Parasite/illness question

jamest0o0

jamest0o0

Chameleon Enthusiast
To start I have no reason to believe my 3 Chams have anything wrong with them, although just to ease my mind I'd like to get another fecal done. When I started I thought that parasites were just from other chameleons or equipment. I understand now that they can come in on feeders. How often does this kind of thing happen? I'm just concerned because I invest a lot of effort/time into my fully planted enclosures and it'd be terrible to have to tear them down and scrap everything.
 
I don't know how often that kind of thing happens but if you want to be more at ease you can do your own fecals.
 
jamest0o0 said:
To start I have no reason to believe my 3 Chams have anything wrong with them, although just to ease my mind I'd like to get another fecal done. When I started I thought that parasites were just from other chameleons or equipment. I understand now that they can come in on feeders. How often does this kind of thing happen? I'm just concerned because I invest a lot of effort/time into my fully planted enclosures and it'd be terrible to have to tear them down and scrap everything.
Click to expand...
We have fecal done once a year usually end of summer . Some keepers do more often if their out year around or longer spans . Frances has had 3 with in a year or just shy . Her because she has respiratory issues .
 
The thing I'm concerned about is in the case that they do have parasites, will I have to rip apart my entire vivariums?
 
Like what is the likelihood of a parasite infecting my Chams that would need a cage torn apart? I spent a lot of time putting them together.
 
A lot of parasites will cause the need for substrate and anything like plants etc to be thrown out. Anything that sheds will. And almost all do that.
 
So in an average Chams lifetime that has good husbandry, how likely would it be that I need to go through That? I mean I understand it's always a possibility, but if this is something that might happen every few months I might really step down how much I commit to my vivariums. Just thought about @Extensionofgreen 's epic parsonii build. What if one of his came down with coccidia or something. All of that just has to be trashed?
 
Well that's much more relieving to hear, I was worried this wad a regular occurrence. I just built 3 stands, with 2 foot deep substrate bins for all of my Cham's new homes. The picture was built to fit my dragonstrand.
 

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I have never kept planted vivs with my chams. But honestly parasites are less of an issue than most people realize. All reptiles have a low amount of coccidia or crypto usually and also sometimes a low level of other types of intestinal parasites. It's when they get something that lowers their immune system, anything from sickness or an overt amount of stress that the parasites usually start to over run chams. It's usually easy for the chameleons to keep them under control. As long as your vivs are relatively clean, and you usually have beautiful soil, then I wouldn't worry. I mean parasites are likely to happen every now and then with keeping chams, but I honestly would find it really odd if once you treated all got clean fecals back for several months, I would find it worrying on if it happened more than once a year and even that seems far too often for me. I still strongly suggest getting a full fecal done once a year if not every 6 months. but yeah.
 
One WC female oustalets chameleon I had came in with a stomach parasite. One (female) came out intact when i fed hthe chameleon a few waxworms as a treat...and it was still alive when I got it to the vet's.The veterinarian college wanted to study it because they hadn't seen it before....but they needed a male so they asked me not to treat the parasite to see if they could get a male out of her. They said she could handle the type of parasite that she had as long as I fed her well and had good husbandry. She was with me for about three years more...so she had to be about 5 or 6 when she died. They got the male parasite and the parasite had no apparent affect on her. Not all parasites are a death sentence.
 
It's true, there are a lot of parasitic beings that's may not provide anything beneficial but aren't really harmful, but there are also types that are beneficial, and then there are the types that just need to go away now! XD
 
Wow I love you guys! Thanks for taking the time to explain. Definitely puts me at ease. One other thing if anyone feels like explaining. When you say overt stress, do you mean over a longterm of a few days, weeks, months of continuous stress? Or can a day or few hours of a lot of stress cause the parasites to take over? I know some days I have to do things that upset my Chams, but I'd assume we all do because they're Chams and they don't like anything else that breathes their air to begin with. I worry sometimes that showering them stresses them too much, but I'm probably paranoid.
 
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