pinworm - help!

I used to get roughly annual fecals done on most of my chameleons. Never anything showed up. So this time I waited a little longer, about 20 months. and of course Murphy's law, this time ONE of the several tested apparently has pinworm eggs. I believe the vet said 8 under only 10x magnification and that this is BAD BAD BAD. I've never had any of them with this issue before. The vet will prescribe medication and in the meantime I am using Reptaid since I happened to buy it just to see if it would perk up a particular chameleon who never quite bounced back from a mystery skin leision illness. Turns out, its the same chameleon - no wonder he hasnt been acting himself! Vet didnt have time to answer a thousand questions over the phone this afternoon. I think I trust you people more anyhow, so...

Okay now the questions:

• Even though it didnt show up for others, is it likely they too have it? Should they all be treated?
• Is this contageous? to other chams? people? Insects? frogs? other reptiles?
• Could he have gotten this from roaches or wild caught insects?
• What are the common ways of contracting pinkworms?
• Could he have gotten this from mating (he was loaned as stud to a friend)?
• I presume extra careful cage cleaning is in order - I dont normally use bleach but is that the recommended cleanser? (I usually use vinegar water or steam clean).
• Should I toss the plants? and vines and branches?
• How to ensure no re-infection?
• Other pointers?

THANK YOU

[*]Even though it didnt show up for others, is it likely they too have it?
yes, if you share some of their "equipment." swap the plants, vines, etc.

Should all be treated? i think if you only have 3 or 4 chams, then it's worth to have them tested as well. But, if you have 20 chameleons, it can be costly.


[*]Is this contageous? to other chams? people? Insects? frogs? other reptiles?
yes yes yes yes yes yes. All can be contracted though not likely.
All required ingesting the infected chameleon's poop. i.e: If you happen to clean the enclosure and deal with the poop, forgot to wash hands, and bite your nails.


[*]Could he have gotten this from roaches or wild caught insects?
Could very well be. Could also come from the soil. it could also that the worm has always been there and kept under control by your cham's immune system until today. anything really.

[*]What are the common ways of contracting pinkworms?
Ingesting contaminated fecal material

[*]Could he have gotten this from mating (he was loaned as stud to a friend)?
I believe so if the female is infected.

[*]I presume extra careful cage cleaning is in order - I dont normally use bleach but is that the recommended cleanser? (I usually use vinegar water or steam clean).
All the above are great.
10% bleach with water and soapy water will loosen the eggs that sticks so water can flush away the eggs.
Just remember not to combine bleach and ammonia! poisonous gas warning!


[*]Should I toss the plants? and vines and branches?
any thing that can be boiled should be ok.
Plants? unfortunately, yes.

[*]How to ensure no re-infection?
deep clean before treatment.
Simplify the cage furniture to absolute necessity since cleaning complicated enclosure can be very tough.
Don't let poop be in the cage too long or worse overnight
Do the treatment.
After initial treatment over, Clean it again..
If you decided to use 3 treatments of panacur, major cleaning in between.
And after last treatment, toss everything that cannot be cleaned away

During treatment, never swap the infected chameleon's furniture with others.
He got to have separate feeding cup, separate plants, separate vines, etc.
even so, sadly, sometimes reinfection can occur

[*]Other pointers?
Don't panic.
Pin worms are common and treatable (even in human).

Panacur should kill them all.
http://chamworld.blogspot.com/2008/01/parasites-warning-this-health-chapter.html

Thank you dodolah - including the bit about not to panic

am I ever glad I wash my hands and dont bite my nails!

Howdy Sandra,

You can follow what Dodolah said and you'll be 100% successful . If it sounds like too much to handle, you'll likely be 99% successful if you rinse-off the plants with soapy water, change the soil, do a quickie wash the branches, vines and then leave the enclosure bottom wet with 10% bleach for 10-30 minutes. Panacur is super-easy to use. I like to inject it in a feeder and quickly hand-feed to the chameleon before the insect dies from the trauma of being pumped-up . With chameleons, there is almost never any side-effects from it. It also has a high overdose tolerance level. It's cheap too! You can buy enough for a horse (literally), over-the-counter, for about $10-$15 at feed stores and some reptile shops (LLL Reptile).

During the treatment process, just track down where the fecal material lands and spot clean. Chameleons are not like turtles who are likely to be easily re-infected through fecally contaminated drinking water. Pinworms are pretty easy to deal with compared to some of the other parasites out there. Once you've dealt with Coccidia, everything seems easier .

(Funny, when I clicked on Dodolah's posted link and saw that photo of a pinworm egg, I thought to myself: "What a great photo!" Then I realized that I took it .)

Thanks Dave
I spot clean all the cages daily for turds. I'm just going to throw away the branches and plants. I might soak and wash the fake vines. Kinda hard to leave my cages wet (wood) but what I will do is scrub with the soapy water and bleach, then move it to the garage to freeze for a couple months. I've got brand new built cages Trucker can be moved to once he's finished treatment. In the Spring I will wash the old cage again and repaint before it is reused. This presumes its just Trucker who has the nasties. I'll get the others retested and see. If its all of them, its going to suck big time!

sandrachameleon said:

Thanks Dave
I spot clean all the cages daily for turds. I'm just going to throw away the branches and plants. I might soak and wash the fake vines. Kinda hard to leave my cages wet (wood) but what I will do is scrub with the soapy water and bleach, then move it to the garage to freeze for a couple months. I've got brand new built cages Trucker can be moved to once he's finished treatment. In the Spring I will wash the old cage again and repaint before it is reused. This presumes its just Trucker who has the nasties. I'll get the others retested and see. If its all of them, its going to suck big time!

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if you really want to be super careful, quarantine Trucker in a different room.
good luck! I hope the others test results are negative.

Trucker had been quarantined in a different room (due to the skin leision issue) up until about two weeks ago, when (Murphy strikes again) I moved Truck back into the main chameleon room. I was preparing to have a new chameleon arrive and wanted to keep her separated for awhile, so needed the other room cleaned and ready. I suspect Trucker has been suffering these pinworms since the summer, from eating grasshoppers and other wild caught bugs. That or from the Turkish roaches that I got not all that long ago. Either case, its likely the others would have been in contact with the same things. Meaning I have a big clean up job on my hands. UGH.

I wonder if there is a way to find out if the roaches are infected. I'm hesitant to use them now. I do clean the roach buckets fairly often (unlike some people) cuz I'm a little obsessive about poop - or rather, obsessive about NOT having poop around of any sort. I dont really have enough young hissers to feed to everyone one every day (I keep small colonies only) and roaches are the only way to get Reptaid into the chams (it just leaks out of crickets in my experience).

man this sucks

You may also consider using gloves (disposables) for a while to try and totally isolate things (including yourself). You may be able to minimize the transfer risk this way too.

Good luck

OPI

sandrachameleon said:

That or from the Turkish roaches that I got not all that long ago. Either case, its likely the others would have been in contact with the same things. Meaning I have a big clean up job on my hands. UGH.

I wonder if there is a way to find out if the roaches are infected. I'm hesitant to use them now. I do clean the roach buckets fairly often (unlike some people) cuz I'm a little obsessive about poop - or rather, obsessive about NOT having poop around of any sort. I dont really have enough young hissers to feed to everyone one every day (I keep small colonies only) and roaches are the only way to get Reptaid into the chams (it just leaks out of crickets in my experience).

man this sucks

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Is Trucker likes to ingest soil? If so, that might be one of the source.
The soil you are using might be contaminated.

Cockroaches can certainly be one of the host:
http://books.google.com/books?id=u4...&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result

But, seriously, there are way too many possibilities that make it hard to pinpoint what exactly is the source. If he kept getting reinfected, then it is a warrant for investigation.

Well, If you are going to inject panacur into the roaches, then you won't have to worry. The medicine itself will definitely kill pinworms by blocking carbohydrate metabolism in the worms. So, they starve to death. MWAHAHAHAHA

Unfortunately, I have no knowledge on how to know which insects are infected. I don't even think it exist without actually killing the insect and examine it under microscope or something.

Like Dave said, after battling coccidia, everything seems to be easier.
Coccidia you definitely doesn't want to deal with. They are the devil's spawn!
Persistent little bugger and they kept coming back...

So much bad info in this thread...
Pinworms cant be passed to people and small numbers are almost expected. See other thread I started today

True most parasites are host specific meaning they target a certain species or genus of animal to complete their life cycle. There are some that can accidentally infect other hosts (ie. bad sushi) Pin worms are not that kind. They are fairly specific, so reptile pin worms won't infect people. People have their own species of pin worm that is rarely seen in developed countries any more.
The reptile pin worm life cycle includes an egg being accidentally eaten by the host, where it hatches and begins migrating thru the host tissues as a larva. This can cause damage to those tissues but depends on where and how many are migrating. When conditions are right the larva migrates into the intestines and becomes an adult where it mates and lays eggs that get passed in the feces hoping to be eaten and begin the life cycle again. Feeders may walk thru the feces or eat the feces and contribute to the life cycle that way. They do not technically carry pin worms but can be a component of reinfection.
With that knowledge if you are going to treat for pin worms you need to clean your cage to remove the eggs and eliminate any exposed feeders.

Thanks for the info!! and the bump in the 2009 thread, important info!! How do you know your cham has pinworms?

salty dog said:

Thanks for the info!! and the bump in the 2009 thread, important info!! How do you know your cham has pinworms?

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To my knowledge the only way to know for sure if parasites are present is to prepare a fecal float and look at it under a microscope at a minimum of 400x total magnification (40x objective lens) to search for evidence of ova (eggs). If the animal in question is struggling to cope with the parasite load clinical signs including lack of appetite and unexplained weight loss may occur. In my veiled boy, who is struggling to recover from poor husbandry in his first months, a heavy pinworm infestation has also contributed to malabsorption leading to what appears to be some degree of vitamin A deficiency (and possibly other deficiencies).

GoodKarma19 said:

To my knowledge the only way to know for sure if parasites are present is to prepare a fecal float and look at it under a microscope at a minimum of 400x total magnification (40x objective lens) to search for evidence of ova (eggs). If the animal in question is struggling to cope with the parasite load clinical signs including lack of appetite and unexplained weight loss may occur. In my veiled boy, who is struggling to recover from poor husbandry in his first months, a heavy pinworm infestation has also contributed to malabsorption leading to what appears to be some degree of vitamin A deficiency (and possibly other deficiencies).

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Sorry to bump an old thread... but I thought it was worth noting for anyone that might stumble upon it, that you can also see pinworms at 40 and 100x magnification. at 400x magnification, Charlie's pinworms were so large they didn't fit into the field of view! I could see them very easily at 40 and 100x. I was just doing some research on cage cleaning and stumbled across this thread.

snitz427 said:

Sorry to bump an old thread... but I thought it was worth noting for anyone that might stumble upon it, that you can also see pinworms at 40 and 100x magnification. at 400x magnification, Charlie's pinworms were so large they didn't fit into the field of view! I could see them very easily at 40 and 100x. I was just doing some research on cage cleaning and stumbled across this thread.

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Yes, you can see them at objective 40 - which is 400 magnification. 400 would be 4000 magnification.

Edit: I'm full of caca. Please see my follow up remark.

GoodKarma19 said:

Yes, you can see them at objective 40 - which is 400 magnification. 400 would be 4000 magnification.

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I'll double check mine when I get home but I think I have 4x, 10x and 40x but I'll double check as I'm a noob

Let me quickly correct myself - I don't use microscopes very often anymore.

"Objective Lenses: Usually you will find 3 or 4 objective lenses on a microscope. They almost always consist of 4x, 10x, 40x and 100x powers. When coupled with a 10x (most common) eyepiece lens, we get total magnification of 40x (4x times 10x), 100x, 400x, and 1000x."

Think of the microscope itself of having a magnification of ten times. multiply that times the lens value to get the total magnification 4X=40 10X=100 40X=400 the oil immersion lens is not used with wet slides.

I should also say that my vet confirmed pinworms in 2 of my chams - but they have VERY different sizes on their floats. I cant recall with certainty without pulling out my laptop - but both of these are pinworm per my vet, and both at 400x (40x . 10x eyepiece). Charlies were so big Im surprised I didnt see them with my naked eye (just kidding)! Penne’s were much harder to see at 40x.

Dont mean to sound argumentative, just adding in case its helpful to someone stumbles across this post in the future (first post that appeared in google results for pinworm cleaning)