approx. 4 mo. old female veiled new problem

dannyboy1994blue

dannyboy1994blue

New Member
All her info can be found here:
https://www.chameleonforums.com/baby-female-veiled-keeps-her-eyes-closed-89578/

Now she has gotten past the parasite issue, verified by my vet. Because of her size we never were absolutley sure about the sinus infection, but we were giving her an orally administered antibiotic as well as antibiotic eye drops. I recently quit the eye drops because of my suspicion that they may be useless at best, possibly harmful to the skin around her eyes at worst.

She drinks water regularly, eats plenty, climbs around without any problems. Her eyes though haven't returned to 100%. She keeps them opened all day, but I can tell they are not normal. The skin surrounding her eyes looks dry and I know she can't see perfectly because she has to be very close to her food to hit her target. But she is eating 5-6 approx. 1" long silkworms per day. I was concerned about vitamins, so I bought some more crickets and even after eating two silkys this morning she still ate 6 small crickets.

Also her lower lip has started to stay open slightly. Just a tiny bit. Not one side more than the other. I know she can close it all the way but why this is a recent development puzzles me. You can see her mouth and eyes clearly in the photo, so if you have any experience with these types of issues please chime in.
 

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Wow she looks very unhealthy right now. (Not saying it is you at all so please don't take it offensively). Her eye from that picture just look brutal. Honestly she looks like she may have an edema. If that is how you spell it. From the angle it looks like it at least. YOu should have kept up with the eyedrops in my opinion. Man does that eye look bad. I can't really say what is going on with her mouth, she just looks like she may be gaping, and if you are hearing bubbles and popping when she is doing that it is most likely a RI. Which immediately needs to be treated or it may not end well. Anyone else have an opinion?
 
care/cage info

Chameleon Info:
Your Chameleon - Veiled: female approx 4"-6" head to tail, unsure of age and we've had her about 2 months.
Handling - before eye problem, once a day for exposure to natural sunlight, now we try not to handle her at all
Feeding - lots of silkworms for the last week and a half. bought some crickets today and she ate six
Supplements - T-rex chameleon dust on her crickets today, but I haven't supplemented the silkworms as I was told I didn't have to
Watering - Misting with bottled spring water throughout the day for about 15 seconds, long enough to soak her and the fake plants. She does drink water.
Fecal Description - tiny, about 70% dark solids w/30% light whitish clear
Has this chameleon ever been tested for parasites? Yep
History - Captive bread, purchased from national pet store chain. recently recovered from parasite. Was administering antibiotic eye drops and oral antibiotics with the parasite meds, and stopped at the end of the vets recommended schedule.

Cage Info:
Cage Type - screen cage 12"x18"x20" with fake green terarium carpet
Lighting - Exo-terra 25w for heat and Zilla Slimline 25w UVB T8 long fluorescent 12 hours a day
Temperature -Cage is at room temp anywhere from 72-75 degrees with 80-85 degrees at her basking spot. Overnight drops to 70 degrees, maybe 65. Temps are monitered by a thermometer in her cage at basking height and backed up by a digital with a temp probe inside the cage.
Humidity - What are your humidity levels? How are you creating and maintaining these levels? What do you use to measure humidity?humidity has been anywhere from 40-60% by misting and is measured from the center of the cage with a hydrometer
Plants - fake
Placement - the bottom of her cage is 3' above the floor and she is in our living room. We don't have any children but we do have a cat which has expressed no interest in harassing our cham.
Location - Washington State
 
If you were to look at her straight on you can see that her eyes are slightly sunk into her head. This may be a simple humidity problem as I do not think we are able to keep it humid enough for her even with constant misting. I plan on purchasing a Mist King but for now I'm headed to buy a humidifier for her. How humid should it stay in her cage throughout the day and night?
Also she didn't seem to mind the warm bath in the sink this morning. I know she's drinking but I honestly think we haven't been able to keep it humid enough and although we get a lot of rain in Washington it's not very humid on a regular basis in Bellingham, aside from the fact that she is indoors.
 
As she moves her eye around I can see it move inside the eyelid, as opposed to when we first got her, her whole eye moved around with the lid as they normally do. It seems, as she moves the eye around, the skin just isn't as supple so when she targets food and focuses her pupils are partially blocked by the skin just a tiny bit. Enough to make it hard for her to hit her target.
 
Yeah you can do all of that stuff to help and hopefully she will drink and get rehydrated. God I hate to keep saying this but that eye just bothers me, I am sure you can agree too that it has a bad look to it.
 
Well actually both of her eyes look exactly the same. They are slightly sunk into her head and very dark around the outside edge. I started the eye drops again and I have been giving her warm baths. She has been eating nothing but silkworms for the past week. Should I discontinue dusting her crickets and let her eat them for a while. Could she be over supp?
 
Well what you want to do is give her just plain calcium with those crickets, later on the 1st and 15th of next month give her d3 and a multivitamin at those feedings. The silkworms are great for her, your going to want to mix it up between the two though. Idk if you can really dust the silks but they do have a good calcium ratio, not as good as Phoenix worms though.
 
Should I be keeping her bottled spring/distilled water in the fridge? I'm going to cut out the supplements and start using a calender to regulate them. I set up a drip system that drips into a large water dish at the base of her cage. I will be sure to dump out the dish daily and it has been much easier to keep the humidity up with this simple little system in place. I do plan on purchasing a mister & humidifier this week, but unitl then I have no problem keeping the humidity at 40% for a low and about 60-65% after misting.
She will be taking another visit to the vet this week because she has been doing so well since her recovery from the parasite and I want to get a jump on whatever this new problem is ASAP.
 
ISA my Veiled said:
Fluid building up around there eyes due to an infection. Maybe someone can add what type of infection, it is on the tip of my tongue.
Click to expand...

edema does not happen in the eyes as far as I know. Edema is not caused by any type of infection. It is thought to be due to some type of imbalance in the body. It is usually seen in the gular or neck and chest area.
 
Update!

We visited another local vet until I can make another apt. at our specialist in Seattle. Needless to say I don't have as much confidence in his opinion, but he did give us a triple antibiotic ointment for our cham's eyes. It seems very similar to bacitracin and appears to be working very well on her eyes, but she indeed hates having sticky ointment on her eyes. I only apply it after she has eaten due to the fact that it drastically affects her vision until it's fully absorbed, but after it gets absorbed her vision has improved a lot. She now shoots her tongue and hits her target 1st try every time!
We have another apt. in Seattle on Saturday with our spec.
I've intentionally lost track of how much this has cost us in the past month, but oh well.:D
 
Her eyes actually look as if the skin is dead or dry around the base, that may be why the ointment is helping. Her mouth looks like you have been pulling down on her chin a lot, mine used to do that when I had to give them oral antibiotics. Her chin looks quite bruised though, how hard are you pulling on it?
 
You are correct, we were pulling on her chin to administer antibiotics, but we stopped doing that about two weeks ago for obvious reasons. We noticed the bruising, stopped pulling on her chin, started using a rubber spatula and our vet specialist gave us a safe antibiotic cream to rub into her chin to help it heal.
 
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