Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I will give a very short version of a longer story.

I have a about a dozen herps in a quarantine room (colubrids and leo geckos). The animals are all housed in a rack system. I maintain what I considered to be relatively sanitary procedures. I wear and change latex gloves between specimens when I service each enclosure. I clean daily and sanitize with Novalsen. All tools soak in a Novalsen bath when not in use. All my quarantine animals are housed on a paper substrate.

Recently I accepted a juvenile albino cal. king. He was a rescue animal and was not in overly bad shape but he was a picky feeder. After a few weeks he began to accept frozen and thawed pink mice twice weekly. He regurgitated the fourth meal. I waited a week and fed him again and he regurgitated that one within 24 hours.

Within a week another cal king housed in the same room began to regurge and now a third cal king is symptomatic as well along with a couple of yearling honduran milks. Testing on stool and regurgitated mice have confirmed crypto.

I now realize my quarantine procedures weren't adequate and I am paying dearly for it. I now understand Novalsen wasn't strong enough of a sanitizer as well as a number of other things in hindsight I would correct.

I am still shocked at how fast it has moved through the collection.

The vet has recomended euthanasia for all the symptomatic animals as well as an incredible series off testing for the animals that are so far unaffected.

I am most concerned about the geckos even though they are fat, sassy and growing like weeds. He suggests 3 clean tests over a period of 6 months and another full year of quarantine for the geckos. He also said fecal testing was more likely to give accurate results in lizards but snakes needed both fecal and stomach mucous testing.

I wonder if I could ever feel safe introducing them to the rest of my collection even if they did test clean over a period of a year.

Anyone have thoughts on my situation?

Thanks!
Dave

Sorry to hear about crypto affecting your herps. There are some forms of treatment which may help, but probably won't completely eliminate crypto from the herps that have already been infected. I have linked an informative article on the problem. Hopefully, this will help.
Link

Crypto has had many treatments tested. None have even given satasfactory or reproducable results.

While I might feel safe introducing these animals after a year of quarantine, this means it's been a year without a positive test of which many tests were done, no illness of any kind, a good appetite and a good stool. Counting begins after all questionable animals are culled and quarantine has been improved.

Ian

A zoo here in Mexico (Yaguar Zoo - Oaxaca, México) apparently has had some good results against crypto.

The drug they used is Toltrazuril (Baycox(R) produced by Bayer) and with a first dose of 14mg/kg repeated 4 weeks later they have tested negative samples taken every month for up to 6 months (probably more, but when i heard about that, they only showed those results).

As far as i know this is the story with this guys.

They received an amel corn with crypto. They found that toltrazuril ((R) Baycox) was a new (and effective) drug tested on birds so they called to Bayer and ask if there was any recommended dose for snakes (there wasn't), so they recommended duplicate the dose for birds which was 7mg/kg.

This was 2 years ago, so they probably have more to say about this parasite. Any way you could ask to your veterinarian about this drug and keep your animals alive but in a quarantaine situation until they prove negative.

My spanglish isn't good, hopefully u could understand.