Killa Cham is dying...

[FirstTimeChameleon]

Oy...

A bit bummed out about this one actually.

We moved about three weeks ago. I noticed about two weeks ago that Killa wasn't eating much and hadn't pooped in a bit. I figured it was just the stress and the move etc., but I wasn't too worried. He'd stopped pooping for a while before, and a shower helped him out, so I put him in the shower a few times and upped the mistings. It didn't seem to help.

I figured maybe it wasn't hot enough for him at night, so I got one of those red heat lamps and replaced one of his basking bulbs with it (he had a 50 and 75w basking bulb and a 24" 5.0 UVB tube) to keep the temp a little higher in the enclosure at night (The basking spot is about 30-35 degrees celcius, and the cage is 4ft by 2.5 ft by 2ft, so lots of room to move down out of the heat). A few days passed and he didn't poo, instead his eyes started getting all sunken. So I took him to the vet, thinking he was impacted. The vet felt him, listened to his breathing and heart and said there was no impaction. I told the vet about my setup and the diet and he said that everything sounded good, and that it was probably a parasitic gut infection. The vet gave him some medicine, and said I should bring in some poo for a him to run some tests on it.

Sadly he still hasn't pooped, though he does pass some stuff that looks like urea once in a while. I took him to the vet five days ago and he's just gotten worse since. Sometimes he seemed like he'd be getting better, like crawling on the walls of his cage (which he hadn't done for a while) and moving around alot. But I just went downstairs to check on him and found him hanging by his tail upside down from one of the tree branches with his eyes closed and his mouth open. So I took him out and put him on a fake vine on top of the enclosure, close enough to the basking light that he can get some heat from it but not too close to it. I figure this way if he loses his grip and falls at least he won't break a leg or something.

He's just sitting there with his eyes closed.

Ah man.

The thing is I can't figure out for the life of me what I did wrong. When I first got him I did a ton of research, made sure everything was A-OK in terms of the enclosure, the lights, UV, calcium and vitamin supplementation, moisture etc. I've heard chameleons can go off their food for a while when the seasons change, and I'm wondering if this combined with the stress of the move was too much for him or something.

 

[LBonawitz]

did you have a culture/sensitivity test done? i wounder if he has a bacertia over growth


i'm sorry to hear about killa

 

[jannb]

I'm sorry to hear that Killa is not well. Maybe you can call your vet back and see if there's anything else the vet can do.

 

[FirstTimeChameleon]

did you have a culture/sensitivity test done? i wounder if he has a bacertia over growth


i'm sorry to hear about killa

No, no culture/sensitivity tests were done to my knowledge. The vet did ask me to bring a poo sample in, and he gave me a little bottle with some water in it to put the poo it. But he hasn't pooed.

 

[jojackson]

Mouth open, likely too hot. Stick to one basking bulb, no night heat, it needs to cool down/lower its metabolism., No uv lights at night, darkness is nessesary for health.
Have you changed the cage around at all?
Does it have a dripper? Is it drinking?
35c is a bit high, 32c is high enough and around 20c at night is fine.
Boosting the heat is dangerous unless you know what the problem is.
If there is infection, higher temps will just make it worse by increasing the metabolism.

 

[kinyonga]

Your chameleon is dying...iindicated by his hanging by his tail with his mouth open, etc. I don't know if its too late, but he needs a good reptile vet NOW if you want to give him a chance.

Has he been drinking at all?

Do you have a substrate in the cage?

Has he been wheezing or breathing with his mouth open?

You said..."The vet gave him some medicine"..for parasites, I assume?

 

[FirstTimeChameleon]

Mouth open, likely too hot. Stick to one basking bulb, no night heat, it needs to cool down/lower its metabolism., No uv lights at night, darkness is nessesary for health.
Have you changed the cage around at all?
Does it have a dripper? Is it drinking?
35c is a bit high, 32c is high enough and around 20c at night is fine.
Boosting the heat is dangerous unless you know what the problem is.
If there is infection, higher temps will just make it worse by increasing the metabolism.

-no UV on at night
-the cham was drinking. he drank earlier today.
-I don't think he was too hot. he was moving up to the heat and away from it at various point.
-I put the heat lamp in there because I checked the temp at night and it was dropping below 20, around 15-18.
-no dripper, but usually misting twice a day and one ice cube on the top of the cage to drip down during the day. I've been misting more since he got sick.

I don't think he was too hot. He wasn't moving away from the lights. Like I said, the enclosure is big enough that there's a heat gradient in there. If anything he was spending more time in the basking spot than he used to, which is why I figured he was getting too cold. I thought the red light was okay to have on at night, the vet said they didn't really perceive this as light.

Anyways, thanks for your help. I turned off the red light so maybe that'll help. I checked and with just the red light going it's around 25 in the basking spot and around 20 further down in the cage.

ETA: didn't really change the setup at all, but as I said we recently moved, so I put him in a small carrying box and took the plants out of the enclosure, then set everything back up basically the way it was before and put him back in. He seemed fine and scrambled out of the box and hid in the leaves.

 

[FirstTimeChameleon]

Your chameleon is dying...iindicated by his hanging by his tail with his mouth open, etc. I don't know if its too late, but he needs a good reptile vet NOW if you want to give him a chance.

Has he been drinking at all?

Do you have a substrate in the cage?

Has he been wheezing or breathing with his mouth open?

You said..."The vet gave him some medicine"..for parasites, I assume?

His mouth isn't usually open. It was only open when I found him upside down.

There's no substrate in the cage but I have two potted plants in there. I repotted them in organic soil (no vermiculite). No fertilizers, no pesticides. One is a schefflera (I had a big leaf schefflera but then I read these might be toxic so went out and got a small one instead a few months ago) and a ficus.

No wheezing or breathing with his mouth open. He seems to be breathing normally actually.

The medicine was for parasites.

 

[jojackson]

put the heat lamp in there because I checked the temp at night and it was dropping below 20, around 15-18.


If thats celcius its not too cold really, thats around 59-64f, according to most folk here thats acceptable.

 

[FirstTimeChameleon]

RIP lil buddy.

Anyways, the parasite medicine the doc gave him didn't really seem to help at all. I was wondering if maybe he was blocked up but the doc didn't catch it, so I cut him open to take a look post mortem. Everything looked okay from what I could see, except that the intestine was pitch black. I've never dissected a reptile before but that struck me as very odd. Also there was nothing in the stomach except some orangish gelatinous slime, though I had put a mashed up cricket in his mouth the day before and he swallowed it. (yeah I know I know doing that is only supposed to be done under etc. etc. and so forth but I was desperate and thought I needed to do something.)

I have a bit of a stool sample that I managed to get (it dropped on a leaf and not into the dirt below) so I'll probably take that in and see if the vet can tell me anything more this weekend.

I'm thinking about getting another panther chameleon and taking a shot at it again, cause I really enjoyed having it as a pet. But I want to make sure that whatever killed Killa doesn't kill the next one too. Any thoughts? Or is getting another chameleon under the circumstances irresponsible?

 

[Carlton]

I have read that cham's intestines can normally be very dark colored, but not sure if it is species specific.

 

[Carlton]

-no UV on at night
-the cham was drinking. he drank earlier today.
-I don't think he was too hot. he was moving up to the heat and away from it at various point.
-I put the heat lamp in there because I checked the temp at night and it was dropping below 20, around 15-18.
-no dripper, but usually misting twice a day and one ice cube on the top of the cage to drip down during the day. I've been misting more since he got sick.

I don't think he was too hot. He wasn't moving away from the lights. Like I said, the enclosure is big enough that there's a heat gradient in there. If anything he was spending more time in the basking spot than he used to, which is why I figured he was getting too cold. I thought the red light was okay to have on at night, the vet said they didn't really perceive this as light.

Anyways, thanks for your help. I turned off the red light so maybe that'll help. I checked and with just the red light going it's around 25 in the basking spot and around 20 further down in the cage.

ETA: didn't really change the setup at all, but as I said we recently moved, so I put him in a small carrying box and took the plants out of the enclosure, then set everything back up basically the way it was before and put him back in. He seemed fine and scrambled out of the box and hid in the leaves.

Too much heat lighting can dry the cage out quite a bit even if the temp isn't too hot. I didn't see mention of a humidity gauge. What was the cage humidity level? I suspect adding the lights and the heat spot at night just dehydrated him over time by evaporating your misting too quickly. A melting ice cube or dripper won't raise the general cage humidity much at all. A dehydrated cham won't eat, can end up with constipation or bowel impactions. If he was drinking a lot every time you misted chances are he was getting dehydrated over time. The parasite med probably added to intestinal problems (it is a poison after all) and really stressed him. Sometimes meds like Panacur can also stimulate appetite and I've heard a lot of vets routinely try this. As he got sicker he probably spent more time basking but that could have added to the problem.

This sounds so similar to what happened to my very first cham. A new house that was a lot dryer than my old one (central AC), a new larger screen cage, poor quality humidity gauge stopped working, too few live plants to retain moisture, eating less and less, gradual constipation (and what I now know was very orange compacted urates), not passing anything at all, a vet visit, being force fed an antiparasitic and given an enema to try and clear the bowel, shock and death. A necropsy showed a section of necrotic bowel just packed with insect shells and legs.

 

[FirstTimeChameleon]

You know what, you might be right. The humidity in there was getting pretty low actually, around 40% (somehow my new place is much drier than my old place; I used to have the humidity up around 60% generally). THis was before the heat light was added. The addition of the heat light didn't really seem to change things much. I didn't really think the humidity was a big deal when I found out he wasn't constipated, but I was gonna do something about it over the holidays.

I guess I'll invest in a dripper or something for the next time around. MAybe a mister.

RE: intestines; yes I actually found a link to a 'how to' necropsy guide on this site (Dr. Greek's Guts Guide or something) and the intestines looked like they should.

 

[jessica]

Sorry to jump in and, sorry about your Cham but I was reading this and thought if your room gets that dry in your new home may be a humidifier might help.
Again sorry to hear about Killa

 

[FirstTimeChameleon]

Sorry to jump in and, sorry about your Cham but I was reading this and thought if your room gets that dry in your new home may be a humidifier might help.
Again sorry to hear about Killa

No need to be sorry, I'm looking for advice so the next one stays healthy!

You mean a whole of room humidifier, or can you get humidifiers that just keep the enclosure humid?

 

[jessica]

A room humidifier, I'm not sure they make one to go in the enclosure.
If your new house is drier a humidfier might help you too!

 

[Carlton]

There are small cage foggers some people like, but I find them touchy and short lived. I prefer to use an ultrasonic room humidifier set right next to or above the cage. Depending on the model you can add some pvc pipe or flexible tubing to the spout (where the fog comes out) and direct the fog so it pour over the cage plants. It doesn't necessarily need to run all the time. You can set up some cycles of fogging by working with your humidity gauge and a multiple setting timer. This can really help maintain cage humidity between misting for drinking.