Question:
We have a 18 month old male veiled chameleon, he's normally shed well but seems to have some shed stuck on the tip of his tail he has taken to biting at it (which we try to stop as soon as we notice him paying it attention) the tip has now fallen off but the surrounding skin looks bruised and he has minor cuts to it. Is there any antibiotic spray available that would stop infection. He's not very friendly, will tolerate coming out onto your arm, but becomes very aggressive if you go to touch him so creams would be impossible, could possibly get medicine in to him orally.
He's housed in a 48 x 24x 24 arboreal viv with a sol glo 125 watt dual lamp, fed gut loaded wax worms morio locust and greens dusted with nutrabol twice a week eats well sprayed 3 times a day and humidity kept around 50%
Any advice would be appreciated as i cant find a vet in my area that specializes in reptiles.
Answer:
I suspect your humidity is a bit low. This can slow down the shedding process. It also sounds as if the tail tip failed to shed properly, resulting in a constriction of old skin, cutting off the blood supply to the tail tip. I suppose that the skin has now come off, leaving a damaged area. An antiseptic/moisturising treatment might be beneficial here. We do not currently sell any such product, but the antiseptic skin gels sold by many pets stores for people (especially children) to rub their hands with after handling reptiles should be suitable. It might not be easy to apply, but that would be down to you. You would not need to rub it in, just apply to the surface or dip the tail in it.
Also I would suggest that you make sure that at least part of the vivarium is more humid in future, so that shedding works better. It is most likely that this was the problem. Spraying with water lots of times through the day does help when shedding, but the chameleon should be able to move somewhere which is very humid to help the process itself if possible.