Still Stressed :(

BKO Overdrive

Established Member
Chameleon Info:
  • Your Chameleon - 7th Month Old Vieled Chameleon / Female, Been in my care for 2 months.
  • Handling - I only Handle during feeding to give her trust, ill extend my hand and make her come get the food then i just place her back in her cage. Also to clean her cage but i never grab her, i bait her with food and she walks onto my hand
  • Feeding - I feed her a mix of crickets/super worms/butter worms/silk worms, crickets are gut loaded with cricket crack with sweet potatoes, super worms are fed mustard and collard greens, and the silk worms are fed silk worm chow from mulberry farms. Im feeding her 10 feeders a day giving her 6 feeders not dusted with anyhting and 4 feeders with calcium WITHOUT D3 (zoo med brand), then i have a rotating schedule of every sunday to switch between calcium with d3 (reptical) and vitamins (zoo med). She is fed every morning after waking up one hour.
  • Watering - I have a Monsoon System that is set to spray at 9/11/1/5 threw out the day, i see everyone says 2 min but i have mine spraying for 15 sec. I feel if i sprayed for two min strait i would drown the cage or ruin the walls, I have seen her drink and i have a Dripper on at all time from when she wakes up at 7am to when she goes to bed at 8.
  • Fecal Description - She has never been tested or gone to the vet yet, but her poop used to be very shiny and soft, her urate was always white. Now its sorta hard and not as soft and her urate is mostly white but sightly yellow.

Cage Info:
  • Cage Type - Screen Medium Zoo Med Reptibreeze cage (kind you get with the kit) 16x16x30
  • Lighting - The Kit came with a dual lamp combo i have a 5.0 mini reptisun uvb light and i have a 65 watt basking bulb
  • Temperature - During the day the house is kept at 76 with the basking temp at 84, at night i set it at 73 so she gets a temp drop.
  • Humidity - I bought a gauge and its always above 65%, i live in Louisiana where its never below 60% so i dont think i have an issue with humidity.
  • Plants - I recently put in golden pathos and a hibiscus plant. But I took the Pathos Out.
  • Placement - The cage is located in the living room, i live by myself in a house so theirs no traffic at all,
  • Location - Lafayette, LA

Current Problem - Okay Ill make this simple as it could be a few things im thinking off. So when I first got her i was told it was a male...well boom she isnt so that opened a world of anxiety on me such as the case with owning a chameleon haha. So as you will see in the picture i will label it as "Before" which will show how her cage looked like. I saw so many setups on here and i wanted more for her and i thought it was too open to i went out and got a real habiscus and a real golden pathos. They will be in the picture "After" it is when i did this that she started to do this. So simple logic dictates let me take out a plant because its to crowded. So i take out the golden Pathos. She goes back to normal for a day then the next day back at it. I left the hibiscus in there because she LOVES eating the leaves. Shes been munching on them and i can tell she loves it. The only time she isnt like that is if shes sleeping which is a lime green, or when im feeding her which i think is due to excitement. Sleeping i know she will loose the darkness because she is resting and not putting toward the effort to show her colors. The only thing i can think of next....is to take the hibiscus out and see what she does. I just figured It Wasn't an issue because she was eating it. Im going to go get a fecal done on her this weekend to make sure she has no parasites because i was told if shes sick that can also cause it. If also noticed that after i added the plant/shes been eating it....her poop smells horrible. Usually it was light colored and soft but now its kinda hard and smells god awefull. Not sure if that might help. Hopefully ive described enough. Ive done so much research but lacked the research of a female because when i got her i was told it was a male and went in blind. My fault in reality. So i know her cage is too small as now im seeing what people have theirs in, the plan is to order her a XL screen cage and reconfigure the entire cage, get bigger lights to fix the lighting issue and put a laying bin in her cage at all times, i currently dont have the room to even fit a testing bin to see if she would dig in it, ive squeezed the side of her stomach (which she cant stand and it hurts me to do it but i do it out of care) but her sides are puffed up and i dont feel any jelly bean or eggs, but one second she could look fat as if she was then the next second look skinny like i haven't fed her in weeks.

Before /After/ Stressed

Before.jpg After.jpg Stressed.jpg
 
So today I installed a security camera so I can monitor her......she did not like that. She got super defense and changed a color I have never seen before. The pic is sorta clear but there were 3 green spots that we almost neon green. Did she think the camera was a male cham and showed off her gravid colors?
 

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She could have smelly feces because of her crickets, they tend to give parasites when poorly cared for. You definitely need to increase her misting times. If her urates are yellow it means she's dehydrated. She needs 2 minutes at least preferably. My panther has 4 minutes sessions and a couple 2 minute sessions 6 times a day.
 
I tried to get a stool sample to the exotic vet we have in town to check....apparently I choose to go when she took off all week. So I have an appointment Tuesday with her. Also Urate is white, she just pooped. I've been misting her manually with the monsoon as back up. Once I get her a XL cage I play to resolution the misters and to mist longer. I just can't do 2 min. The mist isnt really a fine mist and if I did 2 min it would ruin stuff. More like a slight rain.
 
I tried to get a stool sample to the exotic vet we have in town to check....apparently I choose to go when she took off all week. So I have an appointment Tuesday with her. Also Urate is white, she just pooped. I've been misting her manually with the monsoon as back up. Once I get her a XL cage I play to resolution the misters and to mist longer. I just can't do 2 min. The mist isnt really a fine mist and if I did 2 min it would ruin stuff. More like a slight rain.

Get a MistKing is all I can say. If you can't mist for two minutes without ruining stuff, you need to resolve whatever the issue3 is because two minutes is nothing. Water issues usually break down into two basic problems--drainage or over spray. Each has a solution--you just have to find it.
 
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