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Coccidia comes from fecal infected ground. Which is, honestly, everywhere.)
majority of animals (including you) have traces of coccidia in the system. The population, however, is under control of the host' immune system.
making them to live harmoniously in the intestine.
During the time when your chameleon under a heavy stress, his immune system will loose its effectiveness. During this, coccidia population burst out of control.
Then the nightmare comes. Coccidia way to reproduce is particularly nasty. They burrow themselves in the cell of your digestive system and reproduce inside the cell. When they are ready, they will burst out of the cell and reinfect the neighboring cells causing the host' intestine to be thin and soon ruptured in the case of heavy population attack.
Coccidia is a protozoan that thrive under humid environment.
They are everywhere, certainly on the soil around you. Most of the time they are buried under. During rain, however, they resurface.
They can be killed by normal way of killing microorganism, but one cycle of them is difficult to kill. During hardship, coccidia develop a strong thick wall called cyst and somewhat live in a suspended animation until the environment change.
This cyst is very sticky and cannot be killed even using the strongest bleach concentration that are safe for you to use.
When these annoying creatures in the oocyst stage, they practically almost impossible to kill except by boiling water.
There is a treatment for coccidia but the hardest thing is to prevent the reinfestation.
