rieppeleon brevicaudatus with fungus

Hello, i bought two juvenile pygmies at a zoo expo in sweden resently,and it took two days before i got home with them, but they had roomtemperature in the transportboxes at all time. I released them in a 20x20x40 cm glass terrarium with about 5 cm screen and the rest of glass on both the top and front. Everything in the terrarium is sterilised by boiling it, except from the plants. In the first week i used a huge led plant bulb, but it had a extreme untatural colour and i was worrying about it stressing the animals, so i switched to a t2 longlife plant bulb, and builted a reflector of a beer-can that holds it a couple of inches over the glass top to prevent over-heating. Both chameleons eated fine(fruitflies with calvirep without phosphourus), but day two with the new bulb it got to around 25 in the top of the terrarium and about 24 at the bottom. So i turned the light of. It appeared as the main reason for the high temperatures is that the new termostat-system in my terrarium room wasn't working as it should so i turned the temperature in the room down, waiting for a new weaker bulb. After one or two days with no light and a temp between 18 and 23 c i tryed the same bulb again and managed to not get the temp over 24 at the top and about 22 at the bottom, but now i saw i couple of white spots on the smallest chameleon that looks like some sort of fungus. They day after it was worse and he is scratching his eyes that is now often half-open. I used to mist two times a day manually but when i spotted the fungus i saw i little water buildup beneath the peat soil so i drained it and redused to mist once a day. To day some of the spots was gone but the remaining spots had grown, so i removed him to a quarantine cage with peat that is much drier than the other one. Tomorrow i wil get a fan to increase the airflow, and i wil call a vet. But the problem is that i live 5 ours from a good reptile vet, so i am not sure that it will be a good idea to take him to the vet if i need to wait for lab results. Then i maybe have to go to the vet twice. Is it any meds i can ask for that is safe to start with immediately? And if i shold go for the trip should i take the healty one too?

This is what i belivie is chameleon faeces. I can mention that i tryed to tuch the biggest white spot with my fingernail as gentle as possibleand it semed hard like a rock. Maybe it,s some sort of calsium buildup? he drank before the light turned off today, but not much. Should i switch the peat with a sterile papertowel cage or should i try to leave it as it is? I tought that peat was the best, as it has a little antifungal tannins and a sterile paper would gather patogens fast and i would have to change it daily and stress him. I'm very worried about this going the wrong way, and i hope i did't cause this by wrong husbandry . Sorry about my bad english.

The gravel isn't a big part of the substrate by the way. It's an alternative to hydroton and is just visible in the corner that i use for draining.

I would take everything out of the bottom of your chameleon's cage, stones and substrate included.

The best thing to have is nothing, or failing that paper towels, or large sponges (I use these as they catch water and other detritus and can be taken out at the end of every day, squeezed out and washed).

ZiggyStardust said:

I would take everything out of the bottom of your chameleon's cage, stones and substrate included.

The best thing to have is nothing, or failing that paper towels, or large sponges (I use these as they catch water and other detritus and can be taken out at the end of every day, squeezed out and washed).

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It's different for pygmy chameleons. They are kept in very different conditions from arboreal chams. Proper substrate is an important part of their environment.

I found him dead this morning. It definetly ruined my day
His mate does not show any sign of fungus yet, but it hasn't eated in almost two days. Could it mean that something is wrong, or is it because it's almost adult? And can someone tell me te sex of both of them. I was told that it was a pair. I think the smallest(dead) one was the male.