Respiratory infections/ eye weirdness

[mrsruvi]

• Your Chameleon - Male, veiled in my care since mid-december. approximately 6 mo old
• Handling - rarely. once a week or so?
• Feeding - I feed 5-7 crickets in the mornings, dusted with calcium powder 6 days a week an multivitamin with D3 on Sundays. Crickets are gut loaded with flukers orange stuff and a green high calcium goo, the brand name i cant remember
• Supplements - Zoomed for the supplements and flukers for the gut loading.
• Watering - Misting system: 15 seconds every hour during the day and every 3 hours at night. I delay to every 3 hours if water starts to sit on the bottom of the cage.
• Fecal Description - white urate, normal brown fecal mater, nothing that looks interesting.
• History - historical symptoms of MDB, however last vet appt they did an xray and checked bone density and indicated that there was no loss of density, but he has a bent cask and his coloring was awful for a while there, about a 4 week span. It improved when the UVB light was changed.

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - Screen
• Lighting - ZooMed bulbs in a dual bulb thingy. There is a day light and a UVB light which was just replaced in January. Those are on 8a-9p. There is a heat lamp also on top of the cage, no lights just ceramic heat that i turn on at night for him.
• Temperature - 70 in the top of the cage away from the basking spot, 80-87 in the basking spot depending on how cold it is that day.
• Humidity - 50-70% i use a little cheap dial thingy
• Plants - there is one live plant and a mess of plastic ones. the live one is a golden pathos.
• Placement - cage is in our bedroom, near a window, top floor. we moved him upstairs during the polar vortex as the downstairs was just way too cold.
• Location - Indiana USA.
  
  My veiled chameleon seems to have been having struggles since the day I got him. He was fine for about 3 weeks, but then started showing MDB signs: bent cask, lack of color changing and his right eye was often closed or looked like it was "swallowing". It is not gooey or anything. But his appetite was never bad, his urine and fecal mater have always been normal. I made a vet appt in Dec. for him but they told me to change out his light first as that was a likely problem and they wouldnt be able to get me in for 4 days. I changed the bulb immediately (although it was only 3 weeks old) and saw pretty steady improvement. I canceled the vet appt and bought the misting system to help with the eye as the vet said it was likely dehydration.

The eye has never really improved completely but the eating was good, color was back... but then symptoms of a respiratory infection in mid Jan. I took her into the vet, showed the vet my viv set up, and got an xray which ruled out bone density issues, although the casque was still bent. The vet seemed a bit... not great. She was an exotic animal vet but she didnt know the gender of my cham, suspected HE was gravid, and refused to believe me that he would eat apples. The vet insisted on injected antibiotics for the respiratory infection, which i gave for ten days. Kappa improved but the eye was still closed often or looked weak when it was open.

This morning he's opening his mouth to breath AGAIN but no bubbles in the throat. So i made an appt with a different herp vet in a different office (i just really didnt trust that first one). I told them i had leftover antibiotics from the last infection (which was about a month ago) in my freezer and they said to go ahead and give a dose this morning to hold him over til tomorrow when they can see him.

My question: What is going on here?! Is there anything i should be asking the vet to look for? Is there any reason to think the weird eye could be related to the easy respiratory infections?

 

[Brodybreaux25]

To is likely due to your misting schedule. You’ve got to give his viv time to dry out completely between sessions, once an hour is far to aggressive especially for a veild. Cut it to 3 3-4 min sessions a day.

Eye issue is likely related to the super short misting sessions, the need time to clean their eyes out.

Supplements, gutload, and lighting are wrong, see graphic.

And definitely don’t go back to the original vet, do not cancel your upcoming vet appointment based on my post. Discuss everything I’ve mentioned with them.

 

[mrsruvi]

Ok I’ll make adjustments. Can I ask a follow up? My misting schedule was based on the vets advice because she said the eye was likely due to dehydration and needing to maintain a more moist environment. I’m worried longer misting will result in pooling and still less moisture in the air can you explain

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Ok I’ll make adjustments. Can I ask a follow up? My misting schedule was based on the vets advice because she said the eye was likely due to dehydration and needing to maintain a more moist environment. I’m worried longer misting will result in pooling and still less moisture in the air can you explain

Absolutely. First, she has proven to know absolutely nothing about Chams, you mentioned that above. Chams use rain storms to clean their eyes out, has nothing to do with actual water intake. Some Chams don’t automatically start cleaning their eyes, some have a delayed reaction. That’s why we recommend fewer and longer duration sessions, not short frequent ones. Having a lot of short duration sessions doesn’t allow the viv to completely dry out between misting, this coupled with higher daytime temps can lead to RIs. If your going to be pumping water into your viv your going to have to come up with some type of drainage system as well. Could be as simple as putting a lot of live plants in the bottom of the viv so they can suck up the excess water or something as complex as installing drainage lines.

 

[mrsruvi]

Ah that makes a lot of sense. Ok thank you so much for your help. I’ll head out this afternoon for upgraded lighting fixtures. Do you use anything for heat at night? I worry he will get cold when I turn the lights out, which is why I had the ceramic but I see it’s not recommended.

 

[Brodybreaux25]

No heat at night unless your house gets into the low 50s

 

[mrsruvi]

Oh also would you have the new vet re-so the xrays tomorrow? I’d like to think bone density is something she’d get right either way and there’s no softening of the casque etc but given that she was so dumb I worry

 

[Brodybreaux25]

I agree with you, I would think bone density would be something anyvet could get right. But given her lack of experience and you using the wrong lights and supplements I’m going to recommend you getting it done again. You’ll sleep better at night!

 

[mrsruvi]

Updated lights. Basking bulb on the left there and the 10.0 UVB in the long fixture. Updated the mister to 60sec every 6 hours (longest available spray interval on my machine) and vet appt at 2:30. Second dose of antibiotics is onboard and the mouth breathing has stopped but the eye seems worse, he was rubbing it in a branch this morning. Feedback on the lights is greatly appreciated and thank you so much for your help!!

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Updated lights. Basking bulb on the left there and the 10.0 UVB in the long fixture. Updated the mister to 60sec every 6 hours (longest available spray interval on my machine) and vet appt at 2:30. Second dose of antibiotics is onboard and the mouth breathing has stopped but the eye seems worse, he was rubbing it in a branch this morning. Feedback on the lights is greatly appreciated and thank you so much for your help!!

Is there a 4hr option? You kind of jumped from one extreme to the other there, lol....

 

[mrsruvi]

Lol I have 1-3-6-12. So I’ll do 3 then!

 

[mrsruvi]

Ok vet said to keep up antibiotics and gave RX for antibiotic drops for the eye as well as vitamin a drops. But she looked at him with goggles to see the eye up close and said it looks like a structural deformity at the front of the eye, like a moly but that didn’t come loose and is constricting the eyelid? So I’m to swab it w drops 2x a day. She was on board with all the husbandry recs you made. Thank you!!

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Your welcome, keep us updated!

 

[mrsruvi]

I have given him his second round of eye drops today and the eye is more open than it’s been in weeks. I looks like it’s on the mend. But there is a lot of water pooling in the bottom of the cage from the longer sprays. I’m going to fiddle with the sprayers and see if I can’t get more cage area wet and less pooling on the floor.

 

[CC's Baby]

You may want to look at getting a drainage tray to help with that. What type of habitat do you have?

 

[mrsruvi]

a screen cage... 18x18x24 (ish, thats just eyeballing it!)

 

[mrsruvi]

Scale of 1-crazy how insane is this plant? (schedulers arboricola, I looked: the inter webs says it’s safe)

 

[Mawtyplant]

• Your Chameleon - Male, veiled in my care since mid-december. approximately 6 mo old
• Handling - rarely. once a week or so?
• Feeding - I feed 5-7 crickets in the mornings, dusted with calcium powder 6 days a week an multivitamin with D3 on Sundays. Crickets are gut loaded with flukers orange stuff and a green high calcium goo, the brand name i cant remember
• Supplements - Zoomed for the supplements and flukers for the gut loading.
• Watering - Misting system: 15 seconds every hour during the day and every 3 hours at night. I delay to every 3 hours if water starts to sit on the bottom of the cage.
• Fecal Description - white urate, normal brown fecal mater, nothing that looks interesting.
• History - historical symptoms of MDB, however last vet appt they did an xray and checked bone density and indicated that there was no loss of density, but he has a bent cask and his coloring was awful for a while there, about a 4 week span. It improved when the UVB light was changed.

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - Screen
• Lighting - ZooMed bulbs in a dual bulb thingy. There is a day light and a UVB light which was just replaced in January. Those are on 8a-9p. There is a heat lamp also on top of the cage, no lights just ceramic heat that i turn on at night for him.
• Temperature - 70 in the top of the cage away from the basking spot, 80-87 in the basking spot depending on how cold it is that day.
• Humidity - 50-70% i use a little cheap dial thingy
• Plants - there is one live plant and a mess of plastic ones. the live one is a golden pathos.
• Placement - cage is in our bedroom, near a window, top floor. we moved him upstairs during the polar vortex as the downstairs was just way too cold.
• Location - Indiana USA.
  
  My veiled chameleon seems to have been having struggles since the day I got him. He was fine for about 3 weeks, but then started showing MDB signs: bent cask, lack of color changing and his right eye was often closed or looked like it was "swallowing". It is not gooey or anything. But his appetite was never bad, his urine and fecal mater have always been normal. I made a vet appt in Dec. for him but they told me to change out his light first as that was a likely problem and they wouldnt be able to get me in for 4 days. I changed the bulb immediately (although it was only 3 weeks old) and saw pretty steady improvement. I canceled the vet appt and bought the misting system to help with the eye as the vet said it was likely dehydration.

The eye has never really improved completely but the eating was good, color was back... but then symptoms of a respiratory infection in mid Jan. I took her into the vet, showed the vet my viv set up, and got an xray which ruled out bone density issues, although the casque was still bent. The vet seemed a bit... not great. She was an exotic animal vet but she didnt know the gender of my cham, suspected HE was gravid, and refused to believe me that he would eat apples. The vet insisted on injected antibiotics for the respiratory infection, which i gave for ten days. Kappa improved but the eye was still closed often or looked weak when it was open.

This morning he's opening his mouth to breath AGAIN but no bubbles in the throat. So i made an appt with a different herp vet in a different office (i just really didnt trust that first one). I told them i had leftover antibiotics from the last infection (which was about a month ago) in my freezer and they said to go ahead and give a dose this morning to hold him over til tomorrow when they can see him.

My question: What is going on here?! Is there anything i should be asking the vet to look for? Is there any reason to think the weird eye could be related to the easy respiratory infections?

Definetely, weird eyes liked to RI because nostril can be block and you will notice somme puffy eyes.

I strongly suggest you to raise your basking spot (try too reach 85 to 95 degres) and to diminish your humidity (veiled are semi-desertic animal so 50-70 its too much) add a dripper for drinking and if you want you can only add one misting session (shorter in time)

If you got silkworm close to your place, I strongly suggest you too feed him with this for now (containing anti-inflammatory substance so it must help) And banish the fruit (too much sugar)

close your night light he don't need it! anyway you already got advices on your lightening im not gonna repeat it

if you want to try to give small dose of vitamin A it can help a bit but careful vit A can be toxic to go with small dose!

For the rest, if you want to ty something natural, I already used repaid on my chameleon and it really help but only if you make some change in your husbandry! you can also try to found some serrapeptasis (try stargazer exotic? or berdeddragon.co if my memory is good!) it can also help with mucous

Good luck with him! do you by chance got picture of him?