Meller Chameleon

[ataraxia]

awsome stories. i will buy a uvb 10 bulb today. i did have fecal done at airport vet clinic here in terre haute. they said they saw no parasite. getting the 10 uvb hopefully will perk there appetite. its now been 7 days of no food intake. how long can they go without food? i called all the indianapolis pet shops and no one has roaches if anyone here has roaches near indiana i will drive to come get them!!!

 

[summoner12]

awsome stories. i will buy a uvb 10 bulb today. i did have fecal done at airport vet clinic here in terre haute. they said they saw no parasite. getting the 10 uvb hopefully will perk there appetite. its now been 7 days of no food intake. how long can they go without food? i called all the indianapolis pet shops and no one has roaches if anyone here has roaches near indiana i will drive to come get them!!!

I would buy some panacur from LLL Reptile (or if you know where to get some near you) and give her a treatment. It won't hurt your cham to give the correct dosage even if she is clean. I would also send another sample to another vet and do it a couple of times.... if you have a microscope or would like to be a science geek, you can find them on eBay for around $200-250 If you plant to keep up on your fecal tests (as most of us should especially with more than one cham...) it will pay for itself pretty fast if you consider most vets charge $30 for one fecal test.

Can you show us some more pics?

 

[eisentrauti]

Could you post a pic of the noteating one ? I'm quite sure that an adult melleri in good condition could survive over a month without food

 

[summoner12]

Keep up the work!!!
Our Mellers Story:
We, like you, bought ours at the reptile show in Jacksonville, FL. I feel bad b/c I do not remember the name of the people who were selling them. They had about 20 Mellers in a single 36x24x36" enclosure. They even had "$100" stickers on some of them. Ours was perched on top of the enclosure and when we walked up, we asked if we could touch them. The guy said "yeah" as soon as Chelsea put her hand out Joy immediately climbed onto her arm. She gave us a "please dont put me back there" look and made no effort to return. We asked the people at the booth how hard they were to keep, "Oh they arent hard at all". So like many we bought her. Joy did not leave Chelsea's arm the entire hour ride home to St Augustine. She had great color the whole way, only showed stress once when one of our daughters reached over to touch her, and immediately calmed back down afterwards. Fortunately we are the kind of people that wanted to know everything we could about her and found Melleridiscovery and this forum. Shes been spoiled ever since She still walks up to Chelsea, crawls up to her shoulder, burries her head in her hair and takes naps in the evening.

If you ever go back to that show I'd like to know who that person was... I wouldn't be surprised if the guys name was Nick. I don't remember his last name but he is disliked by many.

as for your cham liking Chelsea... Melleri have a good sense like that. There is a bit on Melleri Discovery that talks about how Kristina (site owner) changed her eye glasses and her chams were acting as if they didn't recognize her. My melleri must think I am three different people I get home from work wearing a red shirt... in the morning im normally not wearing a shirt and during the weekend I usually have on a darker color shirt like black or dark green or grey... (I only wear 'street cloths' on the weekend so my wardrobe is kinda limited ). Melleri are great, they have good personalities.

 

[ataraxia]

Could you post a pic of the noteating one ? I'm quite sure that an adult melleri in good condition could survive over a month without food

from what i understand it is a male. the smaller one is a female (the one in the background of the pic). i put the 10 uvb in and the female started moving closer to the top. first time she has moved in the new cage. what would you like to see pics of? ive got enough lighting on the cage to start a tanning salon lol.

 

[eisentrauti]

They both look stable from what I can see. Try it with flying insects. Eg butterflies, moths, flies or dragenflies. Let outside your house a bulb burn in the night, than you can catch many flying insects

 

[summoner12]

Todd has a method for trapping moths at night. I think he uses a light and a cloth bag or something.

 

[ataraxia]

im going to try this tonight if it stops raining. i have some large koi nets that will be perfect for this. *pictures what the neighbors will think when they see me running around the porch swatting the air with a butterfly net. LOL!! today i put a kitty litter box loaded with crickets in the cage. the female seemed very interested at first. she moved over the box and watched for a while but didnt eat.

 

[Chigimonky]

Wow Mellers are really nice! That was a pretty impulsive move haha. I've never worked with them but I understand they are more high maintenance than most

 

[summoner12]

im going to try this tonight if it stops raining. i have some large koi nets that will be perfect for this. *pictures what the neighbors will think when they see me running around the porch swatting the air with a butterfly net. LOL!! today i put a kitty litter box loaded with crickets in the cage. the female seemed very interested at first. she moved over the box and watched for a while but didnt eat.

Try not to over feed. If she is large, adult size. You can put a few crickets free ranging in the cage with her. Today I did the same with the two melleri I got this weekend and they ate all of them (for the most part). It will be a bit more natural for them to catch the food than to sit there and pick them off on the ground of the cage. Yes... they will get lazy and just eat from a bowl or cup.... BUT... Today I offered some crickets to my little CH, Chris, and he ate from the cup... took a long time of him inspecting the cup, watching me, looking at Lenny (who was getting interested too and moving in on him). Finally they both took turns and ate from the same cup. It got really fun when I would let one cricket at a time climb around the free range... chris would hurry to snatch it before Lenny would get it, her making no effort since she is so large she can hit far distances.

I guess they all eat in their own ways is where I am going with this... LOL I would just try different things

 

[summoner12]

Wow Mellers are really nice! That was a pretty impulsive move haha. I've never worked with them but I understand they are more high maintenance than most

They aren't offered as captive hatched or captive bred very often.... so if someone gets a Melleri it is most likely wild caught. This is why they are more tough than a captive bred or hatched animals. When wild caught you have to go through the steps of treating them for parasites and any cuts or scrapes they might have from being shipped around the world. You also need to HYDRATE and feed them ASAP. Hydration is the key. I think its about a week between the time they were wild till they land in the US..... and then you have to rely on the importer to try and acclimate them... you pray they water the chams stright out of the box, but you don't always know what kind of treatment they have gotten along the way to you... so you need to have a bit of experience and it is NEVER a sure thing the cham will make it through. It is why they call them 'rented' chameleons (wild caughts get this nickname... but I think it stems form Melleri) but, if you are able to keep the new comer alive for more than 90 days, you might have a keeper.

 

[Carlton]

BTW your free range article was one of the first chameleon related articles I read when doing research on chameleons.

Thanks for the note! I hate to preach about not rescuing chams from bad shops and then turn around and do it myself. Especially as she was the first melleri I had seen in person. That little inner voice was screaming don't do it!!!If the students hadn't been there arguing I might have resisted. But then I wouldn't have met Mufindi either. I learned so much more about chams setting that space up. Of course I'd heard all the bad news about the 90 day chameleon, and only had experience with veiled, jackson's, and a fairly new verrucosus when I saw her. Granted, she was lucky...in good condition with no injuries or health problems. The other 3 melleri I took in over the next few years weren't so lucky. One was found strolling down a sidewalk in Denver CO during a heat wave. It was blind in one eye, severely dehydrated, just skin and bones. It was a battle to keep him going for a long long time. Another had large thermal burns and needed months of vet care. Very luckily my vet at the time was Kevin Fitzgerald of Alameda East Vet Hospital. He liked us and didn't charge for some of the visits as the work was pretty experimental. Check re-runs of Emergency Vets...you may see us.

If you've got the right space for a free range setup it can be so much better than a cage. For one thing, less to clean up after (all the access problems with doors and a frame), less to maintain (no water damage, screen tears, scrubbing, sterilizing, etc), much more roaming space for the cham (and I think there is more psychological freedom), and a lot less expensive to outfit. No more searching hardware stores for building materials or websites for yet another dumb too-small stock cage. I've never yet found a ready made cage for any of mine...except an outdoor basking Reptarium.

But, if you don't have a safe area for a cham in your house a cage can't be ignored.

 

[ataraxia]

well i check the box of crickets daily and today i noticed i only have 5 crickets out of 24 left! man i hope these guys are eatting! i caught a grasshopper last night and threw him in. im going to try and catch some moths tonight and this friday im going to order a load of roaches. all the reptiles i own and have never have tried roaches :/ i will say this. if these guys live for 6 months. they will get a room. the female is in the shower as we speak. i would love to see her hydrated like the male. not sure what they are called but the flaps on the back of the head on the male are flush with his skull. where hers are still sunk in. never been so stressed out over a animal before.

summoner: do you have the two together?

 

[ataraxia]

WOOOHOOOO!!!After the female had her drink she immediately went to the box and picked off 5 large crickets and 1 superworm!!Shortly after her feeding she had a movement. the liquid was clear and other than that it looked like the males stool. the male had another movement that looked like the first. still have yet to see him eat. i have also put a dripper on the cage. this weekend i am going to work on the drainage. i see now why i need it.

 

[summoner12]

well i check the box of crickets daily and today i noticed i only have 5 crickets out of 24 left! man i hope these guys are eatting! i caught a grasshopper last night and threw him in. im going to try and catch some moths tonight and this friday im going to order a load of roaches. all the reptiles i own and have never have tried roaches :/ i will say this. if these guys live for 6 months. they will get a room. the female is in the shower as we speak. i would love to see her hydrated like the male. not sure what they are called but the flaps on the back of the head on the male are flush with his skull. where hers are still sunk in. never been so stressed out over a animal before.

summoner: do you have the two together?

You are referring to the fat pads just forward of her lobes?

I do not have them in one cage but they are side by side and can see one another. I wonder if this is good or bad..... I do it just so that they can get full air circulation. The wind doesn't blow much on my patio so to get as much cross flow I figured its better not to have a barrier. They don't really show stress color................. hmm Maybe tomorrow I will put something up and just see how things change.

It is a good idea to keep both of your WCs separate until you know what kind of parasites you have. You don't want to have something that is really hard to get rid of in one and transfer it to the other cham.

 

[ataraxia]

sad news today. i just got off work and found the female on the floor of the cage. im so disappointed i cant see straight. this morning she had her drink and was actually moving a lot through the cage. she was eatting and drinking. idk what i am doing wrong but i need to figure it out before the male dies. i have one thing i have been skeptical about since the beginning is the shower using tap water. i currently have a few leopard geckos and have had many in the past. i would keep losing these guys after about 6 months of having them. well the only thing i could think was killing them was the water. so i switched to r/o water and i havent lost a single gecko in years. i have attatched picture her last droppings. nothing is dissolved :/ everything is whole and you can see each and every cricket. is this right? sorry it isnt really clear.

 

[CleaTheChameleon]

sad news today. i just got off work and found the female on the floor of the cage. im so disappointed i cant see straight. this morning she had her drink and was actually moving a lot through the cage. she was eatting and drinking. idk what i am doing wrong but i need to figure it out before the male dies. i have one thing i have been skeptical about since the beginning is the shower using tap water. i currently have a few leopard geckos and have had many in the past. i would keep losing these guys after about 6 months of having them. well the only thing i could think was killing them was the water. so i switched to r/o water and i havent lost a single gecko in years. i have attatched picture her last droppings. nothing is dissolved :/ everything is whole and you can see each and every cricket. is this right? sorry it isnt really clear.

has she passed away

If so im so sorry for your loss

 

[summoner12]

I don't think that is cham dropping from the rear end... I think that is comit. Sam (the big guy I just got) puked up some crickets. I think it was the first day I had him.... or the next. I think its from all the water he drank but it can be from other stuff going on.

If you lost the girl I am sorry to hear... have you been able to do fecal testing yet?

 

[Joy Leaf]

Did you ever have a fecal done? It could have been worms or parasites that were inhibiting proper digestion. She could have been eating and drinking but not able to absorb any nutrients. But I agree with above, it looks more like vomit.

 

[summoner12]

This is what Sam spit up...