Tis a puzzlement

[Jeevesieb]

Hi there cham fam.

Well, I am officially stumped. Paulie has been closing his left eye, only his left eye, in the mid to late afternoons. In the morning, it's wide open. In the evenings while he cruises to a sleeping spot, it's wide open. No issues targeting food. Appetite and feces is normal. Otherwise, behavior is totally normal; basking cruising, feisty as usual.
The vet saw no sign of injury, foreign object/debris or infection. We have ruled out respiratory infection and parasites. The vet did note that the left eye does not seem to fill the turret as completely as the other eye, but noted no other concerns. I changed the UVB lamp about 3 months ago. Same type of bulb, same fixture, same placement. Vet had no concerns of issues with supplementation. Basically we are stumped and so is our very knowledgeable vet. Anyone have thoughts here? I'm adding pictures for context. I'm completely at a loss.

 

[Beman]

Can you post a few more pics of him so I can see overall body condition? And a few of the cage from lighting down? Are you using any red lighting?

 

[Jeevesieb]

UVB is Arcadia T5 7%. Here is the cage and some pictures of him. No red lighting. Just the UVB, the heat lamp and LED plant lights.

 

[Beman]

UVB is Arcadia T5 7%. Here is the cage and some pictures of him. No red lighting. Just the UVB, the heat lamp and LED plant lights.

So your biggest issue is the UVB strength. The 7% is not meant for chameleons. But I would replace the LED light your using. It is not a white light and looks to be more of a pink light. Red is damaging for their eyes. Not sure what the pink would do I just know only white light is recommended for cham cages.

More details on the 7% vs the recommended 6%

So the difference in the arcadia bulbs... You have UVB and UVA lighting from them. The 7% bulb is the shade dweller bulb so it has almost half the amount of UVA lighting as the 6% or 12% bulbs they sit at around 30% UVA vs the shadedweller 7% strength UVB bulb sitting at 17% UVA.
UVA is responsible for stimulating different aspects in a chameleon. Feeding and mating responses are linked to this.

 

[Jeevesieb]

Thank you. We will look at swapping these out.

 

[MissSkittles]

I need to add that if your bought the Arcadia ProT5 that included the 7% uvb, you won’t be able to use any other strength in it but 7%. You’ll need to get the standard T5HO to run a 6% or 5.0 strength uvb. I can’t find the thread that gave some explanation of why and only remember that one fixture (I think the 7% one) isn’t strong enough to provide the full output of a 6% uvb bulb.

 

[Beman]

Yes, this ^^^ you need an entire ProT5 set up with the 6% bulb. The shade dweller fixture which is the 7% bulb runs on a different ballast. So you have to buy everything even the correct fixture.

 

[Jeevesieb]

Well, good news!!! Looks like I was wrong and our UVB bulb IS a 6%. Husband thought he we had a 7% for some reason, but I checked the bulb and fixture. We shut the plant lights off after my original post, but his eye still seems to he bothering him. We may be headed toward a specialist the vet says. We have done antibiotic eye drops for good measure and ruled out any other infection, supplementation issues or injury/debris. Vet says he can clearly see out of the eye and it functions normally in the turret. The vet is hesitant because a specialist will likely mean putting him under anesthesia and our vet wants to avoid that if it isn't necessary because chams don't always do well with anesthesia.

 

[MzLaurie]

You said that one eye does not fill the turret as much as the other eye. Well I had a female panther that came to me in very bad shape. She was left in the sun to die and got badly sunburned. Especially one eye lid was black. She was peach colored. The vet said it was necropsy and if it continued to die, her eye would have to be removed. In the past I learned that chameleons have remarkable skin recovery abilities it just takes a very long time. So with a lot of tlc and patience the eyelid healed but was forever scarred. She would close that one eye during any resting periods during the day. I felt it was probably uncomfortable and required a lot on energy to keep it open all the time. As one eye of your Cham doesn’t fill the turret the same, I think your issue lies there. Now why it doesn’t is the question. Is it a deformation from birth that is now coming into play once he is fully grown? They have more energy when they are younger which may be why it did not occur before. Or it may be issue of the one eye not getting the hydration the other eye gets that a specialist could identify. Please keep us updated on this issue as we all want to know the cause.

 

[Jeevesieb]

You said that one eye does not fill the turret as much as the other eye. Well I had a female panther that came to me in very bad shape. She was left in the sun to die and got badly sunburned. Especially one eye lid was black. She was peach colored. The vet said it was necropsy and if it continued to die, her eye would have to be removed. In the past I learned that chameleons have remarkable skin recovery abilities it just takes a very long time. So with a lot of tlc and patience the eyelid healed but was forever scarred. She would close that one eye during any resting periods during the day. I felt it was probably uncomfortable and required a lot on energy to keep it open all the time. As one eye of your Cham doesn’t fill the turret the same, I think your issue lies there. Now why it doesn’t is the question. Is it a deformation from birth that is now coming into play once he is fully grown? They have more energy when they are younger which may be why it did not occur before. Or it may be issue of the one eye not getting the hydration the other eye gets that a specialist could identify. Please keep us updated on this issue as we all want to know the cause.

Thank you. I will absolutely keep you posted. We bought him from a big box pet store (hindsight is 20/20) and he had issues with his other eye when we got him. It took months to work that out and after a couple of good exams, vet finally determined he had scarring on the edge of his eye turret that was preventing it from shedding properly and he had stuck shed that needed to be removed a couple times. Now this is the other eye, and a different problem, but I can't help but wonder if the bad husbandry, diet (he was eating only mealworms when we bought him) and poor supplementation when he was tiny have created all sorts of lasting issues.

 

[MzLaurie]

Thank you. I will absolutely keep you posted. We bought him from a big box pet store (hindsight is 20/20) and he had issues with his other eye when we got him. It took months to work that out and after a couple of good exams, vet finally determined he had scarring on the edge of his eye turret that was preventing it from shedding properly and he had stuck shed that needed to be removed a couple times. Now this is the other eye, and a different problem, but I can't help but wonder if the bad husbandry, diet (he was eating only mealworms when we bought him) and poor supplementation when he was tiny have created all sorts of lasting issues.

I hear you. All we can do is try to make their lives better then they were. There are no guarantees with pets or babies. We get what we get and just have to deal with whatever comes with it and love em even more.

 

[Sticktongue]

Could it possibly be a vitamin A deficiency? This can cause eye issues as well. I had a panther about 12 years ago that that was the cause for a similar issue. Might want to search the forums a bit for information related to that. I can’t 100% recall how I administered it. But if I remember right, I got vitamin A liquid capsules and would put a single drop directly into his mouth. Can’t recall for how long I did that so consult your vet and search the forums before taking action.

 

[Jeevesieb]

Could it possibly be a vitamin A deficiency? This can cause eye issues as well. I had a panther about 12 years ago that that was the cause for a similar issue. Might want to search the forums a bit for information related to that. I can’t 100% recall how I administered it. But if I remember right, I got vitamin A liquid capsules and would put a single drop directly into his mouth. Can’t recall for how long I did that so consult your vet and search the forums before taking action.

The vet says he doesn't think it's vitamin A because he would expect issues with both eyes and the other eye is fine now. I will approach the vet with it again though. Thank you.

 

[Sticktongue]

The vet says he doesn't think it's vitamin A because he would expect issues with both eyes and the other eye is fine now. I will approach the vet with it again though. Thank you.

I only had issues with 1 eye, for what it’s worth. Good luck!!

 

[Jeevesieb]

I only had issues with 1 eye, for what it’s worth. Good luck!!

That is good to know! Thank you!!!

 

[Jeevesieb]

Update: Still no answer for Paulie closing his left eye. He went through a ROUGH shed, his first in almost a year, and his left eye had a lot of thick shed stuck for over a week. That has finally cleared save for one TINY piece of skin still stuck. Our vet suggested increasing the multivitamin frequency for a month or so to see if it is a Vitamin A issue, as he is reluctant to do Vitamin A injections or liquid Vitamin A. He's doing further research for me as well. We reviewed all the husbandry/feeding/supplementation with the vet and he says everything is spot on and to just keep at it. Paulie still closes that eye some afternoons for a little while, though not every day. We swapped out the old plant lights for an Arcadia Jungle Dawn (holy smokes that thing is BRIGHT) and we are just keeping at it. All other behavior is totally normal. So, for now we just keep doing what we are doing and see if it resolves. Our vet strongly suspects we are dealing with fallout of improper husbandry/supplementation from the time he was young at the big box store that have finally surfaced in his reaching adulthood.

 

[kinyonga]

What’s the type of vitamin A in the vitamins you are using? PrEformed (retinol, animal sources) or prOformed (carotenes, veggie sources)?

 

[Jeevesieb]

What’s the type of vitamin A in the vitamins you are using? PrEformed (retinol, animal sources) or prOformed (carotenes, veggie sources)?

We use the Repashy Plus LoD multivitamin which I think is preformed (please correct me if I'm wrong!) and the vet suggested adding an extra supplementation every month for the next couple months (so 3x per month instead of 2x per month), to see if it helps with his eye.

 

[Beman]

We use the Repashy Plus LoD multivitamin which I think is preformed (please correct me if I'm wrong!) and the vet suggested adding an extra supplementation every month for the next couple months (so 3x per month instead of 2x per month), to see if it helps with his eye.

It does have preformed A. If you are using Repashy calcium plus LoD version then there is minimal risk of overdose with D3 and A if you increase from 2 times a month to 3 times a month to see if it helps. Dusting all insects that day with it but lightly. Not powdered donuts.

 

[Jeevesieb]

It does have preformed A. If you are using Repashy calcium plus LoD version then there is minimal risk of overdose with D3 and A if you increase from 2 times a month to 3 times a month to see if it helps. Dusting all insects that day with it but lightly. Not powdered donuts.

That's exactly what we are doing. Our vet said the same. He said he would rather try to increase the Vitamin A this way, so we can rule it out (of course, it's always on the list of possibilities for chams) than do injections or liquid which could cause overdose.
Just a light dusting. This course will take a little longer to see a benefit he said, be he's being cautious, which I appreciate.