will be a surprise of a gift! And the bonus is that purchasing from a content creator's merchandise store supports the videos and podcast shows that are making our community so enjoyable and diverse.

Nutrition is of prime importance for us chameleon keepers and this requires a great deal of work in the care and keeping of our feeder insects. Those crickets coming from the pet store are likely empty shells and need to be fed to be useful! The Repashy Bug Burger product is a powder that can be tied with boiling water and will turn into a nutritious gelatin that can be cut into squares and fed to your feeder insects. This save enormous amounts of time! So I describe my Day 5 gift giving pick of Repashy Bug Burger!

Mountain Dragons is a photo journal recording the travels of Jan Stipala across the highlands of Kenya to document the chameleon species there. It is the most beautiful book we have in the chameleon community and is my day 3 pick for great gifts for people that love chameleons. This book is a wonderful one to cuddle up with and would actually be a great gift for anyone who enjoys reptiles or just wants to learn more about the natural world.

My choice for the second gift giving recommendation is a cup of Black Soldier Fly Larva! BSFL (as the are called) are a nutritious feeder that can give your chameleon diet variety. The bonus is that they start as grubs, which chameleons love, and turn into flies, which chameleons love! So, take a listen as to how you can treat that special chameleon in your life!

Join me for 12 days of chameleon gift recommendations where I publish one recommendation a day for the next 12 days!

My pick for day 1 of the Chameleon gift giving season is the Repti-Riser by Jason King of Kings Reptiles on Etsy. This innovative product provides an elegant solution to our problem of lifting UVB lights off the top of the cage!

Today we are going to talk about going into this holiday season thinking about the chameleon community. We’ll talk about how we can make a difference just by supporting the small business and content creators that are out there right now. You can even do meaningful support without spending money! Let’s care for our community like we care for our chameleon environments!

If you have an interest in reptiles and sharing that interest with others you can do so by joining the growing number of reptile educators and influencers. But you have to decide just what kind of influencer you want to be. In this episode I talk about what is involved in becoming a reptile community educator.

Today we are going to learn how to determine the sex of hatchling panther chameleons. It is tricky, but a skill that can be learned. Carolyn Laframboise from Frams Chams will be joining me and share with us her method of giving that ID to panther chameleons.  

Today I talk with Jan Stipala about what kinds of environments Jackson’s Chameleons are found in. Jan is the author of Mountain Dragons which is our community’s most beautiful book on chameleons. To author this book he travelled the mountains of Kenya documenting the chameleon species there. But today will be strictly Jackson’s Chameleons. I wanted to know what the environmental conditions were like if one was to stand in their natural habitat.

Today I talk about the pregnancy period of the Jackson’s Chameleon to help you understand the steps before the babies are born. The live bearing nature of Jackson's Chameleons can be a mystery, but there are things that we can notice. In this episode I talk about the different stages of pregnancy in the Jackson's Chameleon.

Today I talk with the creative force behind the Neptune the Chameleon show on YouTube and Tik Tok. We talk about what it takes to put on  show in good chameleon husbandry and what insights she has to the state of chameleon education on the frontier edge of social media platforms.

Those of us dedicated to the art of chameleon husbandry have recreating the ideal conditions as our primary goal. Determining ideal conditions starts with understanding the wild conditions our chameleon species developed within. But then it must be translated into an execution in our captive environment. Today I talk about how we extract ideal conditions from wild environmental data and what the limitations of doing that are.

Chameleon behavior is a window into what is going on in their lives. It is one of the ways they communicate with us if we have learned the language to hear what they are saying. Today I go over the basics of what behaviors mean. We will talk about the difference between a behavior that is showing an emotional issue and a behavior that is showing a medical condition.

Chameleons have cryptic ways about them. And being mysterious is how they survive. But being cryptic and mysterious also hides illness and that is what we chameleon keepers want to know about right away! Today I talk about the subtle first behavioral warning signs of illness in chameleons.

Good morning Chameleon Wranglers! Today we are continuing our conversation about chameleon cage type. Today we talk with Dr. Chris Anderson who shares his experiences in a wide range of conditions and why selecting glass sides enclosures was right for him.

Deciding on a cage type for your chameleon can be confusing. You hear that chameleons have to be in screen cages but you have all these advanced users using hybrid or even glass cages. Today I am talking with Jonathan Hill of iPardalis about why he chose to use hybrid caging for his breeding program.

The reptile community needs to be strong. And to accomplish that we need to be strong in our smaller communities. Whether chameleon, bearded dragon, green tree python, tarantula, or dart frog or all the others we need to maintain a strong specialized community while, at the same time, realizing we are part of a larger national and still larger global community. Today I am going to talk about what it takes for us to make our specialized communities strong.

Summer is approaching and it is time to take advantage of natural sunlight for your chameleons. Today we will talk about take your chameleon outside safely.

What do you do when the chameleon experts contradict each other? You just want to set up your chameleon right the first time. Why can't anyone agree on how to do it? In this episode I talk about how to reconcile different experts saying different things.

Getting your chameleon cage set-up right from the beginning is critical for your success. It starts with getting the right cage, lighting, and hydration equipment. Today I will lay out the shopping list to prepare for a Chameleon.

This is your audio care guide for Panther Chameleons. Today we will review the entire care summary to get you started on the right foot.

I take you along with me as I create an egg laying bin for a rare species of chameleon, Trioceros cristatus. By providing multiple egg laying topographies we can allow her to choose what feels best to her chameleon mind.

One of the more exciting times in your chameleon keeping life is when you have decided on a Panther Chameleon and now have to choose what locale and which breeder. Today, I talk about the choices and issues you will run into when selecting a Panther Chameleon!

The most common chameleon to be kept is probably the veiled chameleon. But it is one of the most impressive of chameleons. Today I talk about what you should consider when considering a Veiled Chameleon. Considering how wide spread veiled chameleons are one might think there isn’t much to think about when getting one. And, that is why so many people have trouble with Veiled Chameleons! So, this episode is going to parse apart the situation. I would love for people to be able to start off right with this incredible chameleon.

There are special considerations when buying each species of chameleon. But the Jackson’s Chameleon has more pitfalls than most. Today we will go into what to consider when buying a Jackson’s Chameleon and how to avoid making a mistake that could bring an unwelcome surprise or even heartbreak.

In this first episode of season six I answer the five questions most often asked by people interested in becoming chameleon keepers. It is important to understand what a chameleon is like before getting one to ensure that you are the right fit for one. If you are excited to allow your chameleon to be what a chameleon is then this can be the start of a long, enriching experience. So, I explain what a chameleon is to allow you to make an informed decision!

We have come to the close of Season five of the Chameleon Academy podcast. In this final episode of the season I am going to review 2020 through the eyes of a chameleon keeper.

The ZooMed Chameleon Kit is one of the most common starting points for chameleon keepers. But one soon learns that it must be upgraded. Unfortunately, this isn’t always expected by the new keeper. And it must often be done with an urgency that requires guidance. In today’s episode I review the transition from the Chameleon Kit to the final cage set-up. 

When you step into the chameleon world you find yourself in an immense undiscovered country. You never realized how many species of chameleons there are! So how do you go about learning the species just listed for sale? Today, I take you along with me as I gather information on a rarely available Captive Hatched chameleon species.

We hear about screen cages and we hear about glass cages. But what are these hybrid cages? Today I introduce you to the benefits of keeping chameleons in hybrid cages, how to use them, and even how to make your own.

Crested geckos are common place pet lizards that are available from private breeders all the way to big box pet stores. They are hardy and so are quite popular. If you work during the day and come home right before your chameleon starts to turn in for the night you might find some enjoyment in this nocturnal gecko who is just getting started when the sun goes down! Today I am joined by David and Manny from TikisGeckos who got their start breeding crested geckos and now run one of the prominent reptile captive breeding facilities.

One of the most important parts of creating a suitable living environment for our chameleons is the plant life we place in their home. Today I am joined by Bonnie Person of Verdant Vivariums and she will be giving us the basics of how to keep plants happy.

Temporal Gland Infections are a bane of the keeper of the Jackson’s Chameleon. The Jackson’s is the most common of the chameleons with a temporal gland and infections tend to set in. What is this gland and how do we treat it? Today I am joined by Dr. Tom Greek and we discuss this medical issue.

Anyone who has tried to take a picture of a chameleon has found out that it isn’t that easy. They actively plot against you and your Instagram aspirations. So, in an effort to figure out how I can take better pictures of my chameleons I searched out the person who is not only the most prolific chameleon photographer of our time, but her work looks great. Perhaps some of that could rub off on me with just a podcast interview and ten short years of dedicated practice. Of course, I speak of Briana O’Brien who is the photographer from Kammerflage Kreations. She fills their social media accounts with a great deal of eye candy every week.

Today I have the honor of sharing with you a part of our early chameleon community. A multigenerational breeding project in the US which started in 1967. It was modelled off of a German project that took Jackson’s Chameleons to the F3 generation and a Southern California reptile club decided to replicate the experiment. I will be bringing on Jeff Hattem who, as a young man, was part of this project. Please join me in a view into our past.

This week we wrap up our study on the Green Tree Python by me asking Patrick Holmes to lead us through the steps for us to get started with this beautiful snake. One of the most interesting things about this interview, from a high level, was seeing the parallels between our communities. You will hear some very familiar statements. Because they are the truth in all of our communities. I invite you to listen in and enjoy the conclusion of our study into the Green Tree Python with Patrick Holmes.

Green Tree Pythons are a quintessential arboreal serpent. With that arboreal nature comes some specific husbandry techniques. Today, Patrick Holmes returns to guide us through part one of Green Tree Python husbandry.

Green Tree Pythons fit the bill as an arboreal reptile with a dedicated community that surrounds it. This is important to us because they have studied there reptile as deeply as we have studied ours and we can both benefit from each other’s efforts. And, if there is one snake that would be a natural transition for us, Green Tree Pythons (or their boa counterpart, the Emerald Tree) would be top of the list for many of us.

The Nepenthes Tropical Pitcher plants are one of the most striking plants we can include in our chameleon environments. Their leaves sport ornate carnivorous pitchers at the ends and they add a flash of adventure to our plantscape. With me is Jeremiah Harris to share his expertise in this exciting genus.

Nighttime temperature drops are an important part of chameleon husbandry. Today, I talk with Petr Necas about understanding why they are important and what they mean for us providing the best captive care possible.

Chameleon husbandry is made up of many aspects including environmental conditions, nutrition, and emotional security. Everything we do that gets our husbandry closer to the optimal conditions strengthens our chameleon. Everything we do that is off weakens our chameleon. Today I talk about the cumulative effects of stress and how we should look at each one of these husbandry parameters.

Trioceros ellioti is a small chameleon from Eastern Africa. It is a charming species where the males and females are equally desirable as far as color and shape. It is a livebearing species with the typical care requirements of montane chameleons. Ease of husbandry and hardiness of this species make it a prime candidate for establishing in captivity.