Cryptosporidiosis is one of the least understood and misdiagnosed illnesses in reptile medicine. Many snakes harbor the disease with no ill effects for their entire life only to pass it on to another susceptible animal in a collection and then have it spread like wildfire. Researching literature on the subject can be confusing as well due to contradicting findings (ease of transmission, best methods for killing crypto, etc). Many vets perform floats to look for crypto and the results are poor at best (some positive animals go undetected and some others turn up false positive). ELISA tests are the most reliable method for detecting crypto (they look for antibodies). Most private keepers don't perform tests on animals coming into their collection; usually testing only if an animal is sick or dead (if they even do that). If the testing was less expensive, and more people were willing to test their entire collections, the presence of crypto would be found to be much higher than we all think. Keeping your husbandry protocols as clean as possible and putting new animals in quarantine is the best method of keeping crypto out of your collection. I hope this guy can test his collection ASAP and save the majority of his animals. It stinks to see someone who has obviously taken good care of his collection have sickness wipe it out.



Phil Bradley

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