Reptile & Amphibian Forums

someone told me to post her to get some help I hope someone can help me in time . My chameleon ( valid female 11 months old ) has always been a good eater, crickets 95 % of her life and sometimes wax worms ,I always put the powder vitm. and calcium, recently she has not been eating I didn't get worried right away but now she has lost alot of weight and I can now see her bones I have asked pet store and no one knows what to tell me shocker!!! I have noticed now that she is hungry and is chasing the crickets around the cage but cant catch them I put some in a bowl with a stick ontop so she can get to them and they have no where to run but she is scared to go in the bowl to get them the crickets just wind up dieing she tries to shot out the tongue but it only goes an inch out of her mouth he tongue looks whiter then normal I have had chameleons for years but never seen anything like this before I hope someone can help me before its to late thank you for tasking the time to read this James

need more info on your setup, but the one thing that jumps out is dusting everyday. An adult cham should get Calcium 1x/week and multivitamins 1x/month. You may have overdosed her with a particular vitamin/mineral which may be blocking others. - so many possibilities. The tongue problem could very well be MBD. Too MUCH Ca can mimic the symptoms of MBD.

As for a pet store - forget it - how about a vet??. I am hoping you have one.

Go to link below for vet listings and also a set of questions you can copy and paste into a post all about your setup - please answer ALL the questions so we can help troubleshoot, but I think she may need a vet visit and get some blood work done to see where her levels are. Keep us posted
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Chameleon Help & Resource Info
1.0 Nosy Be Panther Chameleon - Cyrus
0.1 Veiled Chameleon - Luna. She's now hanging from her big jungle gym in the sky
1.0 Beardie - Darwin
1.1 Side-blotched lizards - Ana and Stan for now
0.2 felines - Kyndra and Lita
0.1 African Clawed Frog - Skippy
0.1 Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula - Rosa Leigh, Died 4/21/06
0.1 Goliath Bird-Eater Tarantula - Natasha, donated to science 4/4/06
?.? Pinktoe Tarantula - no name yet

As Lele stated...finding a good herp vet is important.

Hope things work out well.

Kris
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2.1 Black Labs Tucker, Raider and Lacey
1.0 Lepoard Gecko Kumar (Another lost pet RIP and party on with Harold!)
3.0 Horses Smoothie, Rocky and Bogey
1.0 Husbands (he puts up with me)
1.2 Kids-Trevor, Logan and Rylie
1.1 Ferrets Tank and Ellie (The fun fuzzies)
1.1 Veiled Chams Squiggy and Pudge (may she RIP)
0.1 Snowflake Cornsnake Lucky

what kind, exactly, of calcium and vitamin powder are you using?

It could be vitamin C problems, it could be calcuim or D3 related, and it could be that she's impacted or gravid. I've seen gravid females have tongue problems. She hasnt been roamig th ebottom of her cage, has she?

Also, what type of lighting is she under? Be brand specific and tell us how long it's been since the bulbs were changed. All the nutritional and dusting info is complicated by exposure to UV light. If the lighting isn't correct or is old, the dusting and gutloading you are doing won't help.

If she has never hunted free ranging food she may have lost a lot of her muscle tone in her tongue from lack of use (on top of a nutritional problem)