What is your way of draining excess water?

[Mr Wilson]

As the title says, I'm curious to see how you all set up your cages to help with drainage. I did a search for drainage but didn't really come up with much. We have been having issues with water and are having a really hard time keeping the cages dry on the bottom. We've used substrates which have worked amazingly and never gave us any issues as far as the chameleons eating them. Then we couldn't find big enough bags for 4 cages so we started using paper towels which is horrible and costly. I bought a batch of cheap paper towels and the water literally sits on top of them, they absorb terribly and have to literally be changed constantly or else the tray fills with water!

We have ordered more substrate to give that another go, but I want to know how you all deal with drainage. We have the screen enclosures from LLL Reptile with the substrate trays at the bottom. I feel like there has to be a way to keep the bottoms of the cages dry without having to constantly change the paper towels a few times a day (not to mention a more cost effective way!). If anyone has pictures of how they deal with this, I'd really appreciate that, they would be much more helpful than just telling me what you do (I'm a visual learner, what can I say?)

Thanks so much in advance.

 

[Olimpia]

I basically just drilled large holes on the PVC bottom of my cages, something like 3/4 of an inch, or 1 inch holes and then hotglued screen over the holes (but on the underside, so it would look nicer) so the water could exit properly but insects and such couldn't make it through. It's helped a lot. But I had to make several holes, and not just one in the center. And then I have the cages sitting over tables that I built for collecting water and funneling that to buckets under them.

 

[Dez and Delilah]

I basically just drilled large holes on the PVC bottom of my cages, something like 3/4 of an inch, or 1 inch holes and then hotglued screen over the holes (but on the underside, so it would look nicer) so the water could exit properly but insects and such couldn't make it through. It's helped a lot. But I had to make several holes, and not just one in the center. And then I have the cages sitting over tables that I built for collecting water and funneling that to buckets under them.

That's pretty much the same thing we did, aside from covering the holes with screen.

We made a bunch of small holes in the middle of the PVC and the weight of the plant creates enough of a slope for the water to run through the holes into a bucket under the cage.

 

[Olimpia]

That's pretty much the same thing we did, aside from covering the holes with screen.

We made a bunch of small holes in the middle of the PVC and the weight of the plant creates enough of a slope for the water to run through the holes into a bucket under the cage.

I did that with mine too at first, but I found that the smaller holes didn't drain as well in my case. It was as if the water surface tension wasn't letting it go through fast enough. So I found that much bigger holes worked better for me, and let the cage floor dry off faster.

To the OP, besides this, I never did anything else to keep the floor dry. It usually air dried within an hour or two, which is perfectly fine. The floor doesn't have to be bone dry all the time.

 

[Dez and Delilah]

I did that with mine too at first, but I found that the smaller holes didn't drain as well in my case. It was as if the water surface tension wasn't letting it go through fast enough. So I found that much bigger holes worked better for me, and let the cage floor dry off faster.

To the OP, besides this, I never did anything else to keep the floor dry. It usually air dried within an hour or two, which is perfectly fine. The floor doesn't have to be bone dry all the time.

Yeah we actually have to make the holes a little bigger in our females cage as they've gotten plugged once or twice. The screen is a great idea though. Our main concern was feeders escaping so maybe we'll try that.

 

[Mr Wilson]

The LLL Reptile cages have no bottoms. We have the substrate tray on ours which creates a base for the cage. I'm thinking maybe there is some sort of way we can use those trays as water catchers and somehow place something over them so, like some of you said, insects don't get caught. The cages have a little door on the bottom that flips up, so we would be able to slide the trays right out to empty them. The only issue would be finding a way to place something above it, that doesn't get removed, and could hold up the plant in each cage.

Our stands that we built for the cages don't have anywhere to store some sort of bucket to allow water to drip into, so I'm not sure where we would make the water flow into. I'm kind of hoping someone has a similar set up with the LLL cages and is able to keep their cages dry. Maybe we are just misting way too much. We have a MistKing system set up for all 4 cages. They are going on every other hour right now for 2 minutes then 1 minute (for ex: 2 mins at 9, 1 min at 11, 2 mins at 1, 1 min at 3).

 

[AESara]

In my LLL cage, I used to use towels in the bottom because my cham was so small and I wanted something soft at the bottom in case he fell. They also sopped up water which made it easy to remove. Now that he's bigger, I've removed the towels and I just sop up the water nightly.

 

[Titan]

I have developed the perfect Chameleon Cage with fully functional, Water capturing Drain Base. But I cant show pictures cause I am selling them here.
& have Paten Protection on my design, Sorry

 

[Mr Wilson]

I have developed the perfect Chameleon Cage with fully functional, Water capturing Drain Base. But I cant show pictures cause I am selling them here.
& have Paten Protection on my design, Sorry

LOL, thanks???

 

[Mr Wilson]

In my LLL cage, I used to use towels in the bottom because my cham was so small and I wanted something soft at the bottom in case he fell. They also sopped up water which made it easy to remove. Now that he's bigger, I've removed the towels and I just sop up the water nightly.

Do you have the substrate tray on the bottom of yours??

 

[sandrachameleon]

Excess water from the dripper falls into a bowl. I pick up bowl, walk to houseplant or toilet, dump water.

 

[Mr Wilson]

We use to do that, but it seems like ever since we started using the MistKing it's hard to tell where the water mostly drips because the water mists throughout the entire cage and wets just about all of the leaves, so it drips a lot, know what I mean? I may have to try to give that another shot though, just observe and check to see where the heaviest dripping tends to happen.

I'd still love to see some pictures if anyone can provide those