Eye problems and lighting..help

Ren

New Member
Everyone in here uses uvb lights, or should.... Does anyone use additional lighting to make it brighter inside their enclosures? As 4 of my baby veileds are now having some eye issues we are putting terramycin on them and you can see their eyes moving around inside the eyelid very well... Also if you get really close you can see the black (pupil?) part of the eyeball through the eyelid... when we hold them up to the lamp to get a good look at their eyes after putting the meds on them they would open their eyes... and look around a bit...is there a daytime bulb just for additional lighting i can use in the enclosures that may help them out a bit? Natural sunlight is the best thing for them but its starting to get chilly in Ohio and wont be any good weather for basking before too long.... I want these guys to be healthy as possible. what can i do? I would take pictures but no camera i have can get that close without being all blurry..
 
On a couple of my larger enclosures I use a second flouescent "plant light" like the ones you can get at walmart. They are bright and definitely help illuminate the cage more, they are cheap and they are good for the live plants. I just get one the same size as my UVB bulb and run two fixtures parallel to one another :)
 
Cherron's suggestion is good.
Also, you can certainly add incandescent lighting (I have 2 basking light fixtures now) just make sure the extra lights are at a distance that does not allow them to warm the environment.
Basking lights are, in my opinion, unnecessary and potentially dangerous for babies who have not yet learned to thermoregulate.
Temps should be quite a bit cooler for them in the first couple of months.
80 degrees f. would be the high end.

-Brad
 
I'm using the purple nightglo 40watt bulbs, they give off some heat but the temps don't grow above 80... what would cause the eye problem all of a sudden? They weren't like this until a week ago, I'm afraid they aren't eating so im about to mix up some bug juice and see if it helps at all.... no one around my area carries the exo terra electrodize...
 
Im going to town to pick up a few things, and I guess im going to get some Gatorade because i don't know how much of the pedialyte or ensure to mix in the mixture so i can however mix Gatorade and water.... but i was wondering if i should add ADEK my daughter has these vitamins and needs them, as well as perhaps some of the rep cal multivitamin powder to the mix?
 
im using a reptisun 5.0 24 inch flor. tube and the purple night glo bulbs 40 watt... but it isnt effecting the other chams...
 
ive read it and im not using any compact bulbs.... only the 24 in floro tubes 5.0
 
It's so hard...impossible...to figure out what the problem might be with little ones who seem to be having eye issues.
It could be an infection...something may be irritating them...
It might not have anything to do with the eyes at all.
I would seek veterinary advice.
Other than that....???
I think you are getting unsatisfying response to this thread because people don't know what to tell you.
I believe what you are doing so far is good (certainly doesn't hurt) and I wish you the best of luck with them, but beyond consulting with a doctor ....I have nothing to offer.
Sorry:(:(

-Brad
 
My wife talked to 2 vets yesterday I forgot to post about it, the one vet is our own personal vet and he doesn't see reptiles... however he gave us a vet who did, and she called him/her and they prescribed some drops for the eyes and told us to obtain some terramycin in which i did... it seems to work, but only in conjunction with the sunlight, i bought a couple of 12$ light fixtures from lowes, http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=76376-1390-G9721GROW-WH
and put on across the 2 tanks .... we will see how it goes, i am going to attempt to feed the other babies some of the pedialyte and vitamin mixture and see how they like it, thanks for the help everyone...
 
I lost one, when i got home he was laying at the bottom of the cage and he was lifeless.... poor little guy, he was my wifes favorite, when she gets home she will be super bummed.... gonna concentrate on the other 3 and get them fixed back up, one of the three seams to be in a lot better shape both eyes open momentarily and climbing a lot...
 
Ren, Id remove the other bulbs that you previously had on the tank for several hours and see if its not some invisible (to us) light that is having them squint. observe for a difference.
 
Ive had these guys out of the light now since last night. But the others have not, or seam to not have a problem with the lights there were 8 total and only 4 are having the problems and are in the same enclosure...
 
Geez Ren :(

Sorry I've missed this thread Ren........I've got a cold this week (after nursing my husband through his cold!). Are these the four smallest babies? I think I remember you separated the bigger ones out. I don't see that your lighting or low watt purple heat bulb would cause any problems. I am doing the same exact thing with the same caging you have. Mine stays right at about 80 degrees too. Not too warm and they can crawl upside down on the screen top without getting too hot. I do wonder if they got an irritation of some sort that then turned into an infection. Or made them rub their eyes to the point of causing a problem. The ointment you are using is a good one. You can get it over the counter on the web and I always keep it on hand. Have you been dusting your insects for them prior to this? Sometimes the "dust" can get into their eyes and cause irritation, particularily if you put the dusted insects into the cage from above the babies. I am somewhat worried about adding any vitamin powder, etc. into whatever you are hydrating them with. I think it might be too hard on their baby kidneys. I would also be careful trying to manually get them to drink. I killed a baby the first and only time I tried it. I know a couple of other people that have killed hatchlings this way too. It is almost impossible to keep it from getting into their lungs which in turn will cause a secondary respiratory infection. Now, I just keep spraying the foliage throughout the day to try to get them to drink. They can drink even if their eyes are shut. Geez Ren, I am so sorry about all this. I know how attentive you are to their needs.

One thing to keep in mind.......in any given clutch there are several hatchlings that are probably destined not to survive. You are seeing for yourself that four from this clutch are growing super fast and strong even though every hatchling got the same food, light and heat sources. Then there is probably some that are growing the slowest and not making nearly as much progress. There is probably another group that is somewhere between these two extremes. In the wild the smallest group would have already have died or been eaten. Our intervention in the process has allowed them to survive longer than they probably would have in the wild. There is something about these smaller individuals that makes them that way in a controlled situation like our homes. My vet and I had a long conversation about this recently. It is thought that within many reptile species this actually happens by design. These smaller individuals are designed to provide a future meal for the bigger siblings at a later point. This then helps insure the survival of the species as a whole. In the wild, chameleons will eat any other chameleon they can fit into their mouth. It's just another snack to them.

I hope you figure out what is going on with the babies. I know it is very frustrating. Just when you think all is well . I've lost a couple of my smallest hatchlings this week too. They were the smallest of the clutches and they just never really took off. It's so sad to see them not get a chance at growing up :(
 
I decided against adding anything to the mixture of pedialyte , so i used it straight, i did not try to open the mouths of the babies but rather just squeezed out droplets onto the front of their mouths to try to entice them to lick it off, i didn't see any of them drink it.... but who's to say? A thought, would it be bad to mist them with the pedialyte or will water suffice? I want badly for them to eat... but if they wont or cant i need them to get something out of what they are drinking.
 
Howdy Ren,

I'd be tempted to stay with just using water for misting. If they take some pedialyte from a dropper, great. If not then just keep-up the misting. All I've ever used for hatchling lighting was a Reptisun 5.0 and a small Philips 50W flood light, both set to the proper distances. I used the same 15-20 minutes of automated misting directly on all babies and never had any troubles.
 
Keeping my fingers crossed......

I would agree that you should just mist with water. Anything else might get into the eyes and cause more problems. Can we get a picture of one? Did it happen to them all at once or one at a time? Is the plant in their cage the same as the one in the other cage? I'm sure you've racked you brain for any differences between the two groups, etc. I have a little Ambanja hatchling that is so tiny compared to it's siblings. It seemed to be eating and drinking just fine even though it was not really growing. It took a turn for the worse yesterday though, and today it is just sleeping and not eating or drinking. It looks like it is shriveling up before my eyes. It's too small for a vet to help it. Can't do a blood test, too small for general antibiotics and nothing obviously wrong with it. I keep misting it in the hope that it might drink something. I don't think there is much else that can be done at this point. You can at least focus on the eye situation your babies have and see if that leads to a general recovery. Keeping my fingers crossed for you and your family.........
 
i will increase the mistings and what will be will be, as far as differences in the cages they are almost identical in whats in them... but 1 is for the babies and the other is for the Autumn right now, she is almost big enough i think to go to a larger screen cage... i have the troubled babies in a large cricket keeper with paper towel floor and fake tree limbs...
 
Seems to me you're not giving your chameleons proper or sufficient lighting. I ALWAYS use a 10.0 UVB combined with a 2.0 UVB... It's recommended...
 
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