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YOUR HUMIDITY MAY BE WAY OFF!!!
Paul
www. paulthepolymath.wordpress.com
This is taken from a post I made on a reptile forum, edited for more clarity and tweaked a little, so its written in that way, not my normal shenanigans. (This could be a good thing.)
I was reading Inferalis’ post on his poor Monitor who ended up with gout due to low humidity. <– This is a reference to this post:
http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/varanid/90251-long-term-low-level-dehydration-terminal-gout.html
I have used nearly 30 (yes 30) brands of hygrometers, and this is BY FAR the most reliable, you can find them for ~$20-30 on amazon.
I wanted to let you all know about a little problem many of you may not realize, and may be affecting you!
One of my other hobbies is smoking a pipe (tobacco) and cigars (<– you blog readers know this!) So I have some experience with keeping humidity.
I have seen many pictures of enclosures and noticed a trend.. ONE hygrometer!
Why is this bad, you ask? Well, the cigar hobby is much more picky about our humidity than you would imagine. the difference between 68% and 72% humidity could be the difference between a cigar that is too dry and has lost its oils (and thus flavor) or a cigar that is COVERED in mold and destroys your entire collection. The worst is that different cigars need different levels, i have some cigars I enjoy at 58% while others if i go down to 60, it will taste like a cigarette (EUUUGH!)
Because of this, many cigar smokers utilize multiple hygrometers to monitor different drawers, sections, etc. of their humidors (some are rather large).
People wiser than I, a while ago, realized that their humidors were uneven in humidity and trying to find the problem, decided to place all their hygrometers in one area and see if they might be off. You would be horrified as to how inaccurate some of the “high quality” hygrometers are, never-mind the cheapo ones.
I will use my own experienced from here on out to explain/apply this to reptiles.
I purchased a 5 pack of hygrometers (about $40 each if purchased retail) from a high-end cigar company, CAO. Upon opening the hygrometers, I laid them all out and let them acclimate (they take some time to read a change of environment) and they ranged from 20% humidity to 55% humidity. (it was 51% humidity in the room, measured by an accurate hygrometer) Yup, a 35% disparity between 5 identical, $25 hygrometers. This means your expensive hygrometer may be as off as 30% or more without you realizing it.
Luckily, my buddy who has owned a cigar shop for longer than I have been alive showed me his little trick to ensure his hundreds of thousands of dollars in cigar stock don’t turn into bad cheese over night.
It’s called the salt test, and many good hygrometers (the xikar ones) are sold as “adjustable” and have a “reset” button, which sets the hygrometer to read whatever the current humidity is as 75%. The reason it does this is because of the infamous (around cigar people) “salt test”
What is a salt test?
A salt test is an easy test that basically puts your hygrometer into an isolated 75% RH (relative humidity) environment, in which you can then determine how inaccurate the reading is and adjust accordingly.
How to do the salt test:
First off, grab some materials. Luckily, you should have all of them already in your house.
Small sandwich ziplock baggy
- Bottle cap from 2 liter soda bottle (works best)
- Table salt (sodium chloride)
- Hygrometer (AVOID ANALOGUE, think of them like the “hot rocks” of hygrometers. that’s how bad they are!)
STEP 1:
Fill bottle cap with standard table salt; fill about 3/4 of the way up, not too hard!
STEP 2:
Add filtered or distilled water (not tap) to the bottle cap to saturate the salt.
You want more of a slurry consistency of water and salt.
If you see water floating on top of the salt, you’ve added too much water. Easy fix for this is to grab a paper towel, and soak up all of the excess water. This is a bit harder than it sounds, but you’ll get it down in a few tries. just keep dumping it out and retrying until you get the right consistency, salt isn’t expensive.
STEP 3:
Place both hygrometer and bottle cap (with salt/water mixture) inside of a small ziplock baggy. Note how sloshy the salt mixture looks:
One of my other hobbies is smoking a pipe (tobacco) and cigars (<– you blog readers know this!) So I have some experience with keeping humidity.
I have seen many pictures of enclosures and noticed a trend.. ONE hygrometer!
Why is this bad, you ask? Well, the cigar hobby is much more picky about our humidity than you would imagine. the difference between 68% and 72% humidity could be the difference between a cigar that is too dry and has lost its oils (and thus flavor) or a cigar that is COVERED in mold and destroys your entire collection. The worst is that different cigars need different levels, i have some cigars I enjoy at 58% while others if i go down to 60, it will taste like a cigarette (EUUUGH!)
Because of this, many cigar smokers utilize multiple hygrometers to monitor different drawers, sections, etc. of their humidors (some are rather large).
People wiser than I, a while ago, realized that their humidors were uneven in humidity and trying to find the problem, decided to place all their hygrometers in one area and see if they might be off. You would be horrified as to how inaccurate some of the “high quality” hygrometers are, never-mind the cheapo ones.
I will use my own experienced from here on out to explain/apply this to reptiles.
I purchased a 5 pack of hygrometers (about $40 each if purchased retail) from a high-end cigar company, CAO. Upon opening the hygrometers, I laid them all out and let them acclimate (they take some time to read a change of environment) and they ranged from 20% humidity to 55% humidity. (it was 51% humidity in the room, measured by an accurate hygrometer) Yup, a 35% disparity between 5 identical, $25 hygrometers. This means your expensive hygrometer may be as off as 30% or more without you realizing it.
Luckily, my buddy who has owned a cigar shop for longer than I have been alive showed me his little trick to ensure his hundreds of thousands of dollars in cigar stock don’t turn into bad cheese over night.
It’s called the salt test, and many good hygrometers (the xikar ones) are sold as “adjustable” and have a “reset” button, which sets the hygrometer to read whatever the current humidity is as 75%. The reason it does this is because of the infamous (around cigar people) “salt test”
What is a salt test?
A salt test is an easy test that basically puts your hygrometer into an isolated 75% RH (relative humidity) environment, in which you can then determine how inaccurate the reading is and adjust accordingly.
How to do the salt test:
First off, grab some materials. Luckily, you should have all of them already in your house.
Small sandwich ziplock baggy
- Bottle cap from 2 liter soda bottle (works best)
- Table salt (sodium chloride)
- Hygrometer (AVOID ANALOGUE, think of them like the “hot rocks” of hygrometers. that’s how bad they are!)
STEP 1:
Fill bottle cap with standard table salt; fill about 3/4 of the way up, not too hard!
STEP 2:
Add filtered or distilled water (not tap) to the bottle cap to saturate the salt.
You want more of a slurry consistency of water and salt.
If you see water floating on top of the salt, you’ve added too much water. Easy fix for this is to grab a paper towel, and soak up all of the excess water. This is a bit harder than it sounds, but you’ll get it down in a few tries. just keep dumping it out and retrying until you get the right consistency, salt isn’t expensive.
STEP 3:
Place both hygrometer and bottle cap (with salt/water mixture) inside of a small ziplock baggy. Note how sloshy the salt mixture looks:
BTW:
IF YOU SUCK AT LIFE AND CANT SEEM TO MIX WATER AND SALT…
Buy these:
http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Importers-HUMI-CALIBRATE-One-Step-Calibration/dp/B000A3UBLA
IF YOU SUCK AT LIFE AND CANT SEEM TO MIX WATER AND SALT…
Buy these:
http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Importers-HUMI-CALIBRATE-One-Step-Calibration/dp/B000A3UBLA