Possible eye infection in juvenile rudis chameleons?

[Matt Kolmann]

I grabbed these 5 baby rudis chameleons from a reptile show awhile back from a supplier who wasn't feeding them. I expected them to not last, but decided to hydrate and feed them anyways. That was about a month ago. They've been doing great - eating D. hydei and pinhead crickets. I recently moved and decided to move them into an exoterra enclosure so they could have some more room. All of a sudden one had one eye shut. I isolated him and gently misted him with water to see if I could rinse the eye. It progressively got worse - both eyes shut. I used a light saline solution to rinse the eye out, then a saline solution with vitamin B12 to see if it could fight the infection. I noticed the next day that another baby was shutting his eyes. The first infected baby has died. The second one is doing poorly. And now another has started to look like one of his eyes is irritated. What is going on?

Tank specs:
12x12x18 Exoterra - rinsed with warm water and wiped clean
Home Depot organic potting soil
1 Scheffelera arboricola
1 Polyscias balfouriana (P. scuttelaria)
1 Peperomia obtusifolia
Several baked Live Oak branches

Misted with Reptisafe-treated water
Bottom of enclosure is river-washed stones covered with mesh, with soil on top - to facilitate drainage.
Since rudis are a cool-weather species - I keep the room they are in at around 75F

I just recently found out the Peperomia (if correctly identified) may possibly be weakly toxic if the sap comes into contact with small animals. The plants and animals have been in the cage for 2 weeks with no problems until 3 days ago. Please advise.

 

[Dave Weldon]

I recently moved and decided to move them into an exoterra enclosure so they could have some more room.

All of a sudden one had one eye shut...both eyes shut.

used a light saline solution to rinse the eye out, then a saline solution with vitamin B12 to see if it could fight the infection.

I noticed the next day that another baby was shutting his eyes.

The first infected baby has died.

And now another has started to look like one of his eyes is irritated.

What is going on?...

Howdy Matt,

Eye closure is more often a window into a chameleon's health rather than an eye infection. An eye infection usually has a discharge or cloudiness associated with it.

The decline in health you are witnessing may be traceable to the changes in their environment or may be a delayed reaction building-up over the time that you've had them. Rudis keepers will better be able to fill-in more of their specific requirements.

So that I can beat the other keepers to the punch, you might as well go ahead and post the answers to: https://www.chameleonforums.com/how-ask-help-66/. The more detail to those answers the better chance of solving this before they are all lost .

Think: "Back to Basics" - UVB, humidity, toxic plants and soil, isolation, etc. . Time is of the essence. Make no assumptions.