Repashy Calcium plus tongue issues

Lubo

Member
Hi guys,

I keep and breed chameleons for 10 Years now but have issues I need your advise on. Till now I have been using Reptivite and plain calcium but I bought 3 months ago Repashy Calcium plus and supervit at Hamm and have been using it in combination with plain calcium. I used 3x per week calplus and rest plain calcium citrate, once every 14 days I used supervite. After over 2 months my chameleons started to have aim problems and now many of juveniles and some adults have difficulty shooting tongue. They extend tongue just few centimeters. I read a lot of posts where even this brand was mentioned with tongue issues. I am not here to criticize brand supplements they produce (my geckos are doing amazing using it) but I want to understand where this issue is coming from. Many posts indicate lack in B vitamins. I bought B complex from jamieson and grounded up tablets and used nothing but that and plain calcium without any progress. Others suggest that vit A deficiency could have caused that and suggest using drops of cod liver oil but I only started to test this Yesterday on few chams to see if that would help. Cal plus on the other hand has a lot of vit A in retinol form which kind of get's me thinking how could there be vit A deficiency. Other possibility is calcium deficiency but since I use calcium almost at every feeding this doesn't sound right either. Maybe since I use UVB lights and cal plus has D3 could it be that they are overdosed by D3 and that inhibits intake of calcium? In many post I read that people did some progress with extra Vit A and liquid calcium and stopped using this product and went for plain calcium and from time to time another brand of multivitamins. Is here anyone that actually got his chameleon to use tongue as before? And if so what helped? And yes I do gut load both by really good stuff homemade dry gut load and by veggies, carrots etc. And Yes I though also of tongue injury but that is very unlikely that suddenly so many chameleons got tongue injuries just when I switched brands. Thanks for any help on this
 
I would think there is an imbalance in the nutrients they are getting somewhere. If it happened after you changed things then what happens if you go back to what you were using? What in the way of calcium, phos, D3 and preformed vitamin A changed when you added the new supplements?
 
Well per ingredient list Vitamin A doubled repashy cal plus - 200,000 IU/lb and Reptivite - 100,000 I.U./lb. Vitamin D3 doubled also 20,000 IU/lb vs 10,390 IU/lb. Big question is if tongue issue is due to hypervitaminosis or they have hypovitaminosis of something and if so of what. I stopped Cal plus and use only plain calcium for now as I am afraid to introduce Reptivite in case they already have hypervitaminosis so I do not want to make it worse... It's shame so little is known about correct doses. Good article about calcium/vitamin A/D is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24848550 We need more of those...
 
Lubo, have you tried to email repashy to find out what they are using as the preformed version of Vit A? Reptivite lists fish liver oil and cal plus simply states a bunch of proformed ingredients with an addition of "VitA vitamin"<----what form is this? Im not seeing anything stating retinol/acetate...
 
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I will do that..good idea. I was reading Reptile medicine and surgery (Mader) and found out that calcium deficiency which is common issue with tongue projecting correctly could be result of Vit A/D3 imbalance. Mader also states that chameleons are not able to convert proformed vit A to preformed. I also read that vit E deficiency causes muscle and sight disorders which sounds familiar. Selenium is also possible cause. Still doing more research before I start "experimenting". Thanks for any insights and personal observations anyone could have.
 
Anyone having article: Cole,G.A.; Rao,D.B.; Steinberg,H.; Sladky,K.K., 2008: Suspected vitamin E and selenium deficiency in a veiled chameleon, Chamaeleo calyptratus. Journal Of Herpetological Medicine And Surgery: 3 4, 113-116 ?

Reading more about vit E and Selenium deficiency it sounds just right!
 
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