Ok just re listened and re read this
https://www.chameleonbreeder.com/podcast/ep-89-naturalistic-hydration-for-chameleons/ @DeremensisBlue
Here is an excerpt from it directly talking about over hydration. So now I guess we are at a point of what is too much? In my case it is too much based on both
@PetNcs and what Bill Strand Says here...
I guess what I want to know is, am I understanding correctly that I now need to adjust time of fogging and or reducing the fog output to then get a urate that is properly formed and 15-50% orange?
Next is to determine the limits. If you are experimenting with UVB levels then your limits may be the beginnings of Metabolic Bone Disease on one end and sunburn on the other. If you are working with supplementations you have Metabolic Bone Disease, eye infections, and a downward crash of health on the not-enough end and on the too-much end you have Metabolic Bone Disease, eye infections, and a downward crash of health. So, yeah, don’t screw up that one. In my case, I have dehydration on the not enough-end and over-hydration on the too-much end. No matter what the chances are that I will hit those levels I need to be consciously aware of what they are and what the signs of them are. We are pretty familiar with dehydration. The skin starts to look gaunt, the eye turrets sink in, and, when offered water, your chameleon will lap it up with urgency – well, at least the slow chameleon version of urgency. A healthy, hydrated chameleon does not go to water. They let water come to them. Dehydration will be my primary concern during my incorporation of new techniques. The other limit is over-hydration.
wait…over hydration? That’s a thing? We have all been battling dehydration so much we didn’t even consider over hydration.
I am afraid, like food, supplements, UVB, and anything else going into the body, there can be too little and too much water intake. And for us to truly be effective in evaluating new methods of anything we need to understand the extremes. So, even though over-hydration is not a common occurrence we need to do our due diligence and understand what it looks like.
Over hydration also takes a toll. The body bloats and the chameleon struggles to hold its body upright. It will take on an overweight appearance. Over-hydration could happen if the chameleon is placed in a spray of water and has no way of getting out. Though they can stop drinking there is a reflexive drinking process where water will come in through the nostrils and the chameleon could take it in. As a daily occurrence this could, conceivably, be an issue. Now you may be scoffing at the odds against you thinking this could happen. But this exercise is not about convincing anyone of the likelihood of these happening, it is you coming up with every possible scenario that either of the extremes could be reached and watching out for them.
Perhaps our most important preparation for this experiment is to establish a measurement guide that we can use to get an idea on how hydrated our chameleons is from day to day.
So we need a measurement systems to watch our progress and use it as a guide to tell us when we need to make corrections. And we find those in feces and urates. The feces are the compressed brown portion of the poop. The urates are the white and orange portion.
Feces and urates are the results of the processing of all the food input. Everything the body needs from the food is removed in the stomach and intestines. What remains is the indigestible parts that will be compressed together in a tight, typically brown package to be jettisoned later. But there is another part to the waste process. The kidneys are also hard at work to filter the blood and keep it clean. In us humans, urine is produced to carry these toxins out of the body. In chameleons, a white sludge called urates is produced and tacked onto the fecal waste for the upcoming exit. As we experience ourselves, water is a necessary component for this processing and the amount of water in the urine and feces fluctuates with our hydration level. So too it is with chameleons – and this is our chance!
Water is used in the chameleon kidneys to produce the urates. The urates then go through the intestines and this is where the chameleon reclaims the water so as to not waste precious moisture. The amount of water reclaimed from the urates varies depending on the hydration level of the chameleon. The drier the environment and the more water is needed, the more water is sucked back out. When water is removed, the urates crystallize into an orangish colored substance. From field observation (P. Necas, pers comm), normal content of orange in the urates is 15 to 50% of the urates. If there is greater orange content then the chameleon’s body is wanting more moisture back and that is a sign that we need to provide more hydration in the appropriate form. If the urates are totally white then the body has more than enough moisture and Is actually rejecting the normal water reclaiming process. In this way, the urates can give us a window into our chameleon’s hydration level. Of course, nothing can be simple. How much orange should be present is subject of debate. It is common for veterinarians to advise to hydrate until urates are completely white. The logic is that if the body does not extract any water it doesn’t need to and your chameleon is hydrated. But this isn’t what is observed in the wild. So do we target our hydration to what is observed in the wild or do we decide to give it the ole superior conditions approach that we like to do in captivity to make our super specimens? And I fully admit that my personal decision to target up to 50% orange in the urates is based on the field observations of Petr Necas. And there really isn’t much more. He is one of the few field scientists that keep captive husbandry and field observations in mind at the same time to determine their relationships. I have asked a number of other field scientists and apparently, they had better things to do than observe the composition of wild urates. So, admittedly, the data sources are limited. In this case, which do you choose to trust? It is really up to you. Both measurement scales have been in use and neither has left bodies of chameleons in the streets. So, it is a subtle effect. But it is an important issue to consider.
