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My boyfriend and I have a hatchling veiled chameleon (about 4-5 weeks old) that was doing fine when we bought her. However, now she has stopped eating, closes her eyes a lot, and even is starting to sleep during the day. I've read all this stuff on care sheets that says if the animal sleeps during the day/closes its eyes/seems lethargic/etcetera "not to buy it", but I have found nothing explaining what to do if it happens a few weeks AFTER it has been brought home; more importantly WHY it's happening.
We have her in a 24x12x24 tank with two mesh sides and a mesh top. She is on a Benjamin ficus plant. We installed a dripping system, and a drainage system for the excess water. We mist her once every couple hours during the day. In the beginning, we took her out of her tank and fed her (one-week pinheads, dusted, etcetera) in a small container, but after a few days she showed interest in hunting the crickets in her own tank. She didn't appear to have any problems doing this. Now we have a feeding bowl with the pinheads in it, so that she can just climb in and nab 'em...but she has not done so. I haven't seen her go after her food in two days or so. I also used to see her lap water off the leaves, which I haven't seen her do in a couple days.
I'm not sure that her lighting and temperatures are optimal.. Even with the misting and the dripping system, her humidity remains around 60-80% and the heat around 80, which I believe to be too low. Honestly, I've no clue how people can keep their chameleons in completely mesh tanks and keep the temps optimal, since we can't seem to get them anywhere near correct with a half and half tank.
The basking lamp had a 75-watt bulb in it at first until we thought it may be too drying, so we switched it over to a 30-watt bulb which was not producing enough heat. We put the 75-watt back this morning.
We are completely able to take her for a vet visit, but I'm not sure that they could do anything since she is so tiny. Here is a picture of her.
This is our first chameleon, so we're not incredibly experienced with that particular kind of lizard...I'm hoping that someone here could give me an idea as to what is wrong with her and what we need to do. Tomorrow we are planning on taking her in to the vet, but any information before then would be helpful. I'm not even sure if she's going to make it 'til tomorrow. :\
[addsig]
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