Upsetting the balance?

[Jeevesieb]

Hello Chamily!

I'm wondering if anyone else has any experience or insight for this.
I have a sub-adult male panther chameleon. He has been in our care for 3 months. At his last vet visit, the vet found a mild pinworm infection. (At least it wasn't coccidia or I probably would have burned the enclosure down haha). I have now incorporated a SERIOUS deep cleaning bi-weekly, including removing him from the enclosure, stripping everything down and washing it and letting it dry. The problem is, whenever I put Paulie back in the enclosure, he does NOT want to settle in; screen climbing all over, won't stay on his feeding or basking branches, and if I open the enclosure door, he will walk straight out. I caught him on the floor of the enclosure a little while ago. I only used a dilute soapy water solution and I sprayed everything down really well to rinse it, so I don't think it's a chemical or anything. I know it's stressful and he doesn't love it, but I'm just wondering if anyone has insight for this? Watching him screen climb constantly is breaking my heart. Thank you!! -Dani and Paulie (the cham) I have attached a Paulie pic of Paulie staring me down while I'm cleaning and my husband holds him lol.

 

[Sherbertsmysunshine]

Hello and welcome Dani and Paulie! I'm sorry your beautiful boy has pinworms.

Chameleons are usaly a look, don't touch animal, him coming straight to your arm isn't usually normal. If you could fill out this Huabandry sheet, we can see if there is anything to help you fix


Chameleon Info:

• Your Chameleon - The species, sex, and age of your chameleon. How long has it been in your care?
• Handling - How often do you handle your chameleon?
• Feeding - What are you feeding your cham? What amount? What is the schedule? How are you gut-loading your feeders?
• Supplements - What brand and type of calcium and vitamin products are you dusting your feeders with and what is the schedule?
• Watering - What kind of watering technique do you use? How often and how long to you mist? Do you see your chameleon drinking?
• Fecal Description - Briefly note colors and consistency from recent droppings. Has this chameleon ever been tested for parasites?
• History - Any previous information about your cham that might be useful to others when trying to help you.

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - Describe your cage (Glass, Screen, Combo?) What are the dimensions?
• Lighting - What brand, model, and types of lighting are you using? What is your daily lighting schedule?
• Temperature - What temp range have you created (cage floor to basking spot)? Lowest overnight temp? How do you measure these temps?
• Humidity - What are your humidity levels? How are you creating and maintaining these levels? What do you use to measure humidity?
• Plants - Are you using live plants? If so, what kind?
• Placement - Where is your cage located? Is it near any fans, air vents, or high traffic areas? At what height is the top of the cage relative to your room floor?
• Location - Where are you geographically located?

 

[Jeevesieb]

Hello and welcome Dani and Paulie! I'm sorry your beautiful boy has pinworms.

Chameleons are usaly a look, don't touch animal, him coming straight to your arm isn't usually normal. If you could fill out this Huabandry sheet, we can see if there is anything to help you fix


Chameleon Info:

• Your Chameleon - Male panther chameleon approx 9mo, in our 3 months
• Handling - once per week? except to administer medication
• Feeding -dubia roaches, black soldier fly larvae, silk worms, super worms or wax worms as a treat. 3-5 large feeders daily
• Supplements - Repticalcium w/o d3 every feeding, Reptivite w/d3 2x per month
• Watering - MistKing system 2 min before lights come on and 2 min after lights go off. He's not a shy drinker. I see him drink almost daily.
• Fecal Description - Greenish-brown, moist and well-formed 1-2x per week. Mostly white urates. Mild pinworm infection found at fecal test on 1/15. Medication prescribed by vet. 2nd treatment of 2 today.
• History - normally fairly calm. Still working on building trust. Will come slowly to hands. Will readily eat bugs from the back of our hands.

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - Reptibreeze XL, 2x2X4 feet, screen but with 2 sides covered with cage backgrounds.
• Lighting - Reptisun T5 5.0. Bulb is 3 months old. Basking lamp 9 inches from backing branch. Plant LED light.
• Temperature - Cage floor 69 degrees, ambient temp 72, basking 82-83. Thermometer in cage for ambient temp. Heat gun for basking area. Lowest overnight temp 66 degrees.
• Humidity - 50%-62% during the day. 85%-90% overnight. Hygrometer in cage.
• Plants - Live plants: Pothos, arrowhead plant×2, fiddle leaf, monstera, croton and a draconea.
• Placement - In the corner of the kitchen. No pets that can walk by. Not in front of windows or AC/heating vent
• Location - Northern California

I have attached a photo of his enclosure.

 

[Jeevesieb]

Sorry for the typos. I'm posting from my phone.

 

[Sherbertsmysunshine]

What size is the enclosure? You might get some smaller branches, the seem a little thick. Do you have a dripper or a easy way for him to access water?

@MissSkittles @Beman do you know any way to help this pretty boy?

 

[Jeevesieb]

What size is the enclosure? You might get some smaller branches, the seem a little thick. Do you have a dripper or a easy way for him to access water?

@MissSkittles @Beman do you know any way to help this pretty boy?

Enclosure is 2x2x4. He has smaller branches throughout and more up top in the back. I run a dripper once a week for the plants more than anything. I see him drinking nearly every day. He just gets so upset whenever I have to mess with his enclosure and I don't want to keep stressing him out, so looking for ways to help him with that. Thank you!

 

[Sherbertsmysunshine]

Enclosure is 2x2x4. He has smaller branches throughout and more up top in the back. I run a dripper once a week for the plants more than anything. I see him drinking nearly every day. He just gets so upset whenever I have to mess with his enclosure and I don't want to keep stressing him out, so looking for ways to help him with that. Thank you!

Sounds good.
Hopefully one of the more experienced keepers can help more, I have not had a chameleon with pinworms, so I don't know if this is normal

 

[Jeevesieb]

Sounds good.
Hopefully one of the more experienced keepers can help more, I have not had a chameleon with pinworms, so I don't know if this is normal

Thank you for being supportive!

 

[Sherbertsmysunshine]

Thank you for being supportive!

Happy to help!

 

[MissSkittles]

Hi. Chameleons don’t like so much change - it stresses them out. Amongst the parasites, pinworms comparitively are basically a walk in the park on a beautiful day. After giving the medication, you really only need to do one good enclosure cleaning - two if you’re so inclined. Then just return to your usual spot cleaning. I would like to make a couple of suggestions though about your enclosure. I see a lot of plants, which is great…but very few branches to travel on. Give him lots more little roads to travel on. If you notice he tends to poo in one particular area, maybe remove any plant that catches the poo to let it fall down and make spot cleaning easier. My other suggestion is if you have the space, consider giving him a double sized enclosure. https://chameleonacademy.com/double-wide-chameleon-cage-project/ Males can be very active and will use however much space you can give them. At the time I first joined two enclosures together, I hadn’t seen the ‘instructions’ and just used thin wire and tiny hinges (the only thing I could find that would work) to connect the two. I also relied upon the corners of my heavy duty shelving unit to help keep things together. Here’s one of the first ones that I set up using a faux background (no longer use that). Once the plants grew in it was amazing and my chameleon used every inch on his regular patrols. Also note that I do bioactive.

 

[Beman]

Nothing to add from me... I would just repeat what @MissSkittles has mentioned.

When was the the last medication treatment for the pinworms given?

 

[Jeevesieb]

Hi. Chameleons don’t like so much change - it stresses them out. Amongst the parasites, pinworms comparitively are basically a walk in the park on a beautiful day. After giving the medication, you really only need to do one good enclosure cleaning - two if you’re so inclined. Then just return to your usual spot cleaning. I would like to make a couple of suggestions though about your enclosure. I see a lot of plants, which is great…but very few branches to travel on. Give him lots more little roads to travel on. If you notice he tends to poo in one particular area, maybe remove any plant that catches the poo to let it fall down and make spot cleaning easier. My other suggestion is if you have the space, consider giving him a double sized enclosure. https://chameleonacademy.com/double-wide-chameleon-cage-project/ Males can be very active and will use however much space you can give them. At the time I first joined two enclosures together, I hadn’t seen the ‘instructions’ and just used thin wire and tiny hinges (the only thing I could find that would work) to connect the two. I also relied upon the corners of my heavy duty shelving unit to help keep things together. Here’s one of the first ones that I set up using a faux background (no longer use that). Once the plants grew in it was amazing and my chameleon used every inch on his regular patrols. Also note that I do bioactive.
View attachment 350983

Thanks for the advice! Unfortunately the place he tends to poo the most is near his favorite sleeping plant. Lol. But I will look at rearranging and adding some branches. I don't have the space to do a double unless I move the entire enclosure, but it's definitely worth considering.

 

[Jeevesieb]

Nothing to add from me... I would just repeat what @MissSkittles has mentioned.

When was the the last medication treatment for the pinworms given?

Last dose was yesterday.

 

[dinomom]

Last dose was yesterday.

This is ONLY a guess. But I believe that being wormed could potentially cause some intestinal distress/mild pain. (like taking a laxative and getting cramping). If the cham experiences this, he could associate it with his cage/try to "escape" it.

This has sort of a precedent in mammals-If a cat has pain/cramps upon urination or defecation, they can then avoid their litter box and pee or poo outside it-they blame the box LOL.

If this is the case, as soon as the rumblings go away hopefully he will calm down back to normal.

Like I said only a theory but I try to always look at it from the animal's perspective . Would love to hear if anyone else has experienced this with worming.

 

[Jeevesieb]

This is ONLY a guess. But I believe that being wormed could potentially cause some intestinal distress/mild pain. (like taking a laxative and getting cramping). If the cham experiences this, he could associate it with his cage/try to "escape" it.

This has sort of a precedent in mammals-If a cat has pain/cramps upon urination or defecation, they can then avoid their litter box and pee or poo outside it-they blame the box LOL.

If this is the case, as soon as the rumblings go away hopefully he will calm down back to normal.

Like I said only a theory but I try to always look at it from the animal's perspective . Would love to hear if anyone else has experienced this with worming.

This is an excellent point! Thank you so much for this perspective!

 

[Beman]

Last dose was yesterday.

So you will want to do a good cleaning within 3-5 days later. Then you should be good moving forward.

 

[Jeevesieb]

So you will want to do a good cleaning within 3-5 days later. Then you should be good moving forward.

Thank you so much!

 

[Beman]

Thank you so much!

Expect him to be stressed and pissy for a good week after ripping the cage apart and cleaning. They hate this. But if you take pics of your placement for branches and plants and try to replicate it will cause less stress for him because it will look familiar.

 

[Jeevesieb]

Expect him to be stressed and pissy for a good week after ripping the cage apart and cleaning. They hate this. But if you take pics of your placement for branches and plants and try to replicate it will cause less stress for him because it will look familiar.

That's an excellent idea. I think that was part of the problem last time is mom didn't quite get his branches right (my bad). I will definitely snap a few good pics for future use.

 

[DeremensisBlue]

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.

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!)

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.