HELP My Chameleons eye is closed

[AlexJ]

Hi, my baby 4-6 month old veiled chameleon male closed his left eye. The bottom of the lid is a bit swollen. He has been like this for a week now. I took him to the vet and they perscribed 3 medications: Antibiotics, Metacam Oral, and Ofloxacin Eye drops. None of these seem to work. Nothing has changed. Can anyone please help me and tell me what is wrong?

Chameleon Info:

• Your Chameleon - Veiled Chameleon, Male, 4-6 months. Had it for about 2 weeks
• Handling - maybe 1-2 a day when I feed him. But he climbs on me himself because he is very active.
• Feeding - Feeding him 3-4 mealworms twice a day. Gutload them with lettuce tomatoes and fruits/
• Supplements - I use the repti calcium to coat the mealworms once a day
• Watering -I give him water from a eye dropper. I dont see him drink in the cage so I do it myself. I have a mister that goes off for 5 seconds every hour.
• Fecal Description - Normal brown long poop. He poops once a day or two

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - Zoo Med labs screen cage. 10x10x12
• Lighting - I have two lights. A blue light from petco which provides the heat and a pro t5 7% UVB bulb
• Temperature - Day range is from 75-85 degrees. Night goes down to 65degrees because I turn off the lights. I have a thermostat.
• Humidity - 50% ish average. Goes up and down from here. Because I mist for 5 secoonds every hour.
• Plants - No live plants. I have a couple of live sticks though.
• Placement - It is in a drawer to maintain heat.
• Location - NY

Current Problem - Left eye has closed and I dont know what happened.

 

[Gloriawood]

Hi and welcome to you and your cutie!! I see some things that can be tweaked with your husbandry, however I’m still not comfortable doing a full review so I’ll tag in more experienced keepers. A couple questions though: could you post a couple photos of your enclosure including lights? And does your repticalcium have D3?

@MissSkittles @Beman

 

[kinyonga]

Hi, my baby 4-6 month old veiled chameleon male closed his left eye. The bottom of the lid is a bit swollen. He has been like this for a week now. I took him to the vet and they perscribed 3 medications: Antibiotics, Metacam Oral, and Ofloxacin Eye drops. None of these seem to work. Nothing has changed. Can anyone please help me and tell me what is wrong?

Chameleon Info:

• Your Chameleon - Veiled Chameleon, Male, 4-6 months. Had it for about 2 weeks
• Handling - maybe 1-2 a day when I feed him. But he climbs on me himself because he is very active.
• Feeding - Feeding him 3-4 mealworms twice a day. Gutload them with lettuce tomatoes and fruits/ I would recommend only using mealworms once in a while. Crickets, BSFL, roaches, silkworms are better choices. I would recommend feeding/gut loading the insects with a wide assortment of greens such as collards, dandelions, kale, endive, etc and veggies such as squash, sweet red peppers, sweet potato, carrots, etc. and a tiny bit of fruit such as apples, pears, berries.
• Supplements - I use the repti calcium to coat the mealworms once a day Phos. free calcium should be lightly dusted on the insects at each feeding. Reptivite vitamins with D3 should be lightly dusted on them twice a month.
• Watering -I give him water from an eye dropper. I dont see him drink in the cage so I do it myself. I have a mister that goes off for 5 seconds every hour. I would recommend misting the cage and setting up a dropper that drips at the rate of one or two drips per second.
• Fecal Description - Normal brown long poop. He poops once a day or two What colour are the urates? White, slightly orange, very orange?

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - Zoo Med labs screen cage. 10x10x12 Inches? Too small by far.
• Lighting - I have two lights. A blue light from petco which provides the heat and a pro t5 7% UVB bulb Blue lights are not recommended. Most recommended UVB lights are the long linear tube lights…Reptisun 5.0r Arcadia 6%.
• Temperature - Day range is from 75-85 degrees. Night goes down to 65degrees because I turn off the lights. I have a thermostat.
• Humidity - 50% ish average. Goes up and down from here. Because I mist for 5 secoonds every hour.
• Plants - No live plants. I have a couple of live sticks though. Can you post a photo of the cage please? Artificial plants are not recommended. Veiled chamekeons often munch on the plants…so fake ones are dangerous.
• Placement - It is in a drawer to maintain heat. What’s in a drawer? The cage??
• Location - NY

Current Problem - Left eye has closed and I dont know what happened. IMHO, you need to see a good chameleon vet about the eye.

 

[MissSkittles]

Hi and welcome. You’ve gotten some great advice already. To expand on that, your chameleon looks younger than 4-6 months…or is a girl. Boys have very prominent nubs sticking out from the backs of their back feet. My guess would be maybe 3 months. He’s very thin and not getting enough to eat. He should be getting at least 20+ appropriate sized feeders daily for about another month or so, or as much as he’ll eat in about 15 minutes time. Make sure the feeders are smaller than the space between his eyes or he won’t be able to eat them. You may want/need to order some bugs on line and I’d suggest trying a variety pack. https://dubiaroaches.com/ https://www.rainbowmealworms.net/ and https://www.thecritterdepot.com/ are all great vendors to shop from.
For misting, you want to mist for two minutes, twice a day - before lights go on and off. You can use a mister for about 15-20 minutes at mid day if needed. You need to give the enclosure time to dry out. This should bring your humidity down closer to the ideal 30-50% range.
The size of your enclosure is far too small, even for a baby chameleon. The minimum standard for an adult veiled is 2x2x4’ or equivalent. You can put a baby in the adult sized enclosure. The primary concern is that they are able to find their food. For that, I advise setting up a feeding station in an area that is easily seen from his basking branch. You can use a deli cup or buy/make a feeding station. I like and use this. https://tkchameleons.com/products/shooting-gallery?variant=30018608595032 I have made my own versions of it from take out containers. Just be careful to sand the sharp edges or lightly melt them to dull. Then you need correct uvb. You are close to right, but the Arcadia 7% fixture and bulb are designed to only work correctly together and are for animals like leopard geckos. Unfortunately, you can’t put a correct 6% uvb bulb in that fixture…it just won’t work properly to provide the needed uvb levels. You need the standard Arcadia Pro T5 with the 6% bulb. I know it seems like it shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. I can’t explain it as well as @Venutus1 who owns https://www.lightyourreptiles.com/ can. Once you get the correct enclosure and uvb, then you need the basking area to be 8-9” below the lights. You will need to elevate your lights above the screen by a few inches. Babies love to screen walk upside down on the top and can very easily get burned. Once he’s too big to do that anymore, you can put the lights on the top. With him being bigger, the distance between lights and basking area should still be about 8-9” away from him. Hopefully raising the basking light will also lower the basking temp. Young chameleons shouldn’t have temps over around 80.
Veileds like to nibble their plants and it only takes one nibble of a fake leaf to cause a potentially fatal bowel obstruction. Because of this, you want only safe live and clean plants. Pothos is one of the best and easiest. You’ll need a way to attach lots of branches and vines for him to travel. There’s lots of ways to do that. You can get https://dragonstrand.com/dragon-ledges/ which are awesome, or come up with your own way. Just make sure you have the weight being supported by the frame, not the screen. Below are pics of how I used garden trellis. If you want details, just ask.
I strongly suggest reading thru this https://chameleonacademy.com/chameleon-husbandry-program-getting-started-with-chameleons/ to learn all you need. Another great resource is https://www.neptunethechameleon.com/ Keep asking questions here and sharing about your little guy. It is important to make these changes without much delay. Little chameleons have no resources to fall back on and can fail very quickly if things aren’t just right.