Serious Humidity Issues - help please!

[PicassothePanther]

Hey guys,
After getting Picasso just 3 days ago, I got a Dwarf Umbrella Plant to help hold the humidity level (or in my case raise it up, as it has only been at 10% and 20% the last 3 days).

I put a dwarf umbrella plant in and set my mister for 60 seconds of misting every hour. I get home today after a full 11 hours of power (and 11 mists and the plant in there for the whole day) and I notice the humidity is only 10%!

Why is this?

Does this have anything to do with the placement of my humidity gauge and/or my plant?

Also I have a second question about controlling the water that collects at the bottom of the cage.

After reading a few things about too much water being a bad thing and not helping humidity, about an hour ago I lowered the amount of time my mister stays on for - to 15 seconds. I have a Habbamist, so options are 15,30,45 and 60 seconds, and I think 60 seconds is too long of a mister time, especially if I have the mister going off every hour (I can also change that if someone thinks I should, but not sure what you guys think about that)..


HELP!!!!!

Here is a picture of my enclosure

 

[OOOst16]

U need a digital hydrometer / thermom. The anolog ones are crap. Water colected at the bottem can be solved by drilling holes...and placing a container underneath. Drippers help hydrate the cham aswell. A minute of solid mist should be fine for every hour. Room humidifiers help aswell.

 

[OOOst16]

Panthers need about 50-60% humid and 70-90% during mist sesion

 

[PicassothePanther]

what is Mist season?

 

[PicassothePanther]

Oh, Mist Session.. I get it..

Should I tighten the mist valve as much as i can so it produces very thin rain droplets?

 

[Brad Ramsey]

Every hour???
Gads, you are trying to drown this poor chameleon.
I agree that your humidity gauge is probably not accurate.
It is very important that the enclosure be allowed to completely dry out between mistings.
It's a chameleon not a frog

-Brad

 

[PicassothePanther]

so 1 hr intervals / 15 sec sprays then?

 

[Brad Ramsey]

No.
You need three to four hours between mistings.
Do a 60 second misting in the morning, one at noon and maybe one at 4:00.
Or just twice a day if you provide a dripper (which is better than a misting system for providing drinking opportunities)

-Brad

 

[PicassothePanther]

so other than maintaining humidity, the mister doesn't do anything for drinking if a dripper is present?

sorry, it's my first chameleon and i might ask stupid questions but i'm brand new at this and want to get it right

 

[xanthoman]

i agree there must be some problem with your hygrometer, zilla makes a decent hygrometer / thermometer with 2 seperate water resistant probes on 3' leads for $20, it also records min max of both and has an alarm clock. once you are sure your measurements are relatively accurate , you can raise the humidity significantly by simply placing kitchen trash bags on one two or three sides most or all of the way up. guaranteed that will get your humidity up above 50% with frequent mistings. also your hygrometer will not measure accurately if it is directly in your basking beam or too close to bulbs or other heat sources. two to three mistings a day is plenty for most chams in a well planted cage, maybe 3 or 4 for montanes, if you are having problems keeping humidity up, but every hr is out of control , even for montanes

 

[xanthoman]

so other than maintaining humidity, the mister doesn't do anything for drinking if a dripper is present?

sorry, it's my first chameleon and i might ask stupid questions but i'm brand new at this and want to get it right

sometimes they will drink off of wet foliage when they will not drink off of a dripper (&vice-versa). / the only stupid questions are the ones you dont ask

 

[atsutane]

screamealons suggest if your cage is 18x18x20 and you have a habba mist, set it to 30 sec every 3 hours

drippers and misters together offer the cham water whenever it wants, just one or the other would work fine, both together is fine as well. remember to use distilled or filtered water

the room i keep my cham in, i will boil 20 oz of water and the humidity will rise from 20-50% once its done boiling and then slowy drop off durring the day, but the room i keep him in is fairly small.

hope this helps

 

[Brad Ramsey]

Do not use distilled water.

-Brad

 

[warpdrive]

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR HUMIDITY GAGE.
yes, your humidity right now in NJ can be quite poor, and 10% when the cage is dry (or almost dry) is about right.

right now at 1am with the lights out, cage dry as a bone, with plenty of plants, my cage has 30% humidity.
bare in mind the my male's cage is about 5 times the size of your baby cage, and has more plants in it = more humidity then you will have with less plants in a smaller cage.

winter in NJ stinks when we are talking about humidity.

so how do we solve this? (or at least make it better?)
well, first off, stop drowning your cham with too much misting like Brad said.
mist only two or three times a day and add a dripper at least once a day.
then, get a cool mist humidifier...

a cool mist humidifier will help raise the humidity in your room by at least 10%.
mine will give me about a 20% bump in my large room.
so if my room humidity is about 20%, my plants will help with another 10%, and my humidifier will help by adding another 10%-20%...sadly, my humidifier ran out of water for about 2 or 3 hours so that's why my humidity is a little poor at the moment.
if you need more then a 10%-20% bump in humidity, then you could always use the humidifier for direct cage fogging.

a good read is this....
http://www.chameleonnews.com/?page=article&id=72

above all, you need to let the cage dry out between mistings and drippings, so the humidifier will help durring the "dry" times.

one last thing...durring the dryer times of the year (winter months) chams need to drink more often, so that's why I feel that extra mistings alone is not the anser, and using a dripper is important.

Harry

 

[warpdrive]

the room i keep my cham in, i will boil 20 oz of water and the humidity will rise from 20-50% once its done boiling and then slowy drop off durring the day, but the room i keep him in is fairly small.

if you are able to boil water in the same room as your chameleon, I'm kinda wondering what what fumes you are exposing him/her to when you are truly cooking.
just a thought.

Harry

 

[czer]

I have the same problem, I have exo-terra termo/hydro digital combination. I know there's humidity because it worked at first, then it got stuck on 10% I know my house has more so all I do is spray a few times a day.

 

[PicassothePanther]

OK.. so now I am getting different opinions from people that are all contrasting one-another. Here's what I got:

1. buy a new mister
2. dont buy a new mister- just set my mister settings to 30 second sprays every 3 hours
3. buy a dripper
4. dont buy a dripper
5. buy a new digital hydrometer
6. no need to buy a new hydrometer/humidity gauge, my reading is fine.


WHICH IS IT!


Now I am more confused than Hellen Keller after someone moved her furniture!

 

[OldSkoolxReasons]

I don't like the habbamist very much at all but it is alright if its all you got. Mistking is great and actually sprays a nice fine mist instead of a thicker mist. Also cover up 2 or 3 sides of the cage with either a sheet or something like that. I don't like using trash bags because I always feel they will prevent proper air circulation but I'm just paranoid after having a male with a URI earlier this winter. Also it you put deli cup lids with water in them and just let it evaporate all day it helps with humidity also. I would suggest getting the cool water humidifier though as they work great, you will still need to do a couple of the other things to get the humidity to a desirable level though. Good Luck.



Justin



EDIT: Take a cleaned out milk jug or gallon pop bottle and poke a hole in it with a safety pin and then you have a dripper.

 

[Carlton]

OK.. so now I am getting different opinions from people that are all contrasting one-another. Here's what I got:

Ah, I can sure see why you are confused. Let me try to simplify this:

1. Test your humidity gauge...put it in a dry area of the house and read it. Move it to a place you KNOW is humid such as your bathroom during a shower. Let it register the level. If it doesn't react to changes in humidity easily it is toast. Pitch it. Or, you can compare it's readings to another gauge if you have one.

2. No one can tell you exactly how often or how long to run your mister because we don't have cages in exactly the room you do. I've heard that Habba Mister don't work all that well. But, you'll need to do some trials to even find out if it will work well enough for your particular cage. Here's how I figure out how much misting I need and how often. You will need to do some test cycles on a day when you are home.

a. Hand spray your cage as you would normally do to provide drinking water (such as in the morning before work).
b. Measure the resulting humidity level and record it.
c. Decide if that high level it high enough for your cham.
d. Let the cage dry until the humidity gauge reads it's lowest level and record how long it took to bottom out.
e. Start your mister and let it run until the cage reaches the high humidity level you want. If the mister can't reach the high level you want, it isn't going to work well for your setup.
f. Let the cage dry out again until the cage gets too dry again. Record how long it took to get to that level.

You now know how high your humidity gets after hand spraying.
You now know how fast your cage dries out and how dry it actually gets.
You now know if hand spraying even reaches the humidity level you want and how long it stays high.
You now know how long your Habba Mist would need to run to raise the cage humidity to the level you want.
You also know how often you would need to run the Habba Mist to maintain some level of humidity before you have a chance to hand spray for drinking (like after work in the evening)

Does this help? Also remember that your cycles may need to change with the seasons...in summer you wouldn't be using a furnace but might be using an AC. This can affect the cage humidity too.

 

[RPCV]

There could be a number of reasons you relative humidity is only 10%. Based on the amount of moisture you're introducing the problem is likely either:

1) You are measuring RH in the basking area. Keep in mind that relative humidity is RELATIVE to temperature and it based on the % the air is saturated at that temperature. Hot air holds more moisture vapor than cold air. For example; if it is 32 degrees outside with 80% RH and you heat that air to 70 degrees the RH will drop to about 22% even though amount of moisture vapor in the air is the same. Also - moisture vapor always moves from warm to cold so it will naturally migrate in an enclosure to the cooler spots. Because there is a temperature gradient in an enclosure and moisture is moving from warm to cold there can be dramatic differences if your hygrometer is directly in the basking spot when compared to a cooler location.

2) Your hygrometer is not accurate. As a general statement - cheap hygrometers suck and all hygrometers are subject to inaccurate readings. The only readily available and somewhat affordable ($50 on the low end) way to accurately measure RH is with a sling psychrometer (it is analog and much better than anything digital). A sling with mercury thermometers is a primary standard used to calibrate other devices and does not need to be calibrated itself. Unfortunately - whipping around a sling in an enclosure would be somewhat distressing and could create a bit of a mess (but would be fun to watch someone try ). Either try your luck with a new cheaper hygrometer or invest in a sling to check your current (and possibly future devices) against.

Could have made this a much shorter post - if you're measuring 10% RH in a cool area of the enclosure then your hygrometer is probably toast. If you are measuring in a "hot" area then try moving it to a cooler area - RH should increase (if not then you're hygrometer is toast). If you are measure 10% consistantly and your hygrometer is working then it is likely your enclosure is way too hot.