Chameleons are less forgiving than most of the lizards people keep. They rarely tell you they are unwell until the problem is advanced, keepers trace many captive health problems back to diet or hydration, and they will not eat something that is not moving. This guide covers which feeders to use, how to size them, why gut loading matters more here than almost anywhere else, and what to keep out of the enclosure. It is general husbandry rather than veterinary advice, and chameleons are a species where an annual vet check is standard practice rather than a precaution.
Mostly insects, with a species-specific exception
Chameleons are insectivores that hunt visually and take live, moving prey. There is no prepared diet for them and no pellet worth using.
Veiled chameleons are the exception worth knowing about. LafeberVet's care sheet for the species lists blossoms and leaves alongside insects, naming hibiscus, dandelion, ficus, romaine and escarole. Panther and Jackson's chameleons are not usually offered plant matter in the same way. If you are keeping a veiled chameleon, plants are part of the picture. For most other species, insects are essentially all of it.
Water is the other half of feeding this animal and the half most often missed. Chameleons generally do not drink from a standing bowl. LafeberVet's guidance is to mist the plants every four to eight hours or use an automatic system. Good insects do not make up for a chameleon that is not drinking.
Which feeders to use
Variety matters more for chameleons than for most species, partly because no single feeder is nutritionally complete and partly because chameleons are prone to going off a food they have had too much of.
Crickets
Crickets are the standard base feeder. They move constantly, which is exactly what a visual hunter needs, and they come in a fine enough size ladder to suit an animal from a few weeks old to full grown. They are calcium-poor relative to phosphorus, so they need dusting, and adults will bite a sleeping chameleon, so they should not be left loose overnight.
We do not sell crickets. Dubia roaches are what we sell instead.
Feeder roaches
Roaches are the other main staple. They carry more meat per insect than a cricket of the same length and they last far longer in storage. They move more deliberately than crickets, which some chameleons find less interesting and others find easier to track. Most keepers who switch report the animal adjusts within a few feeds.
Silkworms and hornworms
Silkworms are soft-bodied, low in fat, and generally regarded as one of the better feeders available. Hornworms are mostly water, which makes them useful for a chameleon that needs fluid or has gone off its food, and close to useless as a source of nutrition. Both are common in chameleon keeping precisely because chameleons benefit from rotation.
Black soldier fly larvae
Nearly every commercially raised feeder insect carries far more phosphorus than calcium. Black soldier fly larvae are the standard exception, widely reported to run the other way. They move very little, so for a visual hunter they usually need presenting in a cup where the movement of other feeders draws attention.
Feeders to keep occasional
| Feeder | Why it stays occasional |
|---|---|
| Mealworms | Hard exoskeleton relative to body mass and a poor calcium-to-phosphorus balance. Commonly flagged as a poor choice for small chameleons in particular. |
| Superworms | Fatty, and large enough that sizing needs real care. Useful for tempting an adult that has stopped eating. |
| Waxworms | The fattiest ordinary feeder, calcium-poor, and habit-forming. Chameleons will hold out for them. |
| Wild-caught anything | Not occasional. Never. Pesticide residue and parasite load, neither of which can be inspected for. |
Most of the worm feeders belong in this table rather than in the staple list, which is worth knowing before an order gets built around them.
Sizing prey to a chameleon
The usual convention applies: no feeder wider than the space between the animal's eyes. It is a conservative rule of thumb rather than a measured threshold, but chameleons have small heads relative to their apparent bulk and there is no benefit to feeding at the top of the range.
- Judge the widest part of the insect, not its length. A long silkworm and a broad adult roach are different propositions.
- Young chameleons need very small prey and a lot of it. This is the stage at which most people underestimate how small "small" has to be.
- Step up one size at a time. Chameleons that have been eating one size will often refuse a sudden jump.
- Watch a feed. A chameleon working hard to swallow is telling you the size is wrong.
Because size grading is not standardized across the trade, the safest approach is to work from actual measurements rather than size names. For roaches, the dubia roach size chart gives the length in inches behind each size name.
Gut loading and supplementation, which is where chameleons are won or lost
More than any other commonly kept species, a chameleon's health tracks what its insects ate. Metabolic bone disease is the classic captive chameleon problem and it is a supplementation and lighting failure, not a mystery.
Gut loading. Published guidance for chameleons runs longer than for most species, at roughly twenty-four to seventy-two hours of feeding the insects a proper diet before they go in. Commercial gut-load formulations are typically built to be high in calcium, because calcium is the nutrient feeder invertebrates are most reliably short of.
Dusting. The usual chameleon routine involves three separate powders: a calcium supplement with vitamin D3, a calcium supplement without it, and a reptile multivitamin. The alternation between the two calcium powders, and the frequency of the multivitamin, is the part that varies between sources and between animals. It depends on the lighting over the enclosure and on the species. Get the schedule from an exotics vet rather than from a shop page, because both under- and over-supplementation cause real disease in this group.
For the comparative nutrition figures behind the feeder choices above, the nutrition table in our bearded dragon feeder guide sets them out side by side, with sources. The guide on gut loading feeder insects covers what to feed the insects first.
What to keep out of the enclosure
- Fireflies. This is the one absolute. Fireflies contain lucibufagins, which are cardiotoxic steroidal compounds. Cornell University biologists warned in 1999 that fireflies were killing zoo and pet lizards, and a single firefly can be enough.
- Wild-caught insects. Including from your own garden. Pesticides and parasites.
- Insects left loose overnight. Crickets will bite a sleeping chameleon.
- Prey clearly over the sizing rule, even when the animal is willing to take it.
- A single feeder species fed indefinitely. Not acutely dangerous, but it is how deficiencies build.
Ordering for a chameleon
Chameleons eat a moderate number of insects daily or near-daily as juveniles, and less often as adults, so most keepers end up on a repeating order rather than occasional buying. Two things are worth planning around.
First, variety is part of the husbandry here, not a luxury. An order with two staples and one rotating extra does more for the animal than the same money spent on one species in bulk.
Second, the gut-loading window means the insects need to arrive with time to be fed properly before they are used. Buying so that feeders sit in your care for a day or two before feeding out is better practice than feeding straight from the box.
Of the feeders covered here, we sell dubia roaches, silkworms, hornworms, black soldier fly larvae and the worm feeders, all in the feeders collection. When a box lands, what to do when your feeders arrive covers the unpacking, which is where most avoidable losses happen.
This guide describes feeding a healthy animal. A chameleon that has stopped eating, is sitting with its eyes closed during the day, is swollen around the limbs, or has a soft or deformed jaw needs an exotics vet quickly. Chameleons hide illness well, and by the time the signs are obvious the margin is small.