Orange Urate has me stumped

[deadhd5]

Chameleon Info:
Your Chameleon - Ambilobe Male, 6 months
How long has it been in your care?- 2 months
Handling - Twice in 2 months (when I got him, and when I moved him to his new cage)
Feeding - 12-15 appropriately sized feeders a day. 50% crickets gutloaded on butternut squash, arugula, dinofuel, etc. Also BB flies, dubia roaches, phoenix worms, butterwroms, and silkworms. His appetite has not been affected at all.
Supplements - 50/50 mix of plain calcium and repashy calcium plus, daily
Watering - Mistking goes off 4 times a day for a total of 28 minutes, two single nozzles. I use RO water treated with reptisafe. I added a dripper to see if that helped. I use a room humidifier on a humidistat to keep the cham room > 60% RH. I have seen him drink before from the mister and leaves, but I give my chams privacy during misting sessions so I don't see him drink everyday.
Fecal Description - Brown part looks very healthy, but the urate has been looking awful for about a week. >50% of the urate is a nasty looking orange, accompanied by orange crystals. I am in the process of getting a fecal test done, none previously as he was CB by a trusted breeder.
History - This problem has been going on for a little over a week. Prior to that there have been no issues, normal urates. The is cham is otherwise thriving and growing like a weed

Cage Info:.
Cage Type - Recently moved him into a 2'x2'x4' PennPlax cage.
Lighting - Arcadia 22" T5HO 6% bulb, 22" T5HO 6500k bulb, 75w exoterra sunglo basking light, 18" flourescent grow light.
Temperature - Basking spot 85-87 degress, ambient @ top of the cage 83 degrees, ambient at the bottom 74 degrees.
Humidity - Minimum 60% RH maintained by room humidifier, spikes to 90% after mistings.
Plants - Large hanging pothos and a small umbrella plant
Placement - Cage is located in my jungle room, top of the cage at about 6'2" from the ground. No line of sight to other chams.
Location - Cincinnati Ohio

Current Problem - Bright orange urates despite all efforts to provide great hydration. Three changes are roughly correlated with the ugly urates, I moved him into his big boy cage, I replaced his reptisun 5.0 with a T5HO Arcadia 6% and I began using RO water.

Potential theories
1.) Repashy making urate orange - However I have been using repashy all along and this problem is recent
2.) Acryllic door is causing the cham to see his reflection, making him shy to drink. However, he still eats like crazy.

I would appreciate any theories or alternative reasons why a cham's urate would be orange and also advise on how experienced keepers would go about addressing this problem. I am going to give him a shower tonight, so that should help, but I need to discover and fix the root cause.

Thanks!!!

 

[Texas Panther Man]

Keep up with the mistking mistings and also try misting him by hand until you actually see him drink. Mine got used to me hand misting and now they dont get freaked by the mistking going off anymore. Some of them will run from the mist and not drink. I hand mist in the morning daily to be sure they get at least some water intake on a daily basis. The shower should help alot but thats not feasible every day so try the hand misting and see if the urates dont improve after a few days.

 

[deadhd5]

Keep up with the mistking mistings and also try misting him by hand until you actually see him drink. Mine got used to me hand misting and now they dont get freaked by the mistking going off anymore. Some of them will run from the mist and not drink. I hand mist in the morning daily to be sure they get at least some water intake on a daily basis. The shower should help alot but thats not feasible every day so try the hand misting and see if the urates dont improve after a few days.

Thanks for the advice TPM. I actually hand misted him this morning for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately he didn't drink, but I will keep it up since that is potentially a sustainable solution.

I also hand fed him a few crickets I injected water into, although thats less sustainable. I just want to get water into him to see if it fixes the problem in order to make sure the urate issue is hydration related and not a deeper problem (liver/kidney function).

 

[Texas Panther Man]

The only other option I can think of is to get a small syringe and administer water daily that way. It can be tricky though and you dont want him to inhale any water into his lungs. You have to put the syringe down into the throat and go slowly. Bad part is that it is alot more stress on the cham watering him that way. I only do that as a last resort.

 

[CLP]

You can try upping the silkworm intake too since they are good for hydration, but I think you're doing the right thing getting the fecal done. Seems strange that he'd be dehydrated with all the misting, dripper, etc. Perhaps some other underlying problem going on... Good luck with him!

 

[deadhd5]

You can try upping the silkworm intake too since they are good for hydration, but I think you're doing the right thing getting the fecal done. Seems strange that he'd be dehydrated with all the misting, dripper, etc. Perhaps some other underlying problem going on... Good luck with him!

Got some that hatched about a week ago, just waiting for them to grow, and hoping they don't die

Thanks for your input!

 

[ataraxia]

On top of the great advice you have already received. You may try a "Primer misting" as i would call it of about 30 seconds to maybe a minute long. Let the mister turn off for a minute or two. Then turn the misting session on to the duration he will normally drink from start to finish. Some you have to coax to the water and usually once they have started drinking they let it rain on them.