Reptile & Amphibian Forums

OK so Boris has not been eating as much this week I think the powersun bulbs are running low on UV I have a new custom bulb coming from www.reptileuv.com this week so all should be good. But I noticed today what I think is a small amount of blood in his poo right around the urate (white stuff) he had some orange in his urate when I first got him but nothing worth noting since. Any ideas? Really small amount did not even notice it until I picked up the poo to flush it.

I'd suggest taking him, along with a stool sample, to a vet ASAP. It could be that he prolapsed, or could have internal parasites. There's a small possibility that his vent has been irritated, but having blood in the stool of chameleons usually is the sign of a real problem.
Cricket

If taking Boris in to the vet will mean a lot of stress (long drive, pissy cham), you could first take a fresh fecal for the vet to examine. It might not be blood, but if it is the vet could determine if it is "fresh" or "old" blood from different parts of the intestinal tract. How long have you had Boris, how old is he, how old is your PowerSun? What do you feed, gutload and dust with and how often? The orange in the urates can be a sign of earlier dehydration and you could be seeing a fleck of very concentrated urate that looks reddish brown. If the fleck was bright red it could have come from a rectal injury. One of the first things I'd do is give him more soft bodied prey such as silkworms. I've occasionally seen flecks of red in cham poops but most of the time there was no defined cause.

Man lots of help thanks, I was thinking the same thing about taking the sample first. Which I am going to do this week. I have had Boris for about 3 months now and he is about a year old. I have had soooo much trouble with the MVB bulbs getting old fast and producing less UVB the tight now the bulb is 30 days old. Crickets get fed a dry food from www.cricketfood.com (good stuff) and a potatoe or carrot for hydration (changed daily), he also has silk worms from www.mulberryfarms.com fed with their special food only daily. He eats about 5 - 7 crix (3 week old) and 2 silk worms (1 inch or smaller) daily. But this week he has not eaten as much. I dust with repti cal (plus D3) every other day and add some herpavite to the dust every other dusting. it was a little concentrated orangey red but a small bit of kinda liquid red in the urate (I saw it just minutes after the poop came out so no time to dry and harden). I tried switching him over to just silks but now he only wants crix. hmmmm When this new bulb comes in I am certain things will change back to normal. When he first had the orange in the urate (first 30 days I had him) the switching out of the powersun bulb made all the diffrence. Thnaks again

Hi,

I noticed a couple of things you should change. At a year old you are oversupplementing quite a bit. At his age he only needs the RepCal once a week and the vitamins about once a month. It is easy to overdose dusts and is actually more common than under supplementation. I'm also curious how you know your MV lights are losing their UV output. Do you have a UV meter? I had read that those lights were "good" for up to a year. I haven't used them so don't know from personal experience.

good tip on supplementation, I was just following the breeders same pattern. As far as loosing UVB goes I started to notice weird changes in behavior of Boris (like what I am seeing now) after I had the bulbs for over 30 days. SO I did a bunch of research on some sites here is one for example http://www.beautifuldragons.com/ (scroll to bottom and and click UV Project) and discovered that at 6 months the Power sun bulbs drop to 1-5mc2 watts of UVB that is horrible. The problem really lies with the "self ballasted" bulbs. So I took my bulb to a local herp specialist who has a UVB meter and sure enough the bulbs I have at 12" under screen only register at 3-8 microwatts!!!! after 30 days that bites!. SO yeah they will last for a year but the degrade UVB output fast. We tested a new Powersun to compare and got up to 72 UVB at 12" which is excellent. SO I found out about the externally ballasted bulbs and westron industies www.reptileuv.com sells them as well as a few other places. Bob at reptileuv.com is a UVB specialist and has a ton of knowledge. He helped me pick out a custom bulb externally ballasted that should arrive this week (I have not tested it yet) there is a yahoo group about UVB (UVB Meter Owners) that has like every MV bulb and Tubes tested at various distances in new, 30 days, 3 months, and so on. It definatly shows that the self ballasted bulbs are only effective for 30 days to 3 months. Let me know if you want more info on it.

I have a ZooMed MVB which was recently replaced due to it dying after about 3 months or so. Have thought about getting a meter. I have not checked out the sites you mentioned, but if this is true I think ZooMed needs to comment on these finding since they claim that:
"...and the PowerSun UV will continue to emit significant levels of UVB for all of its 10,000-hour average life (over 2 years with normal use.)"

Any changes in Luna is just her quirky personality. ;-/

lele
ZooMed UVB

-----
0.1 veiled - Luna
0.2 house geckos - Gaia & Tia (both MIA
0.2 felines - Kyndra and Líta
1.0 African Clawed Frog (for summer)
0.5 Mad. Hissers (for summer - all girls, no little ones, whew!)

yep same bulb I have well I have been running the 100s are you running 100 or 160? any way talk to Bob at www.reptileuv.com it will change your whole perspective on UV and lighting.

Here are asome exerpts from UVB testing done and tracked on UVB meter owners the yahoo group.

these all refer to power sun lamps, all measurements are from bulb face

160W / Brand New / 12" / 47 mc2
160W / Brand New / 6" / 115 mc2 (solid!) but...
160W / 2 months old / 12" / 36 mc2
160W / 1 year old / 12" / 16 mc2 (sucks!)

100W / 2 months / 12" / 10mc2 (totally unacceptable)

not my measurement got them from the group mentioned above. Seems the only internally ballasted MVB that hols it UVB for 6 full weeks is the T-Rex active heat but they put out a ton of heat (too much for chams). Check these results for the externally ballasted bulbs that www.reptileuv.com sells by Westron lighting. I have not recived my bulb yet so these are not my opinion or findings. From the same chart and group above Bob can make the UVB less or more if needed so even though some of these results are freaking ridiculously high they do not have to be. He custom ordered my bulb at 85-150 mc2. SOme of the bulbs he sells register in the 1700 mc2 range!!!!!

60W EB / 60 days / 12"/ 260 mc2
60W EB / 100 days / 12" / 250 mc2
60W EB / 6 months / 12" / 240 mc2

Wow kick ass results!