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Hi, I have a male Veiled chameleon who recently seems to have lost interest in food, and possibly water as well. The feeding thing seemed relatively sudden, he ate a few of the crickets I had fed him, and then just completely stopped taking interest in them, I've never seen him do this as he's always eaten everything I've thrown in (I throw in approximately 6-8 crickets daily, sometimes every other day if supplies are low. He hasn't eaten in about 3 days now and I'm starting to get concerned, although he doesn't appear to be weak or anything else like that. The other concern that I have is that he also appears dehydrated (sunken eyes), I keep the humidity of the enclosure between 70% and 90% (90% is immediately after misting) and he's given access to dripping water 2-3 times a day for 2-3 hours each time. I have seen him drinking (though not for the past day or so).

Some general information about the enclosure and chameleon:

Veiled Chameleon
Male
roughly 1 year old
captive bred

Enclosure is roughly 36.5x20x36.5 (although it has been measured, the enclosure is a triangle/like corner unit, so it's difficult to measure)

basking spot temperature is kept at roughly 91F during the day (it has peaked up to 95F on hot days) and will usualy drop down to the mid-low 80's at night.

current humidity is at 80%

live plants were used, and offer plenty of cover and branches for him to climb around on, he is able to completely hide himself so that I'd have to dig around in the leaves to find him if he wants to (and he has done every so often, and no, I did not dig around to look for him )

I never handle him unless I need to do something in the enclosure that may injure him.

The plants used were pathos, hibiscus and a fig (pretty sure that's what it was called, it was on pretty much all the lists of safe plants to use, I can varify the plant name later when my mom comes back home).

the roof and 2 sides of the enclosure are about 80% screen, otherwise the enclosure is glass.

There's no draft in the room of any sort, and it's a pretty low traffic area, other than me being in here most of the day (though I'm always in here, it's not a going in and out sort of thing, the door rarely opens).

The drip system I have is pretty basic, little more than a plastic tube and a bucket with a small drip valve on it, the tube is placed so that it drips onto the leaves and water falls on the maximum amount of leaves that he can access.

I'd also like to add, recently it seems that he's gone through a moult, also I never noticed any peeling skin on him or anything, and I never found any dead skin anywhere in the enclosure, though there was a small mark that was put on him (just a little white stripe was drawn on his tail to identify him from the rest when I had purchased him (had to have him put on hold for a couple days before I could take him) and that, which previously didn't seem to be wearing off at all with water, seems to have disappeared completely. Other than that I've recently been experiencing flooding and drainage problems in the enclosure, but I've found a way to solve that and is currently being fixed and should be completely solved within the next 24 hours. Other than that, there hasn't been anything strange or unusual happening in or around the enclosure. The problem with the drainage was that I went away for a week or so, in which time the person I had asked to take care of him had over watered the enclosure and when I came home it was starting to flood and pools of water were developing, I drained out as much water as I could, and I'm replaced a bunch of the substrate to prevent bacteria that may have grown in the water from spreading, although since then I've always been having problems with the occasional flood. But I've found the cause, and solution to this problem, and it will be solved as soon as the stores open and I can get the supplies needed.

I don't think I read anything about the Calcium supplementing. Are you giving him any?

why substrate? With all that humidity and flooding sounds like you have a breeding ground ripe for fungus and/or bacterial (potential) pathogens. Can you post a pic of the cham and your setup? I recognize your name from previous posts. Hvae you had this particular cham for a long time?
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Chameleon Help & Resource Info

0.1 Veiled Chameleon - Luna. She's now hanging from her big jungle gym in the sky

1.0 Beardie - Darwin
0.2 felines - Kyndra and Lita
0.1 African Clawed Frog - Skipper
0.3 Mad. Hissers (2 died ;(
0.1 Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula - Rosa Leigh
0.1 Goliath Bird-Eater Tarantula - Natasha

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sig file edit for oversized logo/graphic 8/12/05

Yes, I was giving a multivitamin (rep-cal) and a Calcium/D3 supplement (same brand) multivitamin every feeding, calcium/d3 ever other. I was using substrate for the live plants inside, and as a decorational piece, the flooding wasn't a problem until I had gone away, over watering had cause the substrate to get heavy and the drainage system I had going was pretty much destroyed. Unfortunately when I came home tonight I was sadened to see the limp body of my chameleon lying on the bottom of the enclosure. He will be greatly missed

I do intend to get a new one though, and would like to learn from my mistakes here. Do you see anything wrong with what I had been doing? From what I can tell my best guess would be that in the time I had been gone, bacteria had formed in the warm water on the bottom of the enclosure, from which he got sick. The body hasn't darkened or anything, so I'm assuming he passed away fairly recently. Was this just unfortunate that I wasn't able to find/fix the problem earlier? Or could there have been something more to it? He only started showing changes in appettite a couple days before his death, otherwise, activity and everything was normal.

And yes, I've had him for a few months now, more likely you've seen me post in the bearded dragon section every so often (if that's the case you'll be glad to know I got the handling thing under control ) but yes, I have posted here in the chameleon forum every once in awhile.

So sorry to hear about your loss, it sounds like you were making an effort and have a pretty good knowledge of them. I cant make and certain jugements, but Im thinking the supplementing was a bit high. Correct me if im wrong (other forum peoples) but once they get to be about 4-5 months old I beleive you can cut back on the supplementation greatly.
The over supplementation could have caused some organs to start failing.
Hopefully someone esle can give some better info than I can.
Sorry again
Erin

.>>Yes, I was giving a multivitamin (rep-cal) and a Calcium/D3 supplement (same brand) multivitamin every feeding, calcium/d3 ever other. I was using substrate for the live plants inside, and as a decorational piece, the flooding wasn't a problem until I had gone away, over watering had cause the substrate to get heavy and the drainage system I had going was pretty much destroyed. Unfortunately when I came home tonight I was sadened to see the limp body of my chameleon lying on the bottom of the enclosure. He will be greatly missed
>>
>>I do intend to get a new one though, and would like to learn from my mistakes here. Do you see anything wrong with what I had been doing? From what I can tell my best guess would be that in the time I had been gone, bacteria had formed in the warm water on the bottom of the enclosure, from which he got sick. The body hasn't darkened or anything, so I'm assuming he passed away fairly recently. Was this just unfortunate that I wasn't able to find/fix the problem earlier? Or could there have been something more to it? He only started showing changes in appettite a couple days before his death, otherwise, activity and everything was normal.
>>
>>And yes, I've had him for a few months now, more likely you've seen me post in the bearded dragon section every so often (if that's the case you'll be glad to know I got the handling thing under control ) but yes, I have posted here in the chameleon forum every once in awhile.
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1:1 Veileds (Gene and Alis)
1:0 Sambava Panther (Knoxville)
1:1 Albino Clawed Frogs (Phedre and Jos)
?? Fire belly toad (Harold)
Various cats and dogs

Sounds like a combination of things to me, but without a necropsy you will never really know. First, chams are experts at hiding health problems until they are really far gone. He probably had something going on for a while but was able to conceal it. Possibly the care he got before you had him was not correct. An adult like that doesn't need to eat every day, so he may have been getting higher and higher doses of vitamin and calcium that caused organ damage. What kind of lighting? Without the correct UVB lighting he could not metabolize the mineral and vitamin dusts. Too high humidity would have most likely given him a respiratory infection but it doesn't sound like that happened. Add to this possibly he was stressed by a reflection in the glass and was always on "high alert" as long as he could see his "rival". Sorry he's gone!

In terms of lighting I had been using repti glo 8.0.

As for the reflection in the glass, this was a concern to me before I even got him, so I put a good amount of effort to position the enclosure in a spot where the glass wont be reflecting his image back at him, though I will not rule out the possibility that this may have happened. Would covering the back of the enclosre (on the outside) with black cloth help perhaps?

After 4-5 months how often would you recommend the vitamins? Are there any vitamins that I should have been giving that I wasn't? And how do I go about sterilyzing the live plants for the next cham? (never lost an animal that's been in with live plants). Anyways, any help is appreciated, this time I think I'm just going to set up the enclosure with a different way to drain it and test it out to see how it handles overwatering before trying again with a new cham.

Putting anything on the outside of the glass won't necesarily cut reflections on the inside. It is the light reflecting off the inside of the glass at certain angles that creates the problem. Also, it may occur at particular periods during the day. As for dusting, a year old male cham only needs mineral/calcium once a week, and a decent herp vitamin such as Herptivite once a month or every 6 weeks. You can pretty well clean the plants by thoroughly hosing or showering them with warm soapy water, rinsing well, and putting them outdoors for a while. Scrub the pots with hot water and repot the plants with fresh potting soil that does not have vermiculite or perlite.

I don't know much about the "ReptiGlo" light. If it is an incandescent "full spectrum" light it does not really produce UVB despite what the label says. Unless you had a UV producing heat spot such as a PowerSun, UVHeat, or Mercury Vapor type combination bulb, or a ReptiSun 5.0 fluorescent tube light, he was not getting the UVB he needed and not metabolizing the calcium or vitamins in his diet.

Man I have a chameleon and he has a stainless steel bowl to eat from and a water dish to drink out of. I am only in his room when I feed him and change his water, he hates the sight of me. Since I stay out of the room he eats more out of his bowl. Try
a still bowl of water with your drips going into it so your chameleon drinks out the bowl, then after awhile he should start to drink out of standing water. Try to stay away for awhile and he might come around a little bit.