veil rot?

[rayman]

Hello,

I have a 2-3 year old veiled, seems quite healthy, but he has a spot on the top of his veil, i would think a burn but it is flaky... i know a pic would help but bear with me as i dont have that option right now. its a small spot at the part that was normally darker. it is not soft or red or anything, it is flaky and hard liek leftover shed but i can tell part of the veil is missing, like it rotted away, i have no idea. i touched it and he did not react so i assume no pain. The light and distance to light has remained the same for atleast 4 months but he may have grown, but at 3 years i doubt it. I felt the heat under the light (dome light resting directly on cage) and it was at a temp that could burn but only right on teh screen, his veil sits atleast 3cm away which is enough to not cause any burns, also he dies not sit with his head under the lamp, usually his body.

could this be anything other than a burn? something serious i should get checked out? hes due for a checkup so i have no problem ringing him in if it is even a slight chance of being something worse than a burn (i did move his basking branch down a few more cm)


the setup:



i have been having sprayer problems recently and dont monitor humnidity but he is on a cycle of a 16 second spray every 40 minutes with highly filtered water with flouride removed.

He has a 75 W basking lamp, was 50 and was 100 but now 75. UVB bulb is good and proper.

very large 48" x 48" x 68" enclosure, aluminum mesh

puppy pads on the bottom, cleaned pretty often but not enough, once or twice a week usually. drippin gwater, proper dusting of crickets, no gut load but i do feed calcium enriched gel to them and teh powdered fulkers nonsense.

drips the same filtered water i spray, sometimes we use chemicals to get rid of chlorine if filtered is not available.

I keep having issues sourcing crickets so after death of crickets he eats maybe 60 /week i may be off though, crickets free roam 90% of the time (i know... there is no other way with my guy)


thank you for any help

 

[jannb]

I am sorry to hear about your little man. There could be a number of things wrong. It's hard to guess without a photo. Could be a burn, MBD, an infection or even cage rub. This is how to post a photo. https://www.chameleonforums.com/how-post-photos-video-3609/
I can tell you that he needs a large variety of well gut loaded feeders that are dusted with the correct supplements. If he doesn't get any outside time he needs calcium without d3 a couple times a week and calcium with d3 twice a month and a good multivitamin such as Reptivite, twice a month. Are you using a UVB light? If so when always the last time that you changed it? Please post some photos and we will try to help you figure out what's going on with his veiled.

 

[Carlton]

it is not soft or red or anything, it is flaky and hard liek leftover shed but i can tell part of the veil is missing, like it rotted away, i have no idea. i touched it and he did not react so i assume no pain.

Dead tissue won't have live nerves to feel pain.

I felt the heat under the light (dome light resting directly on cage) and it was at a temp that could burn but only right on teh screen.

Using your hand to judge temperature isn't very accurate. Remember, if it feels even mildly warm to YOU (a mammal with a body temp of 98.6 F) it could be over 100 F, and hot enough to burn a cham. They don't need to touch the screen to get burned. Burns result from a combination of a) temp directly under the bulb, and b) the total amount of time he spent sitting in that one spot exposing a particular area of skin. The more time he happened to sit in that spot the more intense the heating of the skin in that spot.

 

[rayman]

so the temp on the branch is 100f, i cant measure the air but the top of the cage measured 220 ish but the ir thermometer was hitting the bulb i think and going too high, the air measured around 90. is tehre am ore accurate way to measure?

also i know how to post pics i just have not had a chance and i know it is hard to diagnose without it but i was hoping the info would suffice for somebody who has experienced it before.

now as far as gut loading, ive never really done this, do i need to use actual food? i get fresh crickets all teh time and feed them the high calcium water gel stuff and a powdered food that has vitamins, never fresh plants or potatoes or anything. i dust every feeding (every 3-4 days), crickets free roam most of the time and i know the dusting wears off after about a day but he seems to have healthy calcium levels by eye but its hard to tell, he shows no signs of deficiency in anything. i also do a multivitamin once every week or 2.

so my main question now, is how do i properly check temps wit han ir thermometer? and second what should the temp be? i doubt it is cage rub as he cant really hit the top, his cage is huge and the mark is about 2-4mm down on the veil, it looks to be ab urn more than anything. i will get a pic soon as it seems it would help.