It may not add exciting new info, but I want to add our experiences.
We have used almost every water delivery method - stopping short of waterfalls. We babysat for a cham that had a waterfall in his cage, and I removed; scrubbed and Nolvasan'd that thing daily. It was waaaaaay too much work.
As for our own chams: When we had two it was no trouble to use misting sprayers that could lock on. I just pumped them up, placed them to spray in a good spot and removed them when empty. We had several: you can still buy them -
sprayer
Later when we got more chams, my hubby set up a misting system that he built. It used flexible tubing to deliver the mist and had expensive nossels that clogged a lot! (The walls had plastic on them to prevent overspray from warping the sheetrock.) Then I learned to place cotton sheeting behind the cages - it absorbed stray water and raised the humidity while drying out. All of our indoor cages have catch basins for the water.
In our greenhouse (10' x 16'), hubby fashioned a misting system that worked from his R/O system - going through a filter & reservoir and pump. It had timers. The misting nozzels were on small tubes that were connected to the PVC tubing.
For our breeding facility (25' x 50'), we had a well. So there was filters then the pumps and flow reducers - then the yards & yards of PVC piping and over 200 misters - all on timers. Those cages all were on a drainage gutter system. However.... we changed the micro misting nozzels to drippers. Why? Because it wasted too much water (when they weren't clogged). The chameleons were not impressed with all the water - usually the lowland species hid from it. The only ones that really liked the mist were the jacksons (which we moved to freerange in the greenhouse); the rudis and the melleri. When we removed the misters, we added a fogger to the rudis' environment - they loved that!
We spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars experimenting and trying to give the chams the best water delivery method. It all reverted back to drippers. All of our lowland chameleons prefer the drip method - but the catch was to aim the drip onto a good "bouncy" leaf. In the facility, I fastened large silk leaves under the drip... it worked perfectly. You can bend and shape the silk leaves....
Now don't get me wrong - I am by no means criticizing any one for their method(s) - to be quite honest - we have tried just about every kind of drinking device: bowls; cups; rodent waterers; and IV set-ups.
In our house, I prefer the IV set-up for a single cage - I call it my "dial-a-drip speed" and the chams will drink from the plastic tip. I have one panther and a ousteleti that drink from a small cup that I offer. I have several cages with IV drippers and the rest have drippers too - a large plastic cup (that I fill). I need to get more IV set-ups (there is a vet that sells these on Kingsnake).
For the person starting out that has spent $$$ on cham, cage, plants, branches and other stuff - we always tell them to start with a plastic cup or a plastic juice bottle. Just poke a pinhole in it and let it drip. Why spend $5 on someone else's plastic cup that they put their name on and stuck a drippy valve in (that usually leaks)???
I feel that the true key is WHERE it drips. If the drip falls straight to the bottom - heck - the cham won't know. If it bounces on a leaf and the leaf moves in the rythym of the drip... then the cham will notice.
We recommend folks mist with warm water too - but more for humidity than for drinking purposes. Our only chams that don't have a drip are the pygmies!
~Morgana
