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I Been having a lot of thoughts about UV lighthing recently. Does anybody know asactly how much UVA and UVB a chameleon needs? I know generally tropical forrest chameleons need more than montane species, but is there a study that discloses the amount of UV chameleons need. Lets just assume for a second that there is no sunlight to aid UV absorption in captivity, and all we use are reptisuns or repti-glos. Is is okay to use a 2.0 UV bulb(for reptiles with lesser UV requirements), or a 8.0 UV bulb( normally for deset species)? IF i use a 8.0 bulb on my montane species, would it have a detrimental effect to my chameleon? Perhapes exccesive UVA would negatively effect the psychological state of my chameleon. Remember, we are assuming that there is no sunlight to aid calcium absorption. What are everyones thoughts?

I use UV 5.0 (repti sun from hagen) on all my chams, and everyone is bright, active, and happy. They dont get to go outside for natural sunlight very often because i live in an apartment complex with LOTS of kids, and every time i take the herps for a walk its a big huge hassle with everyone wanting to handle and touch and point and things, and it just stresses them all out. I have no mbd, no weird colors, no dark colors, etc. Everyone is doing fine. I do make a point of changing ALL my bulbs every six months though, to keep the UV output high.

Thats what i do, anybody else?
Jamie
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Jamie A. Stine and the Gang:

0.1 Jacksons Chamelions (Clank) (we miss you, ratchett)
1.0 Veiled Chamelion (George)
1.1 Bearded Dragons (Lancelot & Guenivere)
1.0 Giant Frog Eyed Geckos (Peanut Butter)
0.1 Borneo Short Tailed Python (Ezmerelda)
0.1 Red Tailed Boa (Buffy)
1.0 Short Tailed O'possum (Jethro)
1.0 Greyhound (Hank)

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What you need to factor in to your thoughts is the amount of D3 supplementation that goes with whatever method of UVB delivery that you choose.

We've all heard (hopefully) that if your cham gets natural sunlight, you should dust with calcium that has no D3. And if your cham's inside, you should dust with calcium w/D3. What's interesting is that Ronnie Buck of www.cricketfood.com has suggested to me that your calcium dusting should differ if you are using MercuryVapor vs. a reptisun 5.0 when your cham is inside. According to Ronnie (who really knows his stuff about cham nutrition), if you're using MV, you should dust 2xweek with Ca w/o D3 and 2x a month, switch out the non D3 Ca with Ca w/D3. With a reptisun 5.0, he recommends the Ca w/D3 2x week. This makes sense in that the MVs deliver way more UVB allowing your cham to produce more of it's own D3 rather than getting it from it's diet. Put another way, if you switch from a 5.0 to some type of mercury vapor, and keep your dusting the same, you're really upping the amount of D3 and at some point, you can overdose this resulting in health problems.

John (charmparadise) uses reptisun 2.0s on his R. Uluguruensis, which many people don't use any uvb on, but I can understand his reasoning for it. Beyond that, I don't think 2.0 of anything (remember, 2.0 is the % of light that it produces which is uvb, not an absolute measure) is enough for a cham that requires some uvb. So I wouldn't mess with 2.0s. Not even zoomed recommends using 2.0s on any lizard, much less a cham that requires uvb. At 2.0, you can't add enough dietary D3 to make up for what is not being produced from uvb. When we supplement with D3, it's 'unnatural' and we risk overdosing.

As for UVA, this does affect the psychological state of your cham (and me too ) but I don't see how any bulb could produce as much as the sun and there's no interaction with D3 here, so I can't see any potential for overdose of UVA with the way that we do things.

There are hobbiests that have uvb meters. I would like to play with one sometime......

Joel Fish

Despite all this good info we still don't have a clue how much UVB or A most species of herps need metabolically in the first place. Until someone figures this out our debates about lighting will continue. Still, we know that NO artificial lighting comes anywhere close to radiation from the sun and that many species of chams do fine under the old standby ReptiSun. I haven't used the MV or other newer lights yet because my chams are montane species and don't appreciate the heat. I also get my chams outside to bask when the weather cooperates. The fine tuning of D3 is still very much in its infancy too, so this may be where we can make progress. I prefer ReptiSuns mostly because they are safer in terms of heat. My cages are bigger than most keepers' so I usually use multiple fixtures both for the plants and general lighting though.

Carlton,

Thanks for the response! Is there anything that you use as a guide (like appearance or behaviour) that would make you supplement more or less?

thanks,
Joel Fish