Ep 135: Season 5 Kick-Off
Listen Here!
First Order of Business! The name of the podcast has changed!
Yes, the podcast name has changed from the Chameleon Breeder Podcast to the Chameleon Academy Podcast. I will be slowly transitioning all the previous episode show notes to this Chameleon Academy website. The chameleonbreeder.com website will still be active, but it will start redirecting people to this website for the episode show notes that I have transitioned. It will be a HUGE job so it will take a while! But, to be clear, you are able to listen to all the episodes, from 1 to 135 here at this time!
The iPhone app will be changing to the Chameleon Academy branding. There is nothing that you need to do at this time. Just be prepared for a different look to come when the app is refreshed!
NEW! There will be an Android app in the next few weeks. It is has been commissioned and development is ongoing. I will announce it when it is available, of course!
Welcome to Season 5 of the Chameleon Academy Podcast!
We have a great season ahead! In today’s podcast I talk about the direction we will be going. I will have the standard wide range of episode topics that you are used to, but we will be hitting certain topics hard to try and get some results in our personal husbandry! If you have already listened to the podcast and are here wondering what the next step is then you have come to the right place! The two themes we will work on are Keeping Plants Alive and Understanding UVB.
Plants Alive! Keeping your chameleon cage green!
In the Plants Alive! challenge you have the opportunity to select a personal goal for 2020 which relates to your level of plant experience. The object is for all of us to level up in 2020. Whether that means just keeping plants alive at all or becoming an expert on one species you are specifically interested in. We will be doing it all together on the Chameleon Academy Facebook page so we can all benefit from each other. I have a post dedicated to this challenge so you can get the details and get started with choosing your goal here: Plants Alive! Challenge. And what if you don’t have a goal or want to be doing this just yet? Well, feel free to drop by the Chameleon Academy Facebook page and just watch us with our projects!
Campaign to Understand UVB
We will also be focusing our efforts on learning about UVB. My goal is to provide clear, understandable presentations in all media types so UVB will be a more understood topic in the community. There is nothing for you to do at this time other than wait for regular educational outreach and just study the material presented! If you are anxious and want to jump in immediately then there are a number of educational opportunities available. We have been studying UVB for a number of years! The first thing to do is jump on over to the Replicating the Sun page in the academy and get those concepts under your belt.
Herpeton Conference
Click the above image to go to the Herpeton website. You can register for the conference there. Take a look! I was there last year and was very much looking forward to going this year. I was then asked if I would be willing to talk about chameleons at the conference and, of course, I was honored to do so. So I will be there representing the chameleon community and would love to have a chameleon community get-together one of the evenings. Please let me know if you are going!
Arcadia ProT5 UVB light fixtures
John Courteney-Smith, MRSB, the Head of Science and Innovation at Arcadia Reptile joins me to talk about his new UVB fixture. Arcadia produces high quality UVB lights and it is encouraging that they are now producing a fixture to drive those lamps….although they have been doing it for years in the European market! So, this is the first tie us across the pond are enjoying the benefit of their expertise. I am excited to test these fixtures. Although I had one of the smaller products to look at during the interview I received my production lamps just a few days ago before the release of this episode. My excitement lies in the fact that it is exceedingly difficult to find out what protection circuitry is in the fixtures available to us so we can’t know which ones will drive our light properly and which ones will shorten the effective life. I, of course, will share my personal testing results!
At this time, you can find the ProT5 lights at LightYour Reptiles.com and Reptile Basics in the US. Apparently, they are already in wide spread availability in Europe!
You can learn more about the ProT5 light fixtures at the Arcadia website
Comments (2)
Hey Bill!
So happy season 5 has begun. I recently purchased a quad T5 from Light Your Reptiles for my 48″ enclosure, but a lot of what I’m hearing about using single reflectors for UVB bulbs both here and on forums has me worried I might have made the wrong decision since my fixture has all 4 bulbs together with a single reflector all around them. I’m seeing good reviews for it and I love the fact that it has a built in timer for different parts of the lights. Am I overthinking/worrying about this too much?
I have a solar meter and have yet to arrange my branches, but it was tough getting a 3.0 rating for a supposed basking spot. I have it raised 3″ inches off with the legs and am using the 12% bulb.
Thanks!
James,
With a Solarmeter all is possible. You can raise or lower the lights and raise or lower the basking branch. I use those quad fixtures with a 12% UVB in one of the outside edge slots and the fixture can be a couple inches off the cage. I use that exact model you got from LYR with a 12% and used the legs with it and got a nice level around UVI 3 at my basking branch. My general rule is that I use a 6% UVB in a single bulb reflector and a 12% in a multi-bulb fixture.
If you are having trouble getting a UVI 3 then check to see where you have the UVB bulb. The edge positions will give you better output. If there still is a problem getting UVI 3 then take the legs off. Though that would be strange and a situation I would like to know more about to figure out what is going on. As I am trying to put together reference charts for people without meters I am eager to hear about all the situations where the numbers don’t work!
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