Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My adult male veiled only drinks once or twice a week, or at least i only see him do it that much. The humidity ranges from 45-65%, but is about 50% humidity for about 65% or the time. I would just like to know about the drinking habits of everyone's veileds and about what they keep the humidity at.

I am also still not sure how much to feed an adult, because i am still in the juvi feeding habits. He will eat about 6 crix and as many meal/superworms i give him every day but he has stopped growing.

He shed a patch of skin off each cheek a week ago or so but isn't showing any signs of sheeding the rest of himself...normal or what?

thanks

ya my veild humidity is mainly at 50% gone to 40% and sometimes in 60%. maybe give him a longer sparying so he sees the moving water. i would have to say i useally see mine drink after he eats.

Ours varies from about 35-65%, and he drinks whenever the misters go off (we have foggers, drippers and misters on a timed cycle, going off for a minute several times per day.). Basically, Frasier is stimulated to drink whenever water hits his face. If that's when he brushes against the pothos while it's wet, and the water collects from his casque, he drinks; if that's when he happens to be under the dripper nozzle when the timer goes off, he drinks. Otherwise, if the water sprays against his body, he ran to hide, until we switched over to a much finer mist... Even now, though, I can take our sprayer wand and dribble a little water on his head, and he'll start lapping away (as long as he doesn't see the wand, in which case he freaks, hisses at it and then runs and hides...)

Incidentally, our male ig is onthe same misting system (different nozzles, different terrarium) and acts much the same way, unless he has just eaten...
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Justin, Julie and the menagerie...
www.baskingwonders.com

I think that a minute at a time is way too little and the fact that he drinks so readily tells me he isn't getting enough water. My drippers run 4-6 hours/day and the water drips onto the leaves. I mist several times/day and many of my chams won't even start to drink until the misters have been going for 5 minutes or more.

Chronic suboptimal dehydration is IMO right up there with over-supplementation as the number 1 killer of chams....
Ed

Thanks for the thought! I started wondering about that when I saw how much water you're going through...

Our 3-gallon, for 1 cham and 1 ig, lasts several days, which would indicate to me that ours are getting far less water than yours. Or, perhaps, the water that ours uses isn't just dumping to the floor (ours has no drainage, which is next up to repair...). We're planning on hooking up to the house plumbing in a couple of months (when we move into the new pad), so, we'll probably be runnign the water a good bit more...
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Justin, Julie and the menagerie...
www.baskingwonders.com

Chams often need a drip rate of 2 drops/sec before it gets their attention. BTW, if you want to see how I handle the drainage broblem, contact me off list (epollak@wcupa.edu) & I'll send you a photo.
Ed

I definitely agree, dehydration is a major problem, not just with chams but with several captive lizards. This is why we've set up our misting system with drippers as well as misters, because Frasier would always move away from the mist when it went off. We've also set the dripper to go at a really good pace (nearly a stream) and we've set some of our cycles to 2 minutes, to give him a chance to get a decent drink.

We will, of course, continue to monitor his drinking and adjust the cycles as necessary, because unfortunately, we can't let the drippers run for too long, otherwise we will drown the plants in the terrarium. If it proves to not be enough, we will rearrange the misting set-up somewhat to accomodate some sort of container to catch the excess water.

Thanks for the feedback, I will let Frasier know how much everyone cares for him.

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Julie Williams
www.baskingwonders.com

Uh oh. When you say that you're afraid of drowning the plants in the terrarium, does that mean you've got them in a glass tank? That's one of the many reasons why glass terraria are frowned upon. You can't hydrate enough, can't get a good heat gradient and can't get adequate air flow.
Ed

Oh no, he's in a large screen cage. Sorry, I'm used to saying "terrarium." LOL

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Julie Williams
www.baskingwonders.com

Then I'mnot sure what the problem is. My drippers go right into the plant pots and then out the bottom of the pots. I have shefflera, Ficus and Pothos and they never get any sort of root rot. As long as you have good drainage and the plants have good light it shouldn't be a problem. See
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/drainage.htm
for a pic of the setup I have to collect the excess water.
Ed

Thanks for the pics, that's a cool set-up. At this point, I think our problem is pretty much solved. I just sat and watched Frasier as his misting cycle went off and he doesn't seek out the water nearly as much as before.

The problem before was that the misting system only had misting nozzles and Frasier hates being misted... So whenever the misting started, he'd hide from the mist. By the time he headed back to that area, he would chase the water dropping from the leaves. He was getting *some* water, but I think it wasn't enough, because whenever we would hand-mist the cage and manually offer him water, he would drink very abundantly.

We then increased the misting cycles, but this caused *way* too much water to accumulate in the plant pots and on the floor of the terrarium. This is why we decided to add dripping heads; it solves the problem of Frasier running away from the water source and it also prevents having to waste tons of water.

Thanks again for the advice.

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Julie Williams
www.baskingwonders.com

n/p
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Julie Williams
www.baskingwonders.com

Oops, I said "terrarium" again... LOL One thing I forgot to clarify is that Frasier is in a home-made cage and the floor and back wall are solid wood. This is why setting up a drainage system isn't that simple. Anyway, will post pics of his set-up.

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Julie Williams
www.baskingwonders.com