Mister/Fog machine

Hyperpower

Member
First of all which one is better to have?

Would a fog machine be good enough?

How do I make a drainage system?

Would a fog machine help the humidity?
 
Foggers are pretty much to help humidity through out the day. Chams need misting and drippers for drinking. If you have to buy one or the other, get a mister. Mistking or aquazamp. Most people dont use foggers, but it cant hurt. Especially if you are planning on getting a montaine species.

As for drainage, are you planning on using an exo terra terrarium (glass) or are you using the go to screen caging?

If screen (which i'm sure you are) all you've got to do is put the cage on some sort of stand. I personally use storage shelving from HD or lowes. The shelves will have slots in them. Their will be a plastic like bottom in your cage. Drill a small hole in the middle of it. You're water will now drain out into a bin that you put on the shelve directly below it. Bam, drainage complete! easy peazy.

You can do the same thing if you decide to use a wooden cabinet shelve like some people do. Those do look better, however make sure you water proof the hole you drill through the top to the under cabinet so you dont get molding.

Any questions? Ask away. Feel free to PM me if you'd like :)
 
First of all which one is better to have?

Would a fog machine be good enough?

How do I make a drainage system?

Would a fog machine help the humidity?

Um, we need a little more information to answer your questions...

When you say "fog machine" what to you mean? A terrarium fogger? A decorative fogging fountain with colored lights? An ultrasonic room humidifier? Though the technology for producing fog out of water is basically the same, the units have different capacities and some won't provide fog as long as others. Any, you don't want an open water reservoir inside a cham cage or to let the cham touch the nebulizer disk (the part that vibrates at high speed to produce the fog). So, more detail will help us.

Good enough for what? To provide drinking water for your cham? To keep the cage humid? Usually, an ultrasonic fogger won't create enough large water droplets for the cham to get enough to drink unless the fogger runs constantly. That's not a great idea because it will also keep the cage soaked too much of the time. Foggers can humidify a cage well, but some sort of hand or auto spraying is better for creating a lot of larger hanging droplets the cham can lick up.

If you live in a really dry area you will probably end up using both...hand or auto misting to provide drinking water, and a fogger controlled by a timer to sort of "fill in the gaps" of low humidity between drinking sessions.
 
Thanks for all the help! yes I am getting another (bigger) screen cage for my veiled.

Right now I have a heater in my room because it can get quite cold even in the summer. Are there better ways to keep my chameleon warm without having to heat up the entire room?
 
Typically incandescent lights are used to create warm basking zones in your cage.

On the left side towards the bottom of the forum are links to care sheets and specifics about lighting/heat. Lots of info there related to your questions.
 
Typically incandescent lights are used to create warm basking zones in your cage.

On the left side towards the bottom of the forum are links to care sheets and specifics about lighting/heat. Lots of info there related to your questions.

im just having trouble with the ambient temp in the cage..in the summer the hottest it gets is 73f ..
 
Thanks for all the help! yes I am getting another (bigger) screen cage for my veiled.

Right now I have a heater in my room because it can get quite cold even in the summer. Are there better ways to keep my chameleon warm without having to heat up the entire room?

When you say it gets cold, how cold does it get? I highly doubt it gets too cold for a chameleon, especially for the night time temperatures.
 
Well i have a hand mister which i mist him twice a day and if the humidity drops to low or hes shedding i have a repti fogger. Works great my cham will sometimes move under the stream of fog when he sees it on.
When the fogger is on the humidity ramps up to over 90% at the bottom of the viv and about 75 - 80% at the top. I dont not use the fogger that much as to be honest he honest really need it.
 
fogger

Don't let people talk you down or into a super expensive mister. a Reptifogger will produce so much humudity it warped my hardwood floor. it also created so much condensation that there were constant drops of water for my chams to drink. you can adjust the amount of fog and it has an automatic shut off. watch out for some people on this site. they'll try and get to overspend. a simple spray bottle and Reptifogger will do you just fine. unless you live in the desert. i have 15 chams and none of them are dehydrated or ever had a shedding problem. all my females have found the humidity just fine to lay their eggs also. it can be done for cheap, just not a cheap product.
 
When you say it gets cold, how cold does it get? I highly doubt it gets too cold for a chameleon, especially for the night time temperatures.

summer it gets around 70-73f and in winter probably around 65-68f during the day. basically the ambient temp in the room/cage I have him in does not get hot enough unless I use my room heater..........
 
summer it gets around 70-73f and in winter probably around 65-68f during the day. basically the ambient temp in the room/cage I have him in does not get hot enough unless I use my room heater..........

Just get a higher wattage bulb for basking. That will help heat the cage and you should be all set then. Chams at night can go down into the 50's so that is alright.
 
Don't let people talk you down or into a super expensive mister. watch out for some people on this site. they'll try and get to overspend. it can be done for cheap, just not a cheap product.

Hold on there! None of the experienced members here would EVER suggest buying something more expensive over something less expensive if both work! Basking lights are a good example. How many hundreds of times have we suggested basic house light bulbs for basking heat over fancy reptile daylight bulbs? Everyone's situation and time is different. A ReptiFogger may work just fine for you, other people including myself had nothing but grief with them. Some people need to rely more on automation because of their daily or frequent travel schedules. No one is forcing anyone here to start right off with the most complex auto systems available. Just not true. Cheap is as cheap does.
 
Don't let people talk you down or into a super expensive mister. a Reptifogger will produce so much humudity it warped my hardwood floor. it also created so much condensation that there were constant drops of water for my chams to drink. you can adjust the amount of fog and it has an automatic shut off. watch out for some people on this site. they'll try and get to overspend. a simple spray bottle and Reptifogger will do you just fine. unless you live in the desert. i have 15 chams and none of them are dehydrated or ever had a shedding problem. all my females have found the humidity just fine to lay their eggs also. it can be done for cheap, just not a cheap product.


Hold on there! None of the experienced members here would EVER suggest buying something more expensive over something less expensive if both work! Basking lights are a good example. How many hundreds of times have we suggested basic house light bulbs for basking heat over fancy reptile daylight bulbs? Everyone's situation and time is different. A ReptiFogger may work just fine for you, other people including myself had nothing but grief with them. Some people need to rely more on automation because of their daily or frequent travel schedules. No one is forcing anyone here to start right off with the most complex auto systems available. Just not true. Cheap is as cheap does.


I agree with carlton. almost every thread I read we (as a forum) suggest cheaper alternates. we suggest misting systems because it simply makes life way easier. maintenance of filling the water, etc is cut way down. 100 dollars for an automatic misting system is not over spending. at all!!! a lot of people will do foggers and decide its not enough. then buy the misting system anyway. so now they have spent more than they would of.
im not sayinf your way is wrong, but I am saying don't spread lies about the forum making people over spend.
 
watch out for some people on this site. they'll try and get to overspend.

Rarely do people pose a question and say they want to stay within a certain budget. That would be helpful. I don't think anyone here intentionally tries to get anyone to go broke. Without knowing the OP's financial situation, we often will suggest the equipment we have experience with, maybe along with a link to a forum sponsor's web site.

Just like most things in life, you can save money on a few things but you'll make up the difference in labor. Hand misting vs. automated misting for example.
 
Just get a higher wattage bulb for basking. That will help heat the cage and you should be all set then. Chams at night can go down into the 50's so that is alright.

i guess the ambient temp doesn't matter as much then? how do I get a good humidity going then?

edit: i'm using 100wat incandesant lightbulbs
 
i guess the ambient temp doesn't matter as much then? how do I get a good humidity going then?

edit: i'm using 100wat incandesant lightbulbs

Hand misting, automated misting, or drip system, take your pick. I would not use a fogger on a veiled unless you live in the desert. Even then I would not use it full time or as the primary way of providing water, and never with the transducer installed directly in the enclosure.

Foggers have their place, but misting or drippers should be the primary way for hydration IMO. If you don't have the funds for a system, you'll be doing it by hand.

Good luck.
 
Hand misting, automated misting, or drip system, take your pick. I would not use a fogger on a veiled unless you live in the desert. Even then I would not use it full time or as the primary way of providing water, and never with the transducer installed directly in the enclosure.

Foggers have their place, but misting or drippers should be the primary way for hydration IMO. If you don't have the funds for a system, you'll be doing it by hand.

Good luck.

yeah what I meant was if the ambient temp isn't hot enough the humity wont rise...well it will but it will also drop the temp by a lot.
 
Don't let people talk you down or into a super expensive mister..... watch out for some people on this site. they'll try and get to overspend.

Why would people here want people to overspend? Especially if they're not making money from it? If you think misters are too pricey, and your fogger works for you, that's fine, but that's no reason to insult the people here.

If anything, most of the people you're telling the OP to "watch out for" are the best source of information an inexperienced chameleon owner can get. I went to two reptile vets when my cham got sick, and they both gave the wrong diagnosis.... know where I got the correct diagnosis from? It was here. For free. Multiple people took time out of their day to help me, and were genuinely concerned for my cham. Without them, my cham would be dead. Simple.
 
im no pro and still fine tuning my set ups so to speak.. right now i hand most 3-4 times a day but i do have drippers on all 3 of my cages as well..i do have a reptifogger and it worked pretty good but when i got tht "big boy" cages it just didnt seem to do enough without running it for a very long time and from what ive read, its not designed to run like that..so i am looking into getting a mistking basic set up with an extra noxxle for my 2 24x24x48 cages.

The fogger was very effective on my 16x16x30 cage for humidity. i now use it one my baby panther cage which is the small reptibreeze 16x20 i think.. and it does good on there. the water condensed on the top screen and drips down on the plants.. humidity isnt really an issue for me at the moment so i use it more for watering when im gone...the baby seems to not mind the fogger mist as the spray bottle seems to scare her( i still hand mist one side of it though) and the cage is too small to be hooked up wit the mistking set up on timing for 2 cages 4 times that size..3-5 minutes on a big cage 3 times a day not bad same setting on a tiny cage..everything would be saturated in theory because i havent actually set it up yet lol
 
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