how do you know if your cham is thirsty?

[dylanserbin]

Hey ive had my cham for a little over a month. It is a juvinile Panther cham. He is eating great and everything. Shedding regularly also.

My only concern is how much does he have to drink? i have a ficus benjimina tree in his enlosure for him as a main plant with vines and stuff for him to climp on. I have his cage hooked up to my mistking misting system which goes on 5 time a day for 15 seconds. Is this enough for him? Is there any way for me to know if hes dehydrated or not? I have been using a drip system aswell but thats annoying cause it overfills to fast and spilled out of the screen cage.

 

[pssh]

I would up the misting to 5 minutes at a time, 3-4 times a day. You can check the urates to see if he is hydrated. The urates are the white part of the poop. White means hydrated, yellow means slightly dehydrated, and orange is very dehydrated. A little yellow/orange at the tip is okay but it should be mainly white.

 

[summoner12]

You should provide longer misting sessions so your cham can clean it's eyes and have plenty of opertunity to drink. In the wild they don't get a small sprinkle four times a day... they might get rain for 5 minutes or an hour or two or three.... one two or three times a day. sure, they might go a day without rain... but there is at least morning dew for them to drink.

in otherwords... figure out a drainage solution, if you have a misting system, it's best to do this in case the system doesn't shut off. what will you do with the extra water?

ChamEO sells drain pans that can be drilled and plumbed to a bucket. I would check those drain pans out, well worth the money in case your misting system doesn't shut off and you can then provide longer misting sessions for a healthier chameleon. BTW, ChamEO is a non profit chameleon rescue. Your purchase helps keep the place running.

 

[Olimpia]

I ditto what everyone else is saying.
This is my schedule, to give you a guide (I'm copy-and-pasting this from another thread, because I feel lazy this morning lol)

7:30 am - lights on
8:00 am - 15 minutes
11:00 am - 3 minutes
2:00 pm - 3 minutes
5:00 pm - 15 minutes
7:30 pm - lights off

I think the most valuable advice I heard from someone was "when it comes to misting, think monsoon, not sprinkles." If you've ever been to a rain forest (like Costa Rica), during the rainy season it rains constantly in bursts of half an hour or so on and off all day long. So I try to mimic that as best as I can by doing longish mists. In fact, I'm even considering doing longer mists but it depends on how much water drainage my system can handle and how well the cages dry between them. I think I'll make the 15 minute ones longer when I move to my new place.

Another justification for this is that I find that my chameleons think "Eeek water!" for the first minute or so anyway before they have a change of heart and think "ooooo water!" So by having nice long mists first thing in the morning and the last thing in the afternoon, I give them lots of time to decide to drink, drink, and get hydrated for the day or night.

Since starting this schedule I haven't seen a single hint of yellow in any poop! So I guess it's working!