Need help fast

[Ozzy]

I think that there may be a problem with at least one of my three of my anoles. They have never really tried to escape before. Tonight I've had one ecaped and another failed attempt. When I caught the one that escaped I took a close look at him and had a black spots behind each eye, even though he was a healthy green. I first thought it was some kind of fungas or eye rot. After a few minutes the spots started turning green again.
I noticed that when I put him back in the grow room that the other male anole was also healthy greeen. About ten minutes later I looked in the room and both males had turned dark. One was so dark he was almost black. I've seen thousands of anoles and I have never seen one that dark.
About an hour later just after the lights turned off I heard one of the lizards trying to run up the plastic that I have for the door. I'm sure he was tring to get out.
The thing that makes me so concerned is that I was holding him and I felt fluid run down my hand. I thought he had peed on me, but as I was watching him I saw water come out of his nostrils and mouth. I saw this happen three times in about 5 mins. I put him back in his room.
I don't think that the fact of the males turning brown had anything to do with territory. The room is big enough so that can stay far enough away from each other, and they usually do. They were not close enough to each other to have been fighting. I'm still decreasing light times so I'm sure that they're not getting ready to mate.
These are things that I have never seen them do and now I've seen all this in one day. I don't know if I should be concerned or not. I don't know if these are serious signs. Does any of the herp experts have any idea what any of the things mean?

 

[cephalotus88]

There are a few big signs of stress induced illness here. Lets begin with the first thing you noticed, the black patch in back of the eyes. With anoles, the black coloration is a sign of submissiveness due to a larger males persence or via illness. The attempt to escape may further lean towards the idea that that anole is having problems with the other males. Despite saying the enclosure is large enough, each male generally nneds about a 10gallon space apart, as stated in past Reptiles magazine. The best thing you can do now is seperate the anole in question in an individual enclosure. For the seepage on fluid from the nostrils and mouth. May be due to the lack of good basking space, due to the other males? Try babying the individual in an ideal cage seperately and make sure the temps and food are correct. Good luck-Zach

 

[Ozzy]

Thanks Zack.
I know that some of these are signs of a territory dispute. But let me tell you about their enclosure. It's about three ft wide, 4 feet deep and eight feet tall. There are many large sticks and branches and some pretty large nepenthes for them to setup their own territory. I have many different lights spread around so they should be able to setup territory within an area to bask. In the past I've had them in a 2ft X 3ft X 4ft indoor greenhouse and I never had a problem with them in that much smaller space.
My temps range from about 65f in the bottom and 85f in the top. For food, they have fruit flies flying arourd their cage all the time and I give them about 24 crickets a week.
After knowing the conditions I have them, if you still think it's territory, I'll setup a smaller cage for one of the males.
Thanks again Zack

 

[Daniel]

Ozzy, That is a huge tank for 3 anoles. On a personal opinion, I had some geckos run away, it became all dark and when I brought it back, it started acting funny. After a day or two, it gotten back to its original state. So I wouldn't worry much, if you still notice a problem and think its a huge problem, then I suggest a local vet willl help you out.

Daniel

 

[Ozzy]

I know that is huge for 3 anoles, but I didn't build it for them. I built it for some nepenthes I had that needed more space. I built it about 2 months ago and guess what, I'm out of space again and I'm planning another huge growing chamber of somekind.
I really wasn't concerned until I saw the fluid come out of the lizards nostrils and mouth.
I hear them runnig around alot more than normal so they are either chasing the fruit flies or each other. I'm tring to watch them more to see what they're doing. When I get my other chamber built, I'll move one of the males to it and then buy him a female.

 

[Ozzy]

Update.
I built a new home for one of the males from a 55 gal. tank. He seems to have returned to normal, and is a nice green color. I haven't heard any of the running around that I have been hearing before I removed the male. So I guess it may have been a territorial dispute after all.
Thanks for all the input.

 

[cephalotus88]

Glad everything has worked out. Good luck with the anoles-Zach

 

[FlytrapGurl]

I used to have several anoles, green and brown. The black spots behind the eyes on the greenies means the lizard is stressed out. About the fluid, I have no idea.

 

[Guest]

Cage size has less to do with stress from a dominate animal than sight lines and population density. If the enclosure is set up so that the less dominate animals can escape the sight of the more dominate animal then they can effectively "escape" the more dominate animal. The larger the enclosure with the same number of animals the more likely you are to have territorial problems until you have a large enough cage that each animal can establish an over lapping territory. The dominate male will hold the prime spot and the less dominate males will hold the fringe areas. This territorial drive will occur regardless of the number of food items in the enclosure and has to do more with dominating the prime basking sites. In smaller enclosures, it is more difficult to establish and hold a territory as the density of animals prohibits the effective control of the site (hence the Reptiles Magazine recommendation). The best example of this is housing crocodilians together. Unless you want to keep just a pair on exhibit, you need to increase the density to the point that the animals cannot control a territory (which is what happens in multiple croc and alligator exhibits) unless you are housing females. This rule works for most of the territorial herps but there are exceptions such as chameleons, Corucia (long term housing, short term it works), plethodontid salamanders for a couple of examples for animals that do not do well in more population dense surrondings.
Ed