IPMA Creatures LLC

Took some weights on our carpet chameleons we received from Living Art by Frank Payne a few months ago. About 5 grams on Gerti (green female) and about 4 on Elliot (brown/red male). Only a bit over four inches tip to tip.

So…not breeding time yet, but they sure are cute!

Well! Some exciting news today. Only found one so far (and apparently she doesn’t like the laying bin we provided), but we’ll hopefully have a new Chahoua gecko joining the family.

EDIT: found the second one. It was up high. We think the first fell and it has a bit of a crack. Crossing our fingers.

So we had some really sad news, but it may be blossoming into some real positives.

Joanna, our “rescue” Veiled Chameleon female, that we bought from a local large pet store because we just felt so bad for her (and the staff were calling her “spicy” saying other interested parties had passed on her, and which they discounted deeply for us) passed away after about five days following her egg-laying. We did everything in our power to save her and we could sometimes get her to eat and we could get her to drink and we got her to take a calcium supplement. But she had struggled for sooo long digging that we think she just ran herself empty of energy and gave up. (Like Padme Amidala?)

However, surprisingly, all her eggs are staying VERY healthy and today we found some veining on one of them that we candled. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? Potentially up to 48 Joanna Jr’s! (We all know the big stores and their breeders often house multiple veiled in the same enclosures so…looks like we got lucky! …or she did at some point? 🤔😆)

Meanwhile, we have cleaned her habitat and have decided to go bioactive for my precious “Azul”—a female Ambanja Panther we purchased from Jason Vivid Chameleons & Habitats at a recent Expo. (Still going to setup with you soon for our store, Jason!)

We are doing bioactive—a first for our chameleons. But we like it so much for our geckos we’re going to do it now for our Chameleons too. This one will have a Japanese rural/historical theme. We are starting with the inclusion of our Lace Leaf Japanese Maple we took from our yard. Ten years and this year a cold snap really killed the majority of it off. So this is a little bit of a tree rescue too!

Then Melanie is using her new filament printer to create decor for the rear/side glass (in part to help give a little more privacy.)

We’ll post the completed project soon.

Ruby Rhod taking his daily requested trip around the house. (Such a weird Chameleon.)

Randall in the last shot coming out for silkworm snacks thanks to BeastMode Silks West. (We had to lure him a bit. So food motivated. We were actually weighing him because his cask continuously makes us think he’s too chubby despite cutting food some. But no. He’s a healthy 157 grams.)

Recent shed (this morning) for our male 7 year old Chahoua Gecko. He’s looking very handsome!

Well, the first laying from our “rescued” veiled chameleon was 48 eggs.

…we might have over compensated on feeding as nervous first time grand parents.

She’s healthy and doing well after just about two weeks of digging and finally laying last night. (That time frame was the part that kept making us nervous.)

Haven’t posted about the IPMA Critters for a hot moment as we’re very busy this week with preschool and kindergarten graduations, planting trees, and repairing the old Yukon for a road trip in June.

So, we wish those of you in the US a happy Memorial Day.

Today’s a BIG day!

Joanna (our one veiled chameleon…for now) is FINALLY laying her first clutch of eggs! (Not fertilized but exciting making progress with our chameleons that we started out with as juveniles.)

A really big thanks to Cham. Co. For talking with us and the encouragement at the May Wasatch Reptiles, and for Neptune the Chameleon for helping to coach Shaunalie the past couple years on husbandry, and to Living Art by Frank Payne for helping coach indirectly as well by talking us through the carpet chameleon husbandry for the two carpets we got from him this year.

All animals are doing very well we think. And we think we’ve even got our Jackson’s temperatures sorted in our hot desert environment.

As an extra treat, we got an action shot of one of Elite Exotics Buffalo girls he sent us this week: Bubbles taking her shot with hand feeding!