Upsetting the balance?

[dinomom]

It sounds like you have been taken care of pretty well here! But I happen to be going through this myself right now so I can share what I have been doing and hopefully that will be helpful.

First, understand the beast.
Pinworms are nematodes with a direct lifecycle that hangout in the gastrointestinal tract. They eat and mate there and produce eggs which are expelled in the poop. The idea is that they produce enough eggs that some insect or other small critter comes by, brushes the poop, or lands on it to eat. This vector gets eggs on it somehow and then the chameleon eats the vector (usually an insect) and the egg gets where it needs to be inside the chameleon, grows up, and continues the lifecycle.
View attachment 351108
Pinworm egg from direct fecal smear

Second, how do we disrupt the lifecycle?
The only way those eggs-in-the-poop can reinfect your chameleon is if they get back in the chameleon’s mouth. And so your job is to break that lifecycle. And you see the most obvious weakness in their plan. You just have to make sure no food item gets in contact with the poop. This can be done by containing the food item so it never gets to the bottom of the cage. If we take this to the extreme - and I am NOT recommending this - but you could leave poop and eggs at the bottom of the cage indefinitely if you hand feed your chameleon and the chameleon never goes down to the bottom of the cage. (Now, hookworms may be an exception to this as human hookworms hatch and travel to find their host. I haven’t read that reptile hookworms have been shown to do this, but I would be surprised if they didn’t.) So, cleaning up the eggs is a prime partner to medication and controlling the feeders, but it isn’t the panic situation it may seem.

Third, How to we isolate the eggs from the chameleon?
One thing I would suggest to make this easier on you is to strategically set up the cage so that the poop has nothing to bounce off of or be caught on its way to the floor. We chameleon keepers are lucky in the way that our reptiles do not generally walk through their poop! So arrange the plants and branches so there are not branches under other branches and there are no plants under the branches. This is one of those things that is very simple, but can get to be word soup trying to explain. I have a daily vlog on Youtube and was planning on explaining the quarantine set-up to facilitate parasite treatment. This is as good of a time as any to address how to set up the quarantine cage without going minimalistic so I will film that today for tomorrow. I see you have the Dragon Ledges so you will be able to carry this out easily. Here is a picture of a good quarantine set-up. If you would like to see this in a video explanation then I think I can have it in tomorrow’s VLog. My Vlogs get released every morning at 5AM PST and I am in the chat live at the first showing if you want to drop by and ask questions. (For anyone reading this later, look for the Chameleon Academy YouTube VLog #9 for Tuesday Feb 6. And now that I said that I have to make it happen!)

View attachment 351109
Image from the back of the cage showing the plants towards the front and perching branches behind. The plants offer privacy without being under branches and branches are placed so none are below the ones above. (as best as can be done)

So, to conclude all of this, I suggest changing up the cage so that nothing is below anything else (as much as is possible) and then go to only spot cleaning the poop and you can deep clean the bottom panel. With the Dragon Ledges you have and the flip up service door of the Reptibreeze, all of this can be done without disrupting your chameleon and getting him worked up. I will try to make it a point to come back and post a link to the VLog episode when it releases to make it easy to find.

Thank you another good reason not to have free-ranging insects.

 

[DeremensisBlue]

Thank you another good reason not to have free-ranging insects.

Definitely! In a quarantine set-up, free range insects are the ultimate self-sabotage!