Is a humidifier necessary?

[BenjiTheCham]

I have been reading that you should keep your enclosure at a high humidity at night and I have a few questions:
1) Is a humidifier necessary to keep the humidity up at night?
2) are there any other ways to keep humidity up at night? Obviously I will get on if I have to, but a humidifier is just another expense.
3) what is the reasoning behind a high humidity at night?
I haven’t set up my tank yet (it’s going to be a bioactive glass tank and will be set up Thursday and I will get my cham mid-June) and I’m not sure if I’ll have slang trouble keeping the humidity up at night anyway, but I figure I need to figure this out now before I end up making a quick trip to the store to get one. My house is pretty dry because we always either have air conditioning or heat on, so I’m not sure.

Thanks for any advice

 

[Multivitamins]

Set everything up before getting the Chameleon and use a hydrometer (and thermometer respectively to set up basking branch and spots. ) To understand your ambient humidity. Live plants will help as will using a glass enclosure.

A naturalistic set up will have condensation from an overnight temp drop so misting overnight or using a humidifier would replicate this. and then at lights on / sun up there is few / mist for the sleepy Chameleon to wake up to and hydrate / breath moist air in while it sleeps to stay hydrated. (Also with lower heat humidity doesn't present as large a risk of a infection. So it's preferable to mist when it's not the hottest part of the day) There is a wealth of information available from Bill strand he can elaborate on the topic further check him out here

https://chameleonacademy.com/

From a keepers quality of life viewpoint I really would recommend using a mistking or cymist or even monsoon pump will allow you to automate your mist cycle to keep moisture in the air at night.

In my personal experience the mist king is worth your money. you can program the times you want to to go off and sync it with sun up /down lights on/ off to create a natural effect.

I don't have the space or outlets to run the ultrasonic misters that others use. I cannot speak from experience with them but know they are highly regarded.

 

[BenjiTheCham]

Thank you for all the info!

It works out because I’m getting my shipment from Josh’s Frogs on Thursday and I can set up my enclosure. And I’m going out of town for the second week of June and will purchase my cham afterwards. This will give me time to run my MistKing and set up everything on Timers to get into a good rhythm. I’m going to have to buy a new hygrometer, though. I bought one of the cheap hygrometers (zoo med or something) and it was NOT accurate at all, the reviews say the same. I think I’ll buy a digital one.

Tbh thinking about it now, I don’t think I’ll have an issue with holding in humidity with the enclosure being glass and bioactive.

 

[bbyoda]

Thank you for all the info!

It works out because I’m getting my shipment from Josh’s Frogs on Thursday and I can set up my enclosure. And I’m going out of town for the second week of June and will purchase my cham afterwards. This will give me time to run my MistKing and set up everything on Timers to get into a good rhythm. I’m going to have to buy a new hygrometer, though. I bought one of the cheap hygrometers (zoo med or something) and it was NOT accurate at all, the reviews say the same. I think I’ll buy a digital one.

Tbh thinking about it now, I don’t think I’ll have an issue with holding in humidity with the enclosure being glass and bioactive.

A few people on here (myself included) use a tile that sends temp and humidity data to your smartphone via Bluetooth. You can set a range and set it to alert you, and track humidity changes and trends over days, weeks and months. Here's the brand I have - it's $20 right now on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R586J37/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_h8jXEb3QWYBEA