Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering how long it takes for a monitor to develop pneumonia? I just got a baby Black Throat this past Sunday and he started sneezing Wednesday night. So I dropped him off at the vet on Thursday and he has been there since diagnosed with pneumonia. Also is there anything special I should do when I bring him home on Saturday besides making sure the cage temps are ok?
Thank you,
Kevin

upper RI is a different thing than pneumonia, but simple RI infections can be addressed with proper temps, most importantly, proper basking temps.

look to eliminate much night time temp drop for a couple of weeks until it has completely cleared up. be sure to have a nicely setup basking spot of 130F, it should take care of itself.

if you are given meds and dosages, that would indicate either a more troublesome infection, or a vet not familiar with current monitor husbandry.

i can almost guarantee the vet is keeping the animal sub optimally, and it is only getting worse. i have never seen a proper monitor (or lizard in general) setup at a vet, and the ones i have seen use very dated husbandry setups with hot spots in the 90's, which only sets your animal back further, not giving it the tools it needs to naturally deal with the problem.

best of luck.
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robyn@proexotics.com

Pro Exotics Reptiles

Had a respiratory infection when it was sent to you, kept in lousey conditions for a while. The stress of the shipment, and new surroundings, etc just weakened the immune system enough to make it worse.
In my experience a BT can withstand temps down to and below 40f for lengths of time, and temps upwards to 120 for periods of time. But Ive never had a reptile that was in my care develop or have a respiratory infection. Ive seen reptiles with them given up by owners, and those in petstores, but that can be fixed 90% of the time with a proper environment in about 1-2 days at most.
This is why some of us experienced keepers cringe at posts about free roaming, open cages, open top cages, screen cages,screen top cages, low basking temps, etc, weve seen these things a million times every year for years on these forums.
Typically the owners post about keeping theirs in these conditions because it is cheap and easier, also because some hack on another forum or some "petstore monitor books" info tells them to do that. They argue that they know what they are doing, and everyone else is wrong, next they cant understand why things start to go wrong, next when the excuses run out they go elsewhere to get help so as to prevent their ego from taking a hit. Typically the monitor dies, and the poster disappears as to save their ego again and never come back. All this instead of taking the advice that will actually help them.
Id venture to guess that in any one popular "monitor lizard forum" in one years time, more imported monitor lizards die in the hands of stubborn new keepers than in the hands of the local natives who eat them.
Sorry, just ranting, I guess if people put their egos aside and took the advice they are offered I wouldnt have to vent every now and then.
Probably that lizard was sick and was sent to you to let it die in your hands, and to make some quick money for the christmas season by the seller. A good friend had a load of uromastyx delivered from a big name business before the holidays, the lizards in the photos looked great, the lizards that showed up were skeletons with skin, dieing, sickly, parasite infested and not worth 1/4 of the special price offered to him. A few phone calls, then one offering his lawyers phone number to the business, he was suddenly offered replacements for all dead lizards in a period of 2 weeks (almost all of them). The guy sent about 1/4 of the total number and a refund on the rest, these replacements he sent were the animals he used to sell the others (the lizards in the photos what a huge difference, just not so brightly colored, that was a trick of the business, take the pictures while they are still wet with warm water).

Thank you for the replies. The monitor survived the trip to the vet and seems to be slowly improving. I am a little concerned because I have not been able to get him to eat. Could this be caused by the medication? I was told he is about 4 months old. He has a basking spot of 130 which he has not gone to since he came back from the vet and the ambient temp is at 80. The humidity ranges from about 75% at one side of the cage to around 40% at the other. The substrate is currently Cypress mulch although I have been looking at switching to soil from what I have been reading. I appreciate any info.