it's hot, hot, hot

Hi everyone,

It's 7:30am as I start this post and its already 80F. Unlike the past 8 weeks the humidity is at least normal for this time of year (56%)...but that's not going to last and is expected to get dry by mid day.
Warnings are out for a high of 90F and the humidity should drop to about 30%.

In fact, New York City has been having one of the hottest and driest spring and summer so far.
Normal high temps for the past 4 weeks should be about 75-85F and the humidity should be from 70%-90%.
Avg high temps have been about 89F and 35% relative humidity.
Heck, just two weeks ago we had 5 days of over 100F and only 30% humidity.

As some of you already know, I have gotten quite bit by the Quad bug, and now have 3 quads...and expect a fourth (and maybe a fifth) as soon as Luis and DGray's babies are ready.

To say this spring and summer has been hard in trying to keep such delicate animals is an understatement.
Not only has the outside temps been crazy
hot, but the humidity has been so low that with my AC running full blast it can drop my room's RH to as low as 20% on a good day.
As a result I have had to go to extreme measures to get my room temps and humidity to be good enough for my animals.

Now before I start posting just what I have done and will continue to do to achieve this, I would like to hear from others who have had to deal with such high heat AND more importantly ULTRA LOW HUMIDITY.
Please share your experiences in detail as to how you may be dealing with low relative humidity if you are in the same boat as me.

WARNING: no matter what anyone says in this thread, there is to be no lambasting.
If you don't like what someone is doing, there are ways to be respectful about it, and I expect everyone to be nice.
This thread is for anyone who needs help in keeping their chameleons happy in such dry weather...NOT TO GO NUTS ON SOME NEWBIE.

Again, I'll be back with what I've been doing shortly. So let's hear from all of you first.

Harry

Harry don't you even have a BABY Quad??? How scary for you.
I also have quads & jacksons, so I need lower temps and higher humidity. I have move all my montanes downstairs to an unfinished area of my home. The floor is still bare concrete and I have places where it is wet a good part of the time. Not planned just me being sloppy spraying and such. I addition to heavily planted cages I have several large plants in the room that are staying "very well watered" . Since I am home most of the time I monitor temps and once in a while I open the door to let out heat, mostly the temps are staying good for me. A little extra misting and my kids are good to go.

Thanks Harry!! I hope this thread offers a lot of information for us all to learn on!! I know I'll be learning a thing or three!! I currently don't have any montane's but even with my veileds I fight with humidity problems with the A/C on in the summer. I have mine in the basement where it is cooler all year round. This way it is easier to maintain constant temperatures. I too, like Laurie have my cages heavily planted as well as the room full of plants and trees. I also have an ultrasonic running most of the time. I have added and extra misting as well.

With my T.Deremensis I had them in my basement that averages 70-75F and I had a modified humidifier with piping that pumped the humidity right into the cage from the top.

Also I have a Mistking that runs 4-5 times day.

That seems to do the trick for me. I am in NJ so same weather as you.

ultrasonic humidifiers...

Last week it was warm here and I had to hook up two back-up humidifiers. There was already one that is piped into cages; the back-up ones just humidify the cage area. This, with extra-frequent hand misting ( every 45 min. ), seemed to reduce the temperatures and keep the quads happy.

When it gets very hot the girls will bury themselves in a dense bit of foliage low in the cage. I'm sure they would do this in natural habitat too, and it may give us a clue on how to keep them more comfortable: add more leaves.

Covering windows with foil, and reducing the electric lighting might be other temporary measures to reduce heat build-up.

If you air-condition, I wonder if you would consider letting your temperatures go into the high 70's ( about 26 C. ) during the day in the interest of keeping humidity up?

He Harry,

This is a great topic! We struggle with the temps every summer in FLA where temps soar over 90 for months. We run central air which does lower the RH a bit, but with such high RH during the summer months, the house stays a nice 50-60%. Temps during the summer reach 80 for a short time during midday, but usually hovers around 76-78 for the most part. I've yet to notice them try to bury themselves ever (very interesting observation by Dgray) but anything above 80 they start to gape a little. Nothing an extra misting session doesn't take care of though.

Now in the winter we have the opposite issue, temps are perfect but it's much much dryer, getting down to 20% dome days/weeks. We don't do much extra in the way of providing more RH other than running a cool mist humidifier during exceptionally dryer days/nights. All cages are misted for ten minutes 3 times a day.

It seems like you could benefit from a cool mist humidifier. They run approximately $50 and can be modified to pipe directly into a cage/s.

Good luck and keep us posted!

Luis

I've been a house right now that originally was much smaller than it is now, before my landlord bought it and doubled it in size. But the AC system is the same as it was before, which means that it can't keep up with the size. It's 90-95* outside and it's 88 inside! With the AC set to 62! So it's cheaper to just leave the AC off and have the windows open for air flow.

But this means that keeping my poor Jackson's cool has been a nightmare. At night it's cool enough for him, but during the day the poor guy doesn't know what to do with himself. I've had to set up a free range for him infront of a fan and constant misting just so he'll stay cool. I move to a new apartment tomorrow, so it'll no longer be a problem, but this summer has been horrible!

But poor Othello. I can't imagine how you guys with a whole herd of montaine species are keeping up.

For humidity, I took a small terracotta pot, soaked it in water, filled it with hydrated water crystals, covered the top with tulle. I have it hanging in the cage. When it dries out I soak it overnight in water to bring the crystals back.

I want to thank everyone who replied with how they deal with low humidity.

Just a reminder that we are sometimes not in control of what mother nature gives us and I'm now going to describe what I have had to do to combat this problem.
Again my outside temps have not only been about 10 degrees hotter then normal but the outside humidity has been at least 50% less then normal.
This should be the easiest time of year for me in regards to humidity, but sadly I feel like I just moved to Arizona.

I live in a 1 bedroom apartment just 2 blocks away from the fishing boats, located in Brooklyn.
So its cooler then the city and a nice place to have kids...Oh, chameleons too.
I had panthers for a year, so I was well prepared for what to do at each time of the year for any Quads I could get.

My set up is the following:
All the quads are hooked up to a mistking that goes off 5 times a day.
All cages are covered with towels on 3 sides...found out it works far better then plastic in retaing and resupplying humidity over time to the cages.
A cool mist humidifier is running 24/7 in my living room, and an other is directly pumping mist into the cages twice a day for an hour.
Cages well planted, and so on.

Sadly with the temps being so hot, my AC is on all day and night.
This has been killing my ambient RH and thus my cages can dry out far faster then I would like.
I do hand mist as well because I am addicted to watering my little farts...I wonder if anyone else has my problem?

At first you would think that with my setup it would be enough.
Well thankfully it has for most days.
Normaly my cages don't drop bellow 60% RH, and my temps are between 71-74F.
I find that they all can stay in the mid part of the cages at times, but they also stay at the top a lot and all 3 seem to bask during the warmest part of the day.


But when I had that 5 days of 100+ days and 30% humidity, it was time to call out for the heavy artillery...
I could not get my room temps bellow 75F and I found that at the hottest time of the days it got to 78F.
My room humidity was well bellow 30% and the leafs on the plants were drying up faster then the worst parts of my winters.
I had to find a way to get my ambient humidity up if I could.
I decided to run my shower with the bathroom door open to let the fog run into the hallway my Quads are located in.
I did this twice per day for one hour.
I also ran a pot of boiling water in my kitchen located far away from any cages to help with my living room's humidity.
Also twice per day for one hour.
I found this helped a lot but I'm thinking of getting an other cool mist humidifier for my living room for any bad days to come.

It has been an adventure for sure.
At least at 10:30PM it has cooled off to 79F. Sadly the RH outside is only 35%, so I gata fill the humidifiers again.

I do allow my cages to dry each day, but will admit that on such crazy times I didn't.

Thanks again for reading and/or posting.

Harry

Just moved to Arizona!? Bah! You are silly, it gets up to 120F here, I'd kill for 90 right now! Except today is a rare occasion that we have low 80s and sprinkles just because it's monsoon season.

My best suggestion for you with low humidity, is to get a swamp cooler. That will be your best friend on days such are these.

FroggtheCham said:

Thanks Harry!! I hope this thread offers a lot of information for us all to learn on!! I know I'll be learning a thing or three!! I currently don't have any montane's but even with my veileds I fight with humidity problems with the A/C on in the summer. I have mine in the basement where it is cooler all year round. This way it is easier to maintain constant temperatures. I too, like Laurie have my cages heavily planted as well as the room full of plants and trees. I also have an ultrasonic running most of the time. I have added and extra misting as well.

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Franie, you keep your chams inside in the summer? How dare you! We Minnesotans/Wisconsinites need to utilize these three months
I have been pretty lucky, where I am at allows for different microclimates and high humidity. I keep ALL my chameleons outside in the summer because, in the direct sun it is 90, in the sun/shade (where sun shines through the trees) it is 80, and in the shade, it is about 72, and these remain fairly steady. I am very fortunate in that aspect, and it gets down to 65 at night, so it is good for all. The humidity has been about 80% - 90% for two days now (torture) but is usually about 70%.

FFSTRescue said:

I keep ALL my chameleons outside in the summer because, in the direct sun it is 90, in the sun/shade (where sun shines through the trees) it is 80, and in the shade, it is about 72, and these remain fairly steady. I am very fortunate in that aspect, and it gets down to 65 at night, so it is good for all.

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Wish Texas it was like that... add about 10 degrees to everything you just listed.

Monkeykungphu said:

Wish Texas it was like that... add about 10 degrees to everything you just listed.

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We only have about 3 good months, so I take FULL advantage... I don't even want to think about the upcoming winter where it gets down to 10 below at times, wind chill of -20 to -30... brutal.

FFSTRescue said:

Franie, you keep your chams inside in the summer? How dare you! We Minnesotans/Wisconsinites need to utilize these three months
I have been pretty lucky, where I am at allows for different microclimates and high humidity. I keep ALL my chameleons outside in the summer because, in the direct sun it is 90, in the sun/shade (where sun shines through the trees) it is 80, and in the shade, it is about 72, and these remain fairly steady. I am very fortunate in that aspect, and it gets down to 65 at night, so it is good for all. The humidity has been about 80% - 90% for two days now (torture) but is usually about 70%.

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!!! I live by the lake though....I do take them out when I can. It doesn't warm up here enough until now to have them out!!! I wouldn't trust the temps to stay where they are supposed to, to leave them out!! I'm a chicken!! Humidity outside is perfect!! It's inside that's the problem

It's been in the 100+'s here. Right now it's 100 degrees at 8:30pm. lol! Luckily the ac keeps it nice for the chams and I spray often. There's never much humidity here, I just mist extra when it's really dry and make sure they have lots of plants.

This past week was pretty warm here... temps on the patio were around 100 hitting 106....

I stepped up the frequency on my misting for the two veileds I keep outside.

Misting is a great way to cool the air in and around a cage.

I bought a cool-mist humidifier to help keep up humidity in the dry winter months. My vet recommended the cool-mist type as opposed to warm-mist since the warm water tends to harbor bacteria (need to avoid resp. infections!!). they have them at target, and the vick's brand works pretty well (if you are looking for another.) You'll have to keep the room closed to maintain humidity but this always poses the problem of air flow...i use fans.
I also use the mist-king to mist 5 times a day.

Thanks for starting this thread. I too am dealing with high summer temps. I have been misting heavily twice daily (3 times on the weekends) and using ac. By noon the ac lines are freezing and shutting down so now I shut the house up in the morning with the ac on and then turn it off when I go to work. Family members have been instructed to keep the house closed and blinds drawn. We try to get the ac back on by 3pm. When I get desperate, I have been known to place ice-cubes on top of the screens. Also, the bask light stays off but UVB still goes on. As the day starts to cool, I open the house and let Chi-Chi bask in the evening sun for a couple hrs. She seems to enjoy watching the sun set. She remains there till morning when I am off to work.

The pygs have a 2.0 UVB which heats their environ up a bit too much so I have been turning it on early am and then again around 3pm. They are a titch more difficult to free range for natural light.

Though winter is definately cold here, it is easier to keep temps and humidity more stable during those months.

Those freezing lines are a malfunction of the AC unit.

Probably a fix for a summer or two is just to have a professional add coolant to the lines.

I was in UT in June- was actually cold LOL.

Here in Jax it has been in the 90's but with heat index up to 105+, it has been hot! You would think I would be used to it by now but this has been one of the hottest summers in a long time. I have no clue whats up with the weather but I know many of us are in for a rough season.