Maintaining humidity and heat

[Graves923]

I got my first Veiled chameleon yesterday and he is settling nicely. When checking temperatures around the cage I noticed his basking spot is only around 72-74F and as you get lower in the cage the temp obviously drops to the ambient room temp of 65-67F. His basking branch is about 5-6 inches under the heat bulb and fixture which is the standard zoo med dome.

Currently, I am using a 65W zoo med white basking bulb which I am going to switch out tonight with a 75W incandescent house bulb and retake the temps tomorrow. Good plan?

Also, since its the winter and I have my heat on in the apartment, the air is really dry and I cant maintain humidity above 30% with misting 3 times per day (maybe 4 if my girlfriend is home). I am going to wrap the back and one side of the enclosure with plastic to try and maintain some more humidity and possibly wrap a third side. Question with this is would wrapping two or three sides also help maintain some heat during the day?

Currently I do have a live pothos in there with the vines starting to grow up through the enclosure so hopefully that helps with humidity when it starts to fill out.

 

[Alexander1]

I would use a 60w halogen bulb, they direct heat to one direction which will focus the heat down.

I recommend you get a roll of plastic sheeting, they sell it at menards it's used to cover windows during the winter, use the double sided tape on the frame of the cage, stick the plastic nice and tight on the cage, them just cut off the remaining plastic around the frame with a razor blade, it looks super clean and very clear.
I feel you can get a cool mist humidifier and route the mist with either pvc to the top of the cage and let the humidity drop down into the cage, make a side that's more humid/cool than the other.
Give your Cham options.. that's the name of the game!

 

[Graves923]

Ill be using a roll of plastic I have from a recent project. its not clear but my cham is in a corner so the back and one side wont be noticeable.

Ill try the 60W halogen bulb since I have one laying around.

 

[Graves923]

So turns out I had a 75w halogen bulb in my garage. I put that in my chams fixture and it heated up the basking spot to about 95*F. I raised the fixture off the screen 2 inches and the basking spot is not sitting between 82-84*F which is right where I want it and gives a good temp gradient throughout the cage. mid sections sitting around the mid 70s and lowest is room temp.