hey guys i have a jacksons chameleon and i was wondering how many hours of light everyone would suggest me to put on him?

I am finding some sites say 8-10 and some say 12-14... there's quite a difference, any help would be appreciated

Usually 12 hours is the common. Most chams orginate near the equater so 12 on 12 off should be fine.

Frank

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1.0 Chamaeleo calyptratus

Life is a chameleon, who's color is fit argument for fools.

thanks for the advice, you guys are AWESOME, ive gotten soo much help from this site its AMAZING

I've seen this question a few times, and have often thought about setting the lights to mimic what the chameleons would be exposed to naturally.

I did some research on the web, and compiled the table below. It shows the amount of daylight hours (from sunrise to sunset) in the capitals of Madagascar (where most species are from) and Yemen (where the Veiled species orginates) on the 15th of each month of the year.
(I'm not sure how to post tables to the forum: sorry if the alignment of the columns is a bit off)

Month Yemen Madagascar
------ ------ ------------
Jan.... 11h19... 13h09
Feb.... 11h39... 12h42
Mar.... 12h02... 12h13
Apr.... 12h29... 11h40
May... 12h51... 11h13
Jun.... 13h02... 11h00
Jul...... 12h58... 11h06
Aug.... 12h39... 11h38
Sep.... 12h13... 11h59
Oct.... 11h48... 12h30
Nov.... 11h25... 13h00
Dec.... 11h03... 13h16

This might serve as a guide as to how much light to provide to your chameleons throughout the year. As you can see, 12hrs is quite a good approximation. And perhaps this can be adjusted to give an hour's extra light in summer, and an hour less in winter.

You can get the sunrise/sunset times for most locations at http://www.timeanddate.com/

hmmmm, this might explain why my chams have always "slowed" down a little in the winter. I never thought about tweaking his light hours down, I bet the little guy is just too tired from all the light.

Taking the hours down can give you plants a chance to rest. A plant such a hibiscus will not usually flower under twelve. If it does they will be very underdeveloped and not to straining on the plant.

Nice touch Tygerr. I love when people use information like that.

could you re-worl or elaborate on the plant part. I don't think I understood corectly

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I have grown to have a severe distaste for brevity.

Well let me start by saying this is a friend of mine that has been doing that he use a metal halide light I believe (could be mercury vapor). He works the lighting up to 14 hours in the summer and down to 10ish in the winter. The plants seems to stay semi dorminant during the winter. Producing smaller weaker buds as the lighting goes down. As the timing goes up the buds get bigger. I personally do not like high intensity discharge lighting. A specific incadescent plant growing bulb in place of the basking bulb would probably be sufficient to accomplish this. I read something on Hibisicus the other day but could not find it for referance on this post. It said that they required a certain wave length that only a more specialized light bulb could reproduce. Hibisicus do better in general with some down time in the year so they do not burn themselves out.

As with alot of hydroponics growers 12/12 keeps flowering plants in the vegation state. 18/6 is perfered to make the best buds. I guess with that, this could be alot of the reason chameleon owners that use thes plants run into problems with keeping them healthy. I do not know if ClmrJ used actual sunsetting (and sunrise) or visible light in that schedule

What about newborn babies,would you leave the heat source on all the time or would they be like the adult's and cope with the cooler temps.

The juvenilles can take pretty signifigant drops to. I would not really worry about it. You are warm blooded so it is doubtful that you would keep your house low enough to really be concerned with it. Alot of owners draw the line at 50 degrees. If my house where 50 I would be shivering like crazy (I do not do good in cool weather).