Coccidia question

1 of my new wild caught Nosy Be has just been diagnosed with coccidia. I've never had any of my chams have this before but have done some reading on it. I also brought in one of my new beardies to be checked as well, not w/c, and he was diagnosed to have it as well. According to my vet he said the newest info on dragons is that they all have a small amount of coccidia and the new consensus if they are asymptomatic that they shouldn't be treated for it. He stated that both of them showed small amounts of it. He said he wasn't sure if it would be the same for chams, i told you before he isn't too familiar with chams. Anyway from what i read about chams they should always be treated for this. Correct? This is the same vet that only wanted to treat my cham with tapeworms 1 x, he also stated that reptiles always have some kind of parasites and shouldn't always be treated for everything. Should i just find another vet? I did tell him i wanted another shot for the tapeworms and he said to bring him in and he will give it to him but it worries me that he was willing to just let it go after 1 treatment. It also worries me that he is almost as willing to let it go with my chams. He is leaving for 4 days and i told him i would do a little more research on the matter and we will talk on Tuesday. What is everyones' opinion on letting the coccidia go if there are no symptoms?

Debby

Coccidia can become a large problem if you don’t get rid of it or at least keep it in check… Start off with Albon then if that dosent work get into the big stuff… Gloom girl knows a lot about this, maybe she will pop in here… She had to use TNT to get rid of it in one of hers…

I'm not a big fan of albon - I've used it in chameleons and phelsuma. Phelsuma had no problems, but my chameleons (veileds) had severe problems after dosing with albon. It seems to destroy their intestinal flora, often harming the animals in the process.

From Adcham, I learned of appertex, a european medicine used to treat coccidia in pigeons. Several experts spoke of good results with it, and that it's much gentler than albon.

I ordered it a few weeks ago to treat my LTC melleri, who was skinny, and not gaining weight (despite eatign 2-3X as much as my CB). He had coccidia, but was skinny, so I didnt' want to treat with albon. I ordered appertex from a pigeon supply company (I'll get the name later), and dosed him the next day.

He didnt' act strange or show any side-effects. It's only been a few weeks, and he's already gained significant weight and is filling in nicely.

I do not like albon, but others have had good luck. It's certainly not the most gentle medicine. This stuff seems to be very safe.

About the bearded dragon, they seem to always have coccidia... It's likely that your chameleon got it from the dragons (unless you didn't have them at the same time or whatever). Some bearded dragon breeders just live with the fact that their animals have it, and don't fight it too much. Chameleons are more fragile, though, so I would attempt to clear it up. If you don't clear up your bearded dragon also, though, it might just keep showing up in your cham. It's a difficult parasite to get rid of completely.

If you do decide to use Albon, give the chams additional hydration (to help clear the kidneys of it), and also a pro-biotic supplement to replace their good bacteria (very important). We did that and our chams handled the Albon rather well. I will go out and see what pro-biotic we used and add it's name to this post. Unfortunately, Albon doesn't seem to work for all chams, nor for all strains of coccidia.

Hi,

My female actually had coccidia, hookworms, trichomonas, and clostridium. Well I was battling Coccidia it seems like forever, I bought a (supposedly captive born) chameleon last year, who had a load of parasites and my fav coccidia my vet said with that load of parasites she was most likely wild caught. I won the battle of coccida after 7 months, but my battle isnt over.

What I did to get rid of the coccidia, I had one of those mesh cages that break apart (Reptarium) and I bought some thick wire clothes line from home depot so she would have something to walk on easy to clean and remove from cage. I took the cage apart everyday and washed it in hot water and ammonia. At first the vet tried albon, we tried that for a long while,and it didnt work. So the vet looked into some alternatives and found Sulfamethoxazole w/tmp susphit. Now she doesnt have coccidia anymore. All the medicines did run her poor little immune system down though.

With her immune system being run down she developed pseudomonas, now she is on Fortaz, one injection every 3 days (10 doses injectable) for a course of 30 days..... sigh my vet and I are bummed about having to give her injections. I hope it goes away poor thing has been though a ton. Wish me luck!

For her tapeworms, my vet gave me a oral medication call Praziquantel I gave one dose then repeated it in two weeks. My vet tries to avoid giving injections to stressful for the guys. For the Trichomonas and clostridium I use metronidazole to treat the problem. The hookworms I used panacur.

The other thing you can do is give NutirBAC df Probiotic for reptiles to help them deal with any antibiotics your vet gives them, helps promote "good" bacteria" in the tummy.

http://www.reptileuv.com/nutribac-df-probiotic-for-reptiles.php


Sorry this is so long
Hope this helps all ...

Was your previous de-wormer injected? Do you know what was used to de-worm the first time with your nosy? It is definitely typical to follow up two to three weeks later to kill all the eggs that could have developed since the first treatment. I would be really careful with the coccidia it can be nasty.
Our beardie always has had it and had an overload once that warranted treatment. I could recommend cleaning the cage with a higher quality close steamer, like a Jiffy brand! Coccidia won't die from bleach or any of your typical household cleaners, but something as simple as really warm water (or steam)will kill it along with all of the other nasty stuff.

Thanks for all the great advice. I just got my beardie a little while ago and i always use bacterial soap in between animals. I also haven't hardly touched my new Nosy Be because he was wild caught and wanted to give him plenty of time to get use to being captive. Will antibacterial soap in between kill the coccidia germ? With the stuff you used that is used on pigeons, how do you know how much to use? I will let my vet know that i will not treat my beardie right now but definitely WILL treat my cham i just need to figure out which one to use. How long do they usually need to be on it if they just have a small number.

As far as the tapeworms, it was an injection, and he will be getting another injection by the vet on Tues. I am sorry i don't remember what it was and i just pay the bill and try not to look at it cause it hurts to much. lol.

Debby

The injection was prob Droncit.

Scrubbing well with warm water and soap should do the trick!

Use of disinfectants containing quaternary ammonium compounds, steam cleaning, immersion in boiling water are the best methods to kill coccidia from what I have read. Coccidia can withstand freezing.

Washing your hands well is supposed to be sufficient to prevent transferring it to other reptiles.

Howdy,

I'm also in the middle of treating with Appertex (Clazuril). I read-up on how it is used with pigeons and as far as warm-blooded critters go, it is pretty safe and effective. As was mentioned, there is some data that suggests that it might be effective in chameleons too. My Veiled has had a very tough case of coccidia for many, many months that developed shortly after I sent him out on stud services. Over those months, I've tried several parasite drugs which knocked it down to about 10% of the maximum level but his immune system was never able to finish it off. He's around 5-6 years old. If he was 1-2-3 years old, he'd have probably had a better outcome by now.

A single pill appears to be safe. With mammals, one pill should be enough. The half-life in the system is something like 3 days. If I find that this first dose hasn't cleared it up after a week or so (1-2 poops later) then I will probably try a pill every 2-3 days for a week or two. The pill is not soluble in water so I ground it up and suspended it 0.2ml of food grade glycerin (honey would probably work too) and injected it into a feeder worm and fed-off right away. We'll see how it goes .

I would definitely look into racing pigeons forums or pigeon supply store for cross references on coccidiosis. These fanciers are actually crazier than us chameleon keepers. They spend thousands to hundreds of thousands for their thoroughbred in the sky. So their husbandry is well established and top notch.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to advocate self medicating and forgo seeing a vet. But we can get an insight on another animal that has the same problems and maybe find a similar treatment.

I don't want to sound stupid but what is the reasoning for taking everything down on a daily basis to clean it? I always keep his cage really clean anyway and clean up poop asap. Also i have a real plant in his cage and a few times he has pooped in it. Should i change the soil? And then put some rocks on top in case he does it again? Usually i just remove the poop and surrounding dirt.

Debby