Reptile & Amphibian Forums

has been starting to grow on a couple of my snakes eggs. I remember reading some where about painting the moldy areas with some sort of ointment or something. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Vichris

Vichris Variables

Tanactin and forget it.....
I have used it once before and it worked well on mold.....
Use it lightly.....
John Lassiter

John has a good point that an anti-fungal like Tinactin will combat mold extremely well but I would be worried about the permeable nature of the egg at such a early stage and the effect on the developing embryo. Once mold is present, however, an effort to sterilize the environment may be futile, so my previous suggestions may be in vain.
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Maria
"Life is like a box of thayeri eggs..."

Tinactin is the product I had heard of before. John refreshed my memory when he mentioned it.

BTW I have a couple of eggs that are discolored on one end of the egg and those are the ones that mold id growing on. I've candled the eggs and they appear to be good eggs & growing inside.
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Vichris

Vichris Variables

You are talking about the Tinactin ointment and not the powder, right John?
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Vichris

Vichris Variables

Yes the ointment...
Tough actin Tinactin.......
It does not hurt the developing embryo.....Just use it sparingly.
John Lassiter

My wife has some of that in her purse Hehehehe
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Vichris

Vichris Variables

LOL.....This purse thing continually comes up.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
John Lassiter

Just fun'in with ya bud.
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Vichris

Vichris Variables

Chris,

I've been seeing the same thing with a Knoblochi clutch of mine. I have one egg that is not fertilized that is stuck to a bunch of others and I have been battling a mold problem for some time now. Two days ago, a few eggs started to dimple so I expect them to be piping any day now. One of the dimpled eggs also has a little mold on it. Hopefully, the snakes are mature enough where the mold will not affect them.

All that being said, I have absolutely zero experience advising about mold problems with developing snake eggs. I do, however, have lots of experience combating mold problems in "live" cultures of rat heart cells which require the same type of warm humid environment. The spring is when this problem always occurs. This is what I would do if I were you. Sterilize everything you can possibly sterilize. Use a dry Q-tip to remove as much visible mold you can. Get some fresh/sterile vermiculite with a slightly lesser degree of moisture added to it. Put the eggs in in a new (sterilized with bleach) AIRTIGHT container and put that into your incubator. Every 1 or 2 days get the egg container and bring it to your refrigerator and quickly open the top of the contianer IN the refrigerator to exchange air in a hopefully mold-free environment. That's the only thing I can think of for now. Hopefully othes will have some more ideas.

Good luck.
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Maria
"Life is like a box of thayeri eggs..."

Hi Chris

Someone in the ball python forums suggested/mentioned that they have used methylene blue for egg fundus. It is normally a treatment against fungal and bacteria on freshwater fish eggs and it is also suggested as a treatment for ich, velvet, Cryptocaryon, Amyloodinium, other protozoa, monogenetic trematodes. If you get the actual solution and not the premixed commercial brand, all you need is a drop per gallon of water and to lightly spray the solution on the egg itself or use the conditioned water when mixing the incubation medium. I haven't tried it myself(no problems so far) but if it works with something as sensitive a fish eggs I would imagine that it would not harm the snakes eggs at all. I've heared people using it for dart frogs eggs also. We all know how sensitve these guys are from chemicals in the environment(indicator animals). I think it may be worth a shot. The link to the discussion is posted below. Hope it helps.
Egg fungus discussion in the BP forum.

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Jonel M. Lopez

www.spsnakes.com

Ooops! I meant to say FUNGUS not FUNDUS(as in uterine). Hehe, sorry I just finished my Labor & Delivery rotation. Anyway, give it a shot!
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Jonel M. Lopez

www.spsnakes.com

You should mention that.

We (in opthamology) use something called a Fundus Camera to look at the back of the retina. The pics look almost exactly like a candled egg except in perfect detail. It's what the eye Doc looks at when he gets real close & shines a bright light in your eye. Its also what gives us that red eye in pictures.

I take it that you are looking at the base of the uterus since fundus means bottom of organ.

BTW now that we have fungus and fundus cleared up thanks for the help everyone
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Vichris

Vichris Variables

I have methylene blue in my lab. If you send me your address I can send you some to try.
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Maria
"Life is like a box of thayeri eggs..."

Hi Maria

I forgot to mention that these are also used as a stain for slides for microscoping viewing. I'm sure that's what you it for in your lab for, right? Thanks for the offer but I have 10 ml onhand just in case i need it. I think that'll be enough for my needs for now. I found mine at a local reptile/fish store. Some peeps here may need your help. I may bug you for some later though, hehe. Take care.
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Jonel M. Lopez

www.spsnakes.com

Whoops..sorry Jonel..I meant that to be an offer to Chris. And yes, I use methylene blue as a non-specific stain for proteins. So I gather from your post that you are in Med-school? Where do you attend? I hope I am not politically incorrect by saying that there should be more Philiphinos as physicians and less as nurses. I, myself, am only one quarter Philipino, but I the bloodline is strong
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Maria
"Life is like a box of thayeri eggs..."

First off I've had many great snakes hatch out of eggs that have had some degree of mold on them so it isn't always a great cause for alarm. Generally I take mold as an indication of one of several things. Too much moisture and not enough air circulation are the first things I look for as these are easy to adjust. If this arrests or significantly slows the developement of mold or fungus I generally don't worry about it and I'll end up with a healthy neonate.

Sometimes thought the egg itself wasn't healthy from the start. This to me is a hard call because if the egg isn't good prehaps the neonate will end up not being the best either. In this case I often just remove and destroy the egg from the get go unless there is something exceptionally rare or exciting about the clutch. If I'd had a poor egg on my first thayeri clutch I think I would have done about anything to nurse it to term.

Sometimes the snake room environment contributes to mold formation too. We're prone to keep a lot of snakes and mice in a small room and the air quality can suffer. My room in the new house has both an exhaust fan that runs 24/7 and an air purified that runs a total of 6 hours a day and I haven't had a moldy egg since being here.

I mix my vermiculite relatively dry, much dryer than some others I have seen. I then monitor the eggs everyday (or most everyday), if I notice the eggs start to “dimple” I mist the inside to the container walls with a little water. Sometimes I have to mist it a couple times in a day to get the eggs back “full” looking but I find as long as I watch them, it only takes a couple of misting during the 60 days of incubation to keep the eggs full. My buddy uses a sloppy wet mix and he gets plenty of mold but most of the eggs hatch anyway. His eggs usually swell up more than mine but the babies are not any bigger and there is no difference I have noticed in the health or feeding response. I think I have a better “unassisted” hatch rate than he does; he ends up slitting a lot more eggs than I do too (I often don’t have to “slit” any but never more than one or two) and (so far – knock on wood) I have close to 100 percent hatching of fertile eggs (with a few assists).

Thayeri come from a semi-arid environment where I doubt the eggs are exposed to excessive moisture. Moist – Good; Wet – Bad (lol).

As Tony said, keeping the environment clean helps too, so I never use tap water to mix the vermiculite or to mist the containers.

I know it doesn’t help with mold problems right now but something to think about in the future.
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Rick
Never Enough
Reptiles

Your method is right on Rick...I do something very similar.....
I put the eggs in semi moist perlite and when they start to dimple I place some wet moss in the corner of the container away from the eggs.
They ARE from a semi arid habitat, but their habitat is relative humid. Wet is not good for eggs....Moisture is okay, but a humid container is the best...
The same goes for general husbandry of thayeri.....a dry habitat that has humidity is ideal. Most of my females lay their eggs just a day or two after their "pre-egg laying" shed. I think this is due to acceptable lay boxes and humidity.....And this keeps the females from losing body weight....they can start feeding sooner.
Females that go off feed for their shed cycle and while they are holding eggs to lay sometimes miss food up to four weeks...... Mine rarely miss food over 2 weeks

My Dos Centavos...
John Lassiter

I think the reason I got mold this year was because I had several bad eggs (slugs) that I put in the incubator that went bad and developed mold. I'd bet that the mold spores from those bad eggs passed on to a couple of my good eggs. The only two that got mold were the ones that had some discoloration on the end. I did the Tinactin trick last night and removed the questionable eggs into a different container. I also re-candled all of my eggs and they all appear to be growing fine. I checked the good ones (this AM) that had a bit of mold on them and they both look much better.

Here's how I set up my incubation medium. I read about this years ago but can't remember where. I have a very nice postal scale so I weight my vermiculite (dry) and then add the same amount of water by weight to the vermiculite and stir. My vermiculite is also very dry as is doesn't take much water at all to equal the weight of the vermiculite. I've always used plain old tap water with no problems but that may change next year.

In the future I'm going to keep all questionable eggs in a seperate container and remove them as soon as I can tell they are not developing.

BTW it looks like Mildred is going to double clutch she spent some quality time with two different males for the past two nights.

Thanks for the help everyone.
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Vichris

Vichris Variables

Hi everyone, haven't posted in awhile, I guess better late than never though..LOL.... To stop mold you mix 10 parts water with 1 part bleach, take a Q-tip and lightly paint the molded egg and it will kill the mold and not harm the baby. This came from Dr.McGhee a reptile vet that is a friend. He has used it since vet school on gecko and king eggs. I tried it last year and it worked.
take care Michelle

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Michelle