heres an unconventional idea i had for keeping tanks very humid

[echostatic]

ok, so, you know those humidifiers that have the heating element that vaporizes the water , and has a little fan that pushes that vapor out the top? well, what you do is put some tin foil over that fan hole so no air moves in the vaporizing chamber. the water still gets vaporized, but it stays concentrated in a thick fog. that fog will naturally push itself out of the opening on the humidifier and slowly roll out and fall. what i was thinking is closing off that top exit hole and cutting holes in the object used to seal it, and attatching rubber hose to the holes to direct the fog into the tanks that need to be humidified.

ill add pictures of what im talking about when i get home.

i was thinking of plugging the humidifier into a timer to get 2 or 3 15 minute fogs a day for my tailless whip scorpions. thoughts?

 

[echostatic]

ok heres the pics.

the humidifier i use

the inside. you can see the heating element and fan hole with tin foil over it.

here is cardboard over the top hole with aquarium tubing attatchd.

and here you can see the end result. its not much coming out of a little tube but its good for a kritter keeper

 

[echostatic]

well i already have a proble to figure out. within a few minutes, humidity builds up to the point where the tube becomes clogged with water. mabye it i can keep the tubing at a steep downward angle...

 

[DrAce]

well i already have a proble to figure out. within a few minutes, humidity builds up to the point where the tube becomes clogged with water. mabye it i can keep the tubing at a steep downward angle...

You'll end up draining all that tank of water into the CKeeper.

The reason it's condensing, I think, is because it's never actually water vapor. It's an ultrasonic generator? That's vibrating the water to produce a mist... not heating it.

I'm not familar with the unit, however, just the principles behind it.

 

[JayzunBoget]

This is one of my expertises...

Hooking an ultrasonic humidifier up to just one kritter keeper can be VERY excessive, but I suppose it can be done.
I use ultrasonic humidifiers for most of my poison dart frog cages and it keeps everything rainforest fresh and clean,... as long as there is adequate air circulation and drainage.
To control the amount of "mist" you use two controls. 1) the diameter of the tubing that you use to deliver the mist. 2)How long and how often you have the humidifier on.
To adapt your humidifier better to your tank, I recommend you take the blue reservoir section with you into home depot. Go to the PVC plumbing section and find something that will fit directly into the whole that that silly turret looking piece came out of. I use WalMarts "Reli-On" brand ultrasonic and a 1.5 inch coupler fits into that and then I hook reducers into that to get down to say 1 inch for a larger tank or possibly down to airline tubing if you were to use it on a kritter keeper. Only the amount of mist the fan can push through the smallest diameter hose will make it into your tank. The rest will condense and fall back into your tank. A couple of problems you may run into are the water in the humidifier overheating because the same water keeps getting transduced and when you are plumbing the tubing to your tank, it CAN NOT be allowed to travel down and then up. This will cause condensed water to gather at the lowest point and stop mist from passing.
Now that you've controlled how much mist you are putting into your tank per minute, now you can control for how many minutes and how often you are misting your tank with a timer. You will need a digital timer if you want increments smaller than 15 minutes (like, if you have a small tank) but otherwise a standard Christmas tree style timer will work.
Very shortly you may ask yourself where all of this water that you are dumping into your tank with your humidifier is going. If you w2ere smart and drilled the bottom of your tank for drainage, then it and all sort of yuck from your tank are passing right on through and into a drainage catch container. If you lacked the forsight or where unalbe to drill (like tempered glass) then you will have to either run your humidifier at such a rate that it evaporates out of the cage at the same rate that it is put in, or you will have to periodically have to siphon standing water out of a false bottom, which can quite literally suck (I'm laughing inside).:wall:
One last point I would bring up is to be damn careful about using this method for Ts. I don't even use one on my T. blondi. I fear that if you saturate the air to 100% for two long, you may coat the booklungs and drown the T in mist!
I will try to take pics of one of my own humidifiers and post it here later.

 

[JayzunBoget]

P.S. You should stop using tap water in your humidifier. That white mineral build up is killing it. You should only use reverse osmosis filtered water.
And I see that yours is a Vicks. The 1.5 inch coupler should work for you if you want to use it. What you have now will eventually fall apart but it will work for awhile.

 

[echostatic]

i bought it a long time ago with no intention of using it to humidify invert tanks it was just an idea i thought up and threw together, rough and dirty.

it sure doesnt look like a mist, but alright. i block the fan so that it builds as much as possible into a thick fog, but because the tubing is so thin there isnt all that much making its way into the tank. im running it to three kritter keepers but based on how the water droplets build up inside i think im going to have to go with a larger diameter tube. it gets absorbed by the substrate (coconut fiber) pretty quickly too and the lighting tends to evaporate it pretty quick so i dont really see oversoaking becoming a problem in the long run.

is reverse osmosis filtered water any better than distilled?

 

[Mat]

I was browsing through the local "electronic components superstore" the other day when I discovered they sell the actual "fogging" units used in some of these (tacky ) little "fountains" as a separate unit, which I though would be great for keeping up the humidity on small tanks. These are the ultrasonic units, so no heating involved.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=35215&C=Maplin&U=SearchTop&T=fogger&doy=25m3

These look a little smaller than the unit you are using, so it might be worth checking out to see if you can get something similar in the US

Matt

 

[JayzunBoget]

I hate those little fountain foggers

The small fountain fogger that you found is actually the exact same thing powering that Vicks fogger except for two important details that make it soooo very hard to use.
The water level above the transducer has to be within a certain range to work. Too high, no fog. Too low, nope none for you. In the process of working, the water level will naturally go down as the water leaves in the form of "mist". Eventually it stops working. On top of that, the transducer does heat the water a little bit. If the water keeps getting transduced but is not able to leave, I've seen the water get as high as 98 degrees. Not gonna burn ya, but not safe IMO for cold blooded animals. The room size humidifier has a reservoir that keeps the water at the same level within the unit untill it basically runs dry.
The second big difference is the fan. Just wait till I take and post pics of my humidifiers in action and, just because of that wee little fan, you will see me fill a 90 gallon tank completely with fog with the same unit as this guy has got.

 

[echostatic]

you can fill most tanks as long as you cover the top (if it has a screen top)

 

[dtknow]

Overkill. Unless, and even if you live in a very dry climate wetting the substrate and providing other methods of holding in moisture should do it. Not saying it won't work great but considering the technical problems etc. doesn't seem worthwhile.

 

[JayzunBoget]

Overkill. Unless, and even if you live in a very dry climate wetting the substrate and providing other methods of holding in moisture should do it. Not saying it won't work great but considering the technical problems etc. doesn't seem worthwhile.

In the case of providing for tarantulas, I'm going to have to agree. I've had situations where it was worthwhile, like flow through vivariums or providing for cloud forest reptiles and amphibians.
But for most Ts, the ones that need it rilly swampy, like T. blondi and such, can be provided for with moist bedding and a partially to mostly covered top.

 

[echostatic]

just a thought. maybe someone will find a use for it.

 

[echostatic]

im curious, could something like this be used to humidify an enclosure for a reptile with near 100% humidity requirements?