green anoles are brown

Question
My son has 3 green anoles.  Two females and one male all in the same tank.  We've had the females 18 months and added the male this summer.  The females always seem to be brown even before the addition of the male.  I rarely catch them green.  If the male is brown, I mist the tank and he turns back to green within a few seconds.  Does this mean there's not enough humidity?  What's the easiest way to check the %humidity?  They have plenty of things to hide in, but seem to prefer the hanging plants.  Tank has heat lamp at one end.  Also, I've only seen them shed once.  How often do they shed?  Do they eat the skin?  One last question, how do you pronounce anole?

Answer
Dear Jennifer
thank you for your question.
The easiest way to check the humidity is to buy a gauge. You can get digital ones, which are more expensive, but also more accurate and analog ones, wich are cheap but you may need to calibrate them once a while. To do so, put it in a small glass with really wet sand or salt and leave it there for at least 12 hours, it should then show around 100% humidity. You can get gauges that show both temperature and humidity.

Apart from the heat lamp, anoles need UV lighting to stay healthy and to help the production of vitamin D3 which reptiles need to absorp calcium. Lack of D3 or too low temperatures can make reptiles sick. Add at least one more heat lamp, it can be a normal household bulb (70-100 watt), better two so that each anole has one.

Reptiles grow all their life and shed when they do so. So juvenile anoles shed very often, while adult ones (as your females) shed approximately once a year. They partly eat their skin to get minerals ect. back.
Do you have a place where the females can lay their eggs? They can lay eggs even without a male and if they have problems to find a good place for them, they are stressed or can even become eggbound. They will lay their eggs into the substrate, into flower pots or in a box filled with moist substrate. One box per female is probably a good idea so that they don't fight for them.

It's not a good sign that the females are brown all the time, a healthy and relaxed anole should be green. The reason that an anole turns brown is either stress or illness. I recommend that you let a herp vet check a feces sample to rule anything like parasites out.
But I think that it's probably stress. Even female anoles can stress each other, especially in a too small enclosure. Three anoles should be housed in a high 30 gallon tank or something bigger so that they have room to hide from each other.

You can listen to the pronounciation of anole here:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=anole&x=0&y=0

If you don't know where to find a herp vet, you may find one near you here:
http://www.anapsid.org/vets/index.html
http://www.vin.com/vetquest/index0.html
http://www.herpvetconnection.com/

This website has excellent information on anoles:
http://www.kingsnake.com/anolecare/5.htm

I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer