New Veiled 4months

I just got this guy today. How does he look? He ate some crickets when we got home and has been basking today. This is my first go with these guys any advice?



Also, yes he is in a aquarium please don't freak. His screen cage is in the mail on the way. I was asked to come pick him up a week early. New pics when the cage arrives.

Ok well .... his baskin temps should be about 80 degrees as a baby. Humidity at 50 -60%. Live plants are always beter. Go to the safe plant list for those. Use organic soil, no fertalizers....vields are known plant eaters. Use dripper mister. No waterfalls....they grow bacteria. Make sure he's getting good ventalation until his screen cage comes.no substrate. It can cause impaction if ententialy or acidently eaten. No coil uvb bulbs. Only long tube reptisuns or reptiglows. DO RESEARCH. Unless you alredy have before purchase like I hope you did....goog luck and take care of him well.

He looks about 3-4 months. You can sex him by looking for spurs on the back hindges of his back legs. If there's no spurs or bumps. Its female. If there are its male. If its female research will need to be done for egg laying issues and proper egg care

ok mine does not look like that and I was told mine is around 4months.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44910169@N07/4310239648/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44910169@N07/4309505149/in/photostream/

Sorry if blurry. Anyone guess mines age?

Here is some information for you:

http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.com/

-Brad

its hard to tell unless there's an object next to the chameleon that's a known size. Some chams get larger causqes then others faster or slower

Thanks

Thanks for the info I am right on track so far. He does indeed have "spurs" little bumps right now. Basking is about 83. Humidity is 55. Digital with a corded probe. I am using a reptisun 10.0. I was told only to run this 4hrs a day? I broke down and started to build him a cage last night. Keeping in mind he is a clumsy baby I only went(HxWxL) 30x13x24 I am hoping this will be a good size for a little while. I will get pics up hopefully tomorrow. Going to go get a mister soon I hope. Until then I will mist twice daily. 30 secs each time. Allowing the cage to dry completely before the second misting. How often should the mister run? Also, any help with the UVB question would be great. Thanks again I have wanted a Cham for a long time and want him to have a long good life. Off to look at the safe plant list.

Use a reptisun 5.0, or you can use that but I would raise it a little from the top. Mist for 1-10 minutes every 3-4 hours or maybe a little longer if you have a dripper going and the humidity stays pretty constant.

pssh said:

Use a reptisun 5.0, or you can use that but I would raise it a little from the top. Mist for 1-10 minutes every 3-4 hours or maybe a little longer if you have a dripper going and the humidity stays pretty constant.

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10 minutes?

I would say no longer than a minute MAXIMUM or you are going to have gallons of water all over the place.
With an animal this age try the pinhole in the bottom of a cup style dripper and mist 3 times a day.

-Brad

I have never heard of running a uvb light for only 4 hrs. I have always been told that the uvb stays as long with the heat lamp until bed time. I mean the sun doesent stop putting out uvb.lol btw ur temps and humidity are perfect. Glad he has spurs....males are generaly easyer.

I know this conflicts with what everyone says, but my vet (Dr. Todd Driggers, exotic vet) stressed to me that even a ReptiSun 10.0 is not enough UVB for a veiled chameleon. He suggested a mercury vapor bulb.

10 is designed for terrestrial and desert species and anything that originates from a climate where sunlight/ultra violet light is intense. Though they in no way approximate the natural Uv,( in my opinion), which itself varies considerabley from place to place, habitat to habitat, and at different times of the day, for an aborial species that lives 90% of its life among the trees/shrubs, which screen/deflect/absorb uv anyway, a 10 should be more than sufficient (depending on screen type).
Bare in mind, I consider artificial Uv sources supplimentary and dont rely on them entirely.

While mercury vapor bulbs do output high levels of UVB for the most part, they also put out a great deal of heat, which may not suit all species (montanes for example).
Tube type UV on the other hand, emits virtually no extra heat.

Veilds do come from a warm climate, but they are still arborial and dont hang out in direct sun all day. Like any other species, they can overheat quickly.
I prefer to use a seperate Uv source (tube) specifically because the tube outputs the uvb over a broader area than your mercury vapor.
This means I can arrange perches where my veiled can bask under Uv without the heat of his basking bulb, aswell.
The regularity with which he does so, convinces me this is a suitable arrangement.
Just food for thought.

Welcome Lamesmurf, Congrats on new lizard!

Thanks all!!! This is a great forum. I will try a pin-hole in a cup and start to mist a little bit more. I did have a bit of a humidity drop today. I figured the 4hr uvb thing was way off. Its on the same timer as the basking bulb. Thanks again everyone.

OOOst16 said:

I have never heard of running a uvb light for only 4 hrs. I have always been told that the uvb stays as long with the heat lamp until bed time. I mean the sun doesent stop putting out uvb.lol btw ur temps and humidity are perfect. Glad he has spurs....males are generaly easyer.

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ive heard this from a few places, from what i understood it was to prevent eye damage... since that seems to be a problem with the compact coil bulbs, putting two and two together would suggest only to use the coils for four hours a day to prevent eye damage... something i hear is not as much as a problem with full length bulbs...


anyone care explaining to me the reason why the coiled bulbs are so bad compared to the long tubes? and where do the circle tubes come into play? the more scientific the better

no scientific answer here, but ditch the compact and get a linear tube style UVB. Many anecdotal reports of chams going blind with the compacts. Someone else can prob fill you in on the scientific reasoning. The reptisun 5.0 tube seems to be the standard. good luck.

anyone care explaining to me the reason why the coiled bulbs are so bad compared to the long tubes? and where do the circle tubes come into play? the more scientific the better

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Hows that?


Professor Frink ^

Some compacts output higher than acceptable levels of UVB and some output UVC which isnt good for anything.
Not all compact brands were 'guilty', but any mention of them illicits a knee jerk reaction.
Effects were harsh, something akin to snow-blindness (sunny day in the snow with no sunglasses), and damaged corneal cells.
Prolonged use caused a deeper effect, damaging the retina and causing permanent blindness.
(pers obs~ Rescued bearded dragon now almost totally blind from prolonged use of 10 strength compact [brand unknown])
I prefer tubes if Im going to use any artificial source anyway, simply because they output over a broader area.
As far as Im aware, circular tubes (flouro) were never designed for UVB output, just plain old ceiling lighting.

thealissa said:

I know this conflicts with what everyone says, but my vet (Dr. Todd Driggers, exotic vet) stressed to me that even a ReptiSun 10.0 is not enough UVB for a veiled chameleon. He suggested a mercury vapor bulb.

Click to expand...

Nonsense.

5.0 is plenty.

Has your vet tested the bulbs with a UVB meter?
Is he a chameleon specialist?
Does he own and care for many chameleons himself?

-Brad

jojackson said:

Hows that?

Professor Frink ^

Some compacts output higher than acceptable levels of UVB and some output UVC which isnt good for anything.
Not all compact brands were 'guilty', but any mention of them illicits a knee jerk reaction.
Effects were harsh, something akin to snow-blindness (sunny day in the snow with no sunglasses), and damaged corneal cells.
Prolonged use caused a deeper effect, damaging the retina and causing permanent blindness.
(pers obs~ Rescued bearded dragon now almost totally blind from prolonged use of 10 strength compact [brand unknown])
I prefer tubes if Im going to use any artificial source anyway, simply because they output over a broader area.
As far as Im aware, circular tubes (flouro) were never designed for UVB output, just plain old ceiling lighting.

Click to expand...

love the pic, but as for scientific i was questioning if the materials used in the bulbs differed, or due to the ballast/starter being so small in compact fluros they are made differently etc

i think i read somewhere to produce the UVB in the fluro tube they have a small bead of mercury in them, thats why you hear the "tink tink" sound when you rotate your fluro tube

How Fluorescent Lamps Work
by Tom Harris (not Prof Frink)

Let There Be Light



When an atom gains or loses energy, the change is expressed by the movement of electrons. When something passes energy on to an atom -- heat, for example -- an electron may be temporarily boosted to a higher orbital (farther away from the nucleus). The electron only holds this position for a tiny fraction of a second; almost immediately, it is drawn back toward the nucleus, to its original orbital. As it returns to its original orbital, the electron releases the extra energy in the form of a photon, in some cases a light photon.

The wavelength of the emitted light depends on how much energy is released, which depends on the particular position of the electron. Consequently, different sorts of atoms will release different sorts of light photons. In other words, the color of the light is determined by what kind of atom is excited.

This is the basic mechanism at work in nearly all light sources. The main difference between these sources is the process of exciting the atoms. In an incandescent light source, such as an ordinary light bulb or gas lamp, atoms are excited by heat; in a light stick, atoms are excited by a chemical reaction. Fluorescent lamps have one of the most elaborate systems for exciting atoms.

Down the Tubes
The central element in a fluorescent lamp is a sealed glass tube. The tube contains a small bit of mercury and an inert gas, typically argon, kept under very low pressure. The tube also contains a phosphor powder, coated along the inside of the glass. The tube has two electrodes, one at each end, which are wired to an electrical circuit. The electrical circuit, which we'll examine later, is hooked up to an alternating current (AC) supply



When you turn the lamp on, the current flows through the electrical circuit to the electrodes. There is a considerable voltage across the electrodes, so electrons will migrate through the gas from one end of the tube to the other. This energy changes some of the mercury in the tube from a liquid to a gas. As electrons and charged atoms move through the tube, some of them will collide with the gaseous mercury atoms. These collisions excite the atoms, bumping electrons up to higher energy levels. When the electrons return to their original energy level, they release light photons.

As we saw in the last section, the wavelength of a photon is determined by the particular electron arrangement in the atom. The electrons in mercury atoms are arranged in such a way that they mostly release light photons in the ultraviolet wavelength range. Our eyes don't register ultraviolet photons, so this sort of light needs to be converted into visible light to illuminate the lamp.

This is where the tube's phosphor powder coating comes in. Phosphors are substances that give off light when they are exposed to light. When a photon hits a phosphor atom, one of the phosphor's electrons jumps to a higher energy level and the atom heats up. When the electron falls back to its normal level, it releases energy in the form of another photon. This photon has less energy than the original photon, because some energy was lost as heat. In a fluorescent lamp, the emitted light is in the visible spectrum -- the phosphor gives off white light we can see. Manufacturers can vary the color of the light by using different combinations of phosphors.

Interactive Flash
http://home.howstuffworks.com/fluorescent-lamp2.htm

Conventional incandescent light bulbs also emit a good bit of ultraviolet light, but they do not convert any of it to visible light. Consequently, a lot of the energy used to power an incandescent lamp is wasted. A fluorescent lamp puts this invisible light to work, and so is more efficient. Incandescent lamps also lose more energy through heat emission than do fluorescent lamps. Overall, a typical fluorescent lamp is four to six times more efficient than an incandescent lamp. People generally use incandescent lights in the home, however, since they emit a "warmer" light -- a light with more red and less blue.

As we've seen, the entire fluorescent lamp system depends on an electrical current flowing through the gas in the glass tube. In the next section, we'll see what a fluorescent lamp needs to do to establish this current.

Fluorescent lamps are just one lighting application of a gas discharge tube. Black lights are essentially fluorescent lamps without a phosphor coating. They mostly emit ultraviolet light, which causes phosphors outside of the lamp to emit visible light (click here to learn more).

http://www.howstuffworks.com/black-light.htm

In the last section, we saw that mercury atoms in a fluorescent lamp's glass tube are excited by electrons flowing in an electrical current. This electrical current is something like the current in an ordinary wire, but it passes through gas instead of through a solid. Gas conductors differ from solid conductors in a number of ways.
In a solid conductor, electrical charge is carried by free electrons jumping from atom to atom, from a negatively-charged area to a positively-charged area. As we've seen, electrons always have a negative charge, which means they are always drawn toward positive charges. In a gas, electrical charge is carried by free electrons moving independently of atoms. Current is also carried by ions, atoms that have an electrical charge because they have lost or gained an electron. Like electrons, ions are drawn to oppositely charged areas.

To send a current through gas in a tube, then, a fluorescent light needs to have two things:

Free electrons and ions
A difference in charge between the two ends of the tube (a voltage)
Generally, there are few ions and free electrons in a gas, because all of the atoms naturally maintain a neutral charge. Consequently, it is difficult to conduct an electrical current through most gases. When you turn on a fluorescent lamp, the first thing it needs to do is introduce many new free electrons from both electrodes.
There are several different ways of doing this.

Start it Up
The classic fluorescent lamp design, which has fallen mostly by the wayside, used a special starter switch mechanism to light up the tube. You can see how this system works in the diagram below



When the lamp first turns on, the path of least resistance is through the bypass circuit, and across the starter switch. In this circuit, the current passes through the electrodes on both ends of the tube. These electrodes are simple filaments, like you would find in an incandescent light bulb. When the current runs through the bypass circuit, electricity heats up the filaments. This boils off electrons from the metal surface, sending them into the gas tube, ionizing the gas.

At the same time, the electrical current sets off an interesting sequence of events in the starter switch. The conventional starter switch is a small discharge bulb, containing neon or some other gas. The bulb has two electrodes positioned right next to each other. When electricity is initially passed through the bypass circuit, an electrical arc (essentially, a flow of charged particles) jumps between these electrodes to make a connection. This arc lights the bulb in the same way a larger arc lights a fluorescent bulb.



One of the electrodes is a bimetallic strip that bends when it is heated. The small amount of heat from the lit bulb bends the bimetallic strip so it makes contact with the other electrode. With the two electrodes touching each other, the current doesn't need to jump as an arc anymore. Consequently, there are no charged particles flowing through the gas, and the light goes out. Without the heat from the light, the bimetallic strip cools, bending away from the other electrode. This opens the circuit.


Inside the casing of a conventional fluorescent starter there is a small gas discharge lamp.

By the time this happens, the filaments have already ionized the gas in the fluorescent tube, creating an electrically conductive medium. The tube just needs a voltage kick across the electrodes to establish an electrical arc. This kick is provided by the lamp's ballast, a special sort of transformer wired into the circuit.

When the current flows through the bypass circuit, it establishes a magnetic field in part of the ballast. This magnetic field is maintained by the flowing current. When the starter switch is opened, the current is briefly cut off from the ballast. The magnetic field collapses, which creates a sudden jump in current -- the ballast releases its stored energy.






Uv lighting for reptiles