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Steps

1. Keep in mind that your anoles' tank should not only be visually pleasing, but also an emulation of their ideal environment in the wild.
2. Get at least two lizards to ensure normal behavior and mental health, with no more than one male but as many females as you like. When younger, it is sometimes difficult to determine the sex of your lizards. Males always have a flap underneath their throat that inflates into a red frill for mating/territory display on occasion. When older, males are typically larger and have longer snouts than females.
3. Fill the tank evenly one or more inches with sterilized replile bark big enough that it cannot fit in the anole's mouth.
4. A heat lamp with an appropriate bulb shoud be placed off center on top of the tank. This allows for a cool side and a warm side.
5. Mist your anoles and the plants in their tank for 10 seconds 2-3 times a day. The anoles will regularly drink water from the plant leaves.
6. Feed your anoles every 2-3 days. About once a week you should dust the crickets with a vitamin supplement powder. If you keep crickets around in bulk you could "gut-load" them by feeding them a vitamin rich cricket food.

Tips

• Be prepared for your anoles to live for 3-5 years after you get them.
• To make tank cleaning easier, try putting a sheet of plastic down before you put in the substrate.
• Occasional fast prey like cockroaches or large flies will give your lizards some much needed exercise.
• Kill any red spider mites that you see in the tank. They are to anoles what ticks are to us.
• Some anoles will get infections on their snout along the mouth. This can be cleaned by gingerly and delicately wiping the snout with a cutip barely wetted in either Hydrogen Peroxide or Neosporin. Do not do this more than once a day and not for more than a few days. Don't force them the treatment though; if they try to dodge you, let them.
• Anoles only develop fat reserves in their tail. Ergo an anole with a fat tail is a well-fed anole.
• If you always drop the anoles food in the same location, they will involuntarily learn this and expect their food to be dropped there.
• Small hatchlings sometimes like to lick at citrus fruit to get trace vitamins. Additionally, old citrus fruit will attract fruit flies which are one of their two primary food sources in the wild, the other being termites.
• Small crickets go down easier than large ones. Be careful of to many excess crickets so they do not bite at the anoles.
• For easy dusting, add a small amount of vitamin powder to the plastic bag of insects and shake the bag. They will be coated. Just think "Shake-n'-Bake!"
• Males will sometimes chase females around the tank. Don't worry, this is normal mating behavior, the smaller females can easily outrun the males if they need to. I had a small female that would always outrun the male, but would also at other times approach him for coitus. Their behavior may be peculiar to us, but it is theirs, and the males will never hurt the females.
• Like people, anoles can fall asleep in the sun for longer than they intended to. While they like long days you should still put a timer on their grow light so that it is ON for 18 hours a day, so they can get 6 hours of darkness at night.

Warnings

• As with any reptiles, you should wash your hands after handling to prevent the spread of any salmonella they may have on them. Accordingly, very young children should always be supervised when handling them.
• Do not put more than one male in a tank. They will fight constantly over the limited territory.
• Do not use heating rocks or caves. They often overheat, causing burns or death.
• Do not use a 'sun lamp' or InfraRed bulbs. Many people have lost their anoles because of them literally 'cooking' in the tank.
• Do not rely soley on a water dish for your lizards' hydration; anoles will usually not drink from pools of still water. Furthermore, small hatchlings often drown in any amount of standing water.
• Only feed your anoles live food; adult anoles will not attempt to eat inanimate objects, they will starve.
• Flies alone cannot provide the lizards with fat. They will slowly starve to death much as humans did on all-rabbit diets in frontier times.
• If you are unfamiliar with an insect species but want to feed it to your lizards, research it further until you know it is neither poisonous or has stingers. Wasps, hornets, bees, wolf-spiders, and scorpions are all big NO-NOs! Even if your anole doesn't try to eat it, they can still get hurt by it in a closed cage.
• Always use a tank cover. Other pets like cats try to eat anoles.

Things You'll Need

• At least a 10-gallon, preferably a 20-gallon aquarium with a full metal-mesh lid (for strength and ventilation).
• At least one bag of substrate.
• A water spray bottle that has never been used for anything else.
• Decorations to allow hidind spots, and basking spots.
• A heat lamp with appropriate wattage bulb.
• At least one potted plant or fake plant big enough fr the anoles to rest on.
• At least one branch the length of the aquarium, for climbing.
• Vitamin powder for sprinkling on crickets.
• You can also use a small heating pad that you attach under the glass of the anoles tank
• A small shelter for privacy, such as half of a fake coconut over the heating pad