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Lighting/Enclosures
Enclosure ventilation and humidity
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[QUOTE="Axil, post: 2021339, member: 117612"] Ok, I sat down to try and write this earlier and inevitably things got crazy and i spent the next few hours running putting out fires. So let me just reread this and collect my thoughts.... Ok, so while replenishing the air expelled by the critter utilizing the enclosure is obviously important, that wasn't necessarily the primary reason I thought ventilation was desirable. I had to really think about it, because air circulation was something i always just put in the "good" category of husbandry without a clear understanding the reasoning. You did a very thorough job explaining two clear benefits. 1.) temperature regulation: This is easily measurable with a couple thermometers, and you can easily tell when you've satisfied this requirement. 2.) Allowing your dragons exhaled waste in the form of CO2, etc to dissipate from the tank. You make a good case that this is almost impossible for an enclosure that regulates temperature to fail to do. Apart from those two things here are some things I believed ventilation played a role in: In an enclosed space things pathogens like virus's and bacteria have an easier time taking hold. We see this in humans with the flu, and recently covid, becoming more widespread when people spend time in enclosed spaces. Now the primary vector for these infections are close contact with other humans. However my understanding is that it is prolonged exposure to these pathogens in an enclosed environment that makes it more likely they manage to infect as opposed to an outdoor setting where movement in the air scatters the pathogens and diminishes there ability to infect. Obviously your dragon shouldn't be sharing his space with a roommate with potential to infect him however the pathogens that cause RI's and other contaminants have to enter the enclosure [B]somehow[/B], and I would think the greater the airflow the more likely that contaminant will be removed before a viral load can accumulate. Tied to this are humidity levels in the enclosure. Most pathogens be they viral, bacterial, or even parasitic need higher levels of humidity to survive. Even if the majority of your tank is sitting at 20% humidity a small puddle by the water bowl, droppings you haven't cleaned yet, or some bug carcass that managed to hide after escaping during feeding is going to create a more humid "micro-biome" around that water source. The more air that moves through the tank the sooner that local humidity source should dissipate and cease to be a vector for infection. My understanding is that the theory why dragons often have dehydration issues even with a water bowl present is that they have evolved to subsist largely on morning dew in their natural habitat. This would mean the humidity must reach 100% in order for dew to form. This would lead me to believe one of two things must be true. Either Dragons in the wild often suffer from the consequences of high humidity (RI/Fungus/etc). Or short term exposure to high humidity is tolerated well and it's the persistence of high humidity that can in captivity allow these issues to present. Again this should be largely avoided in a well ventilated enclosure where humidity cannot persist for long periods of time, at least not in localized areas, as the movement in the air will quickly normalize to whatever the humidity level outside the enclosure is. This is why I wondered about the potential of convection systems with small vents on the top and bottom of the enclosure to create dead zones in sections of the tank where air stagnates. Presumably this would be less likely than in a mesh top where i would think the air movement would be mostly uniform. Lastly I wondered about possible benefits of air moving over the dragon itself. Does this perhaps help with shedding, or heat regulation? I have no idea but in the wild they would have access to moving air. Even if there are benefits it may be unlikely that any passive air movement in an enclosure would be able to provide them. I wonder if you could set up a small low powered fan in some way and see if the Dragon would utilize flowing air. I won't be trying that with Beebz, he'd probably find a way to get his tongue stuck in the fan blades. Obviously this is all speculation on my part. It's not meant to refute any of the information you provided, only to say I thought there was more to the subject of ventilation than what you laid out. I suppose the primary benefit I believed ventilation provided was to speed the removal of any pathogens or humidity issues in the enclosure. In reality if those benefits exist at all, they may be outweighed by an inability to realize them without compromising the ability to keep temperature consistent. As i mentioned previously I'm not entirely happy with the way my gradient is working out currently. I'm still playing around with trying to add a heating element to the middle of the enclosure to smooth out my gradient but i may well end up just covering a third of the mesh towards hot side and see if that ends up being the best solution. Anyway, I think that sums up my perspective on the issue. [/QUOTE]
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