dehydration with misters?

[nightcrawler]

so whenever my misters go off my cham runs to the top of the cage
to his basking area. he sits there till he heats up again.
i felt the mist it is pretty cold even tho i have a fishtank heater and
when i lazer it it says the temp is85-88 degrees. when i first got it
i didnt use a dripper for the first two days but now im back to using it.
i dont no if he doesnt drink from the mist because its too cold and he
gets a chill or if he just gets freeked out. his eyes look a little sunken in
to me, but they always do even when they arent. his poo is fine with white
tips and all.

will it take them a while to get used to drinking from a mister?

i cut down the misting time because i thought that he was getting too
cold from it so they only go off 4-12(max) minutes at a time. every two
hours. it ususally is going off 5 minutes.
i think 5 minutes is enough for the leaves and everything to get wet,
but i dont know if he even drinks any of the water off of the leaves.

any ideas?

 

[Chameleons Northwest]

Yes it does take them time to get used to anything, especially a mister. 5 minutes every 2 hours seems a bit excessive for a veiled. What kind of mister are you using?

 

[Dankmeleon]

Yes it does take them time to get used to anything, especially a mister. 5 minutes every 2 hours seems a bit excessive for a veiled. What kind of mister are you using?

it seemed a bit excessive to me at first as well, but you have to remember these are low flow misting systems and five minute increments may be the only choice besides 1 minute increments


also nightcrawler buddy, the warm water is great for your chams but I need to let you know that in a resovoir, anything above 78 degrees is considered a high breeding ground for algae and bacteria

algae and bacteria grow under these temperatures as well, but the the heat speeds things up, much like it does other things, the extra energy provided would be exactly what that slime needs to thrive.

We must be cautious....

it seems great to hit them with warm water, i don't have another solution....

my advice would be to ad a small submersible pump into your res so the water isn't sitting stagnant!
aquarium airstones can help too but not nescesary
also i would highly reccomend sanitizing your lines and resovoir as often as you feel sliminess! or res regularly and lines every couple months or so

you have to be really careful, we don't want to do our chams more harm in the pursuit of helping them out and making our setups better. it goes with the old addage

 

[summoner12]

it seemed a bit excessive to me at first as well, but you have to remember these are low flow misting systems and five minute increments may be the only choice besides 1 minute increments


also nightcrawler buddy, the warm water is great for your chams but I need to let you know that in a resovoir, anything above 78 degrees is considered a high breeding ground for algae and bacteria

algae and bacteria grow under these temperatures as well, but the the heat speeds things up, much like it does other things, the extra energy provided would be exactly what that slime needs to thrive.

We must be cautious....

it seems great to hit them with warm water, i don't have another solution....

my advice would be to ad a small submersible pump into your res so the water isn't sitting stagnant!
aquarium airstones can help too but not nescesary
also i would highly reccomend sanitizing your lines and resovoir as often as you feel sliminess! or res regularly and lines every couple months or so

you have to be really careful, we don't want to do our chams more harm in the pursuit of helping them out and making our setups better. it goes with the old addage

I haven't had any slime in my tank... I've been using it for maybe a year now? Maybe its time to clean it out. As for the heater... I hadn't thought about the bacteria acceleration factor. I have been thinking up ideas for how to heat the water in my setup. I am almost at the point where I am willing to experiment with heat coils from Home Depot that go in household water heater tanks. I bet they could get the water pretty warm pretty quick then turn off when not in use. I bet I could get some kind of thermostat for the tank...... Things to look into.

 

[Dave Weldon]

Howdy,

Having mist nozzle water with an exit temperature of 90-100F has been my goal for quite some time. I've made my own heaters as well as played around with a 300W Hydor inline heater. I've even had to use a 25W aquarium tank heater just to keep the tank water above 70F (rather than 60F) on cold winter days. The inline Hydor heater adds about 20F to the water to get it to around 90F after it leaves the tank just before the pump. From the pump there might be as much as 10-20 feet of pulyurethane tubing before the water gets to my homemade heaters. The homemade heaters are 3 feet of 1/4" copper tubing wrapped with insulated nichrome heat wire powered by old laptop PC power bricks on timers. The copper tubing is connected right to the nozzle! The water going through Hydor heater tends to loose 10F in the 10-20 feet of poly lines on the way up to the copper and nozzles (multiple enclosures with their own nozzles) so each copper heater line pops it up from about 80F back to ~90F again. Also, if you really want to retain more heat in the misted water, use a coarser mist nozzle. I like the "cream" colored (color coded for volume and pattern) ones for their larger mist droplet size. I've also set the pump pressure down to about 30-40psi (instead of 75psi) which further increases the droplet size and reduces the volume of water used. The cream colored nozzle still has an adequate spray pattern to cover the enclosure area that I want wetted. There are at least 6 different colored nozzles available so if you do intend to use a different one than the typical red nozzle most often supplied, get a sample of several colors. I really want someone to either find an OEM industrial source for a “copper line heater” or go into the business of making them. Just a copper line water heater attached directly to the nozzle should be the only heater needed to heat water for misting. My copper line heater doesn't get cold water quite hot enough by itself because the PC power supply voltage needs to be 25% higher for the wire resistance that I happen to be using. The aquarium tank heater and the Hydor inline heater are just "patches" until a real solution is available.

When they want to, my chameleons will come right under their nozzle and literally take a 15-20 minute warm shower!

 

[nightcrawler]

Yes it does take them time to get used to anything, especially a mister. 5 minutes every 2 hours seems a bit excessive for a veiled. What kind of mister are you using?

im useing the hobbiest from herpmist. what do you think would be a
good amount to set the timer to? every 4 hours?

i was starting to think that it wasnt enough becuase his eyes started to get
a little sunkin in.

it seemed a bit excessive to me at first as well, but you have to remember these are low flow misting systems and five minute increments may be the only choice besides 1 minute increments


also nightcrawler buddy, the warm water is great for your chams but I need to let you know that in a resovoir, anything above 78 degrees is considered a high breeding ground for algae and bacteria

algae and bacteria grow under these temperatures as well, but the the heat speeds things up, much like it does other things, the extra energy provided would be exactly what that slime needs to thrive.

We must be cautious....

my advice would be to ad a small submersible pump into your res so the water isn't sitting stagnant!
aquarium airstones can help too but not nescesary
also i would highly reccomend sanitizing your lines and resovoir as often as you feel sliminess! or res regularly and lines every couple months or so

no i can use one minute incs on my timer. im going to have to give
the idea of bacteria another thought.

how does everyone else control bacteria in their tanks?

Howdy,

Having mist nozzle water with an exit temperature of 90-100F has been my goal for quite some time. I've made my own heaters as well as played around with a 300W Hydor inline heater. I've even had to use a 25W aquarium tank heater just to keep the tank water above 70F (rather than 60F) on cold winter days. The inline Hydor heater adds about 20F to the water to get it to around 90F after it leaves the tank just before the pump. From the pump there might be as much as 10-20 feet of pulyurethane tubing before the water gets to my homemade heaters. The homemade heaters are 3 feet of 1/4" copper tubing wrapped with insulated nichrome heat wire powered by old laptop PC power bricks on timers. The copper tubing is connected right to the nozzle! The water going through Hydor heater tends to loose 10F in the 10-20 feet of poly lines on the way up to the copper and nozzles (multiple enclosures with their own nozzles) so each copper heater line pops it up from about 80F back to ~90F again. Also, if you really want to retain more heat in the misted water, use a coarser mist nozzle. I like the "cream" colored (color coded for volume and pattern) ones for their larger mist droplet size. I've also set the pump pressure down to about 30-40psi (instead of 75psi) which further increases the droplet size and reduces the volume of water used. The cream colored nozzle still has an adequate spray pattern to cover the enclosure area that I want wetted. There are at least 6 different colored nozzles available so if you do intend to use a different one than the typical red nozzle most often supplied, get a sample of several colors. I really want someone to either find an OEM industrial source for a “copper line heater” or go into the business of making them. Just a copper line water heater attached directly to the nozzle should be the only heater needed to heat water for misting. My copper line heater doesn't get cold water quite hot enough by itself because the PC power supply voltage needs to be 25% higher for the wire resistance that I happen to be using. The aquarium tank heater and the Hydor inline heater are just "patches" until a real solution is available.
[/IMG]

wow.
if i was a chameleon i would want you as a caregiver.
i dont know the temp of the mist as it comes out of my nossels,
but i was playing around with my temp gun and in the bucket it is 87,
on the tube (there is a max of 8 feet of tubing) its about 84, and at the
tip of the nossel its 80. everytime i try to get the mist it shoots right
past it, like a lazer would. have you had any problems with bacteria
with your containers? are they open toped or closed?


thanks guys.

(on a side note my misters just shut off as i was writing this and i seen him
shoot his toung at the water drops.)

 

[Todnedo]

This might work

http://www.tanklesswaterheaters.com/minitank2-5.html

 

[Dave Weldon]

...herpmist. what do you think would be a
good amount to set the timer to? every 4 hours?

i was starting to think that it wasnt enough becuase his eyes started to get
a little sunkin in.

...i dont know the temp of the mist as it comes out of my nossels,

...have you had any problems with bacteria with your containers? are they open toped or closed?

Howdy,

I use the same pump as the Herpmist that you mentioned. I like to reduce the pressure by adjusting the tiny hex screw on the front of the pump. Turn it out a couple of turns to get it closer to 40psi. I like to run 15-20 minutes at 8am and 2pm. That much time has a higher likelihood of being long enough to trigger their drinking process.


Keep in mind that sunken eyes are often an indication of a health/stress issue of which dehydration is one of many possibilities.

A good indicator of misting water temp is to just stick your hand 2 inches away from the mist nozzle and if the water doesn't feel cold it is probably not going to chase away your chameleon.

My 5 gallon "tank" has a lid. I give it a cleaning every week or two just to make sure that growing thingies don't get out of control. I'd guess that you could get away with water warmer than `75F in your tank if you clean it more often.

 

[Dave Weldon]

This might work

http://www.tanklesswaterheaters.com/minitank2-5.html

Howdy,

I thought long and hard about using a tankless water heater but I kept coming back to the issue of the existing cold water in the lines up to the nozzles and the loss of heat between the tank and the nozzles. These are things that can be solved by existing workarounds but I'm still hoping that someone will come up with an inline tubing heater (like mine ) that puts heat in right up to the nozzle tip. As one example of a workaround, I even put in a bypass valve system that flushes the lines of cold water before pressure is allowed to build-up for misting. All of these Rube Goldberg contraptions could be eliminated with someone finding/producing the inline tubing heater that I mentioned. I suggested this idea to Pro-Products (ProMist) more than a year ago and he said the UL issues were too much for him to be interested in making it. That's why I think finding an existing commercial product would be best.

On the other hand, if your chameleon likes cold showers, forget I ever mentioned it . (Would a cold shower cause a male Jackson's chameleon to be less horny ?)

 

[summoner12]

This might work

http://www.tanklesswaterheaters.com/minitank2-5.html

I was looking at the specs. Output temp range is 50-140*F. Does that seem like it would be enough Dave? I might consider using this. $134 isn't all that bad.

This type of heater would work on my system. But is it warm enough?

 

[LaserGecko]

Use the dripper in combination with the misting.

We have some of those tankless inline water heaters at work in the bathrooms. I don't think most people have 208V, 30A circuits in their cham rooms. Let me see if I can get my hands on those 120V jobs. That's the first time I've seen "regular" voltage units like that.

I just found a Shower Head heater for $80. Unfortunately, it takes a 30amp circuit, too.

 

[summoner12]

Use the dripper in combination with the misting.

We have some of those tankless inline water heaters at work in the bathrooms. I don't think most people have 208V, 30A circuits in their cham rooms. Let me see if I can get my hands on those 120V jobs. That's the first time I've seen "regular" voltage units like that.

Free shipping anywhere in the lower 48... not bad and its 120v. I am very tempted to purchase one.

 

[Professor Booty]

My veiled demands hot showers only. He'll sit in a hand-sprayed mist only if the water is practically boiling when i put it into the sprayer. Once it's in mist-form it cools down a TON and is only warm to the touch.

I was looking at the specs. Output temp range is 50-140*F. Does that seem like it would be enough Dave? I might consider using this. $134 isn't all that bad.

This type of heater would work on my system. But is it warm enough?

If i get the chance I'll measure the temp of 140*F water coming out of my hand sprayer with my laser. That should give you a rough idea.

 

[shaneandjennifer]

In my limited experience with my veiled he looked the best and most hydrated when I was feeding him hornworms. They have a lot of moisture in them, so when I was feeding him hornworms daily, he would never drink from the misters. Maybe try hornworms.

 

[summoner12]

If i get the chance I'll measure the temp of 140*F water coming out of my hand sprayer with my laser. That should give you a rough idea.

Thanks! let me know how it goes.

 

[Professor Booty]

Thanks! let me know how it goes.

My methods were far from rigorous or scientific, but the mist appeared to be about 90-100 degrees F.

 

[summoner12]

My methods were far from rigorous or scientific, but the mist appeared to be about 90-100 degrees F.

Thanks, Professor Booty.