Reptile & Amphibian Forums

last sunday i noticed that the humidity was low in her tank, so i put a clear plastic sheet over the screen side of her tank... that helped alot...

i forgot to turn off the timer for her light, so when i left the bulb turned on and started to melt the plastic... when i got home the house smelled like smoldering plastic... i looked at her cage and saw that there was smoke inside the tank... she was on top of a rock kind of spread out... he's usually all coiled up... i opened the tank, and took her outside and gave her a shower in bottle water... i put the tank outside and wiped it down a bit... the piece of plastic that was burning melted all the way thru... the bulb was 2" away from it and it still managed to melt it...

i put her in a small 5g tank with the DIY humidifier... the next day i noticed that she had this gooey build up in her mouth i mean alot of it... i took her out, and wipped it away with a clean napkin... she didn't let me touch her face like she usually does... i also noticed that her lower lip was a bit swollen... so it's been a week now, and i still see one side of her lip swollen, and there's still some slimey stuff inside her mouth... i don't know if she's supposed to be slimey inside her mouth... i asked around at different petshops and they said that she might have a respitary infection... but she's not gasping for air or anything...

and i also think she has mites... i saw stuff crawling around the tank when i thouroughly cleaned it out tuesday...

so um... cliff notes...???

almost killed snake and burned my house down...
snake was poisoned by burning plastic fumes...
she had gross gooiey build up in her mouth...
found mites in tank...

what's wrong with my boa, and how do i get rid of mites???...

thx... she's an '07 about 22" long...

Skip the pet shops, they are for buying animals and that's it. The easy reply for me is to take it to the vet. This snake has multiple problems, and they will add up to be a much larger burden that the animal might not be able to recoup from without help.

What needs to be done.
1. Returned to optimum husbandry of course. Make sure the little 5 gallon offers everything it needs to. With sick animals, I suggest using paper towel substrate. If you can't keep the humidity up with just that, then you can offer a humid hide with spagnum moss in it.

2. Generic toxin treatment. Fresh air, and fluid therapy at a rate that the animal can deal with. Excess fluids are used to flush toxins from the system. Hopefully the liver and kidneys arn't fried. Monitoring urine production might be essential.

3. Treatment of related symptoms. Damage to the lungs and the rest of the respiratory tract is essential. You can keep the oral cavity clear, but a lung wash might be helpfull. It's hard to say what the best course of action would be without a thorough exam and imaging.

4. Help with concurring problems. The mites need to be treated, but are the least concern at the moment. You can reduce mite numbers without affecting main course treatment by keeping the cage scrupulously clean, and by giving the snake a bath in dilute ivory soap bath (like dishwater consistency minus the bubbles). When the vet deems appropriate, more conclusive chemical mite remedies can be given.

I hope this helps. The last thing I have to offer is advice on finding a herp vet. For this, I'm going to start a new thread, so everyone sees it. It is a common need.

Good luck and take care,

Ian

thx for the info... i found a vet a couple of cities down... they did some test on her and he said that she doesn't have a resparitory infection but she was poisoned by the toxic fumes... he treated her for mites even though they were not present, and gave me some frozen fuzzies with some vitamins and antibacterial/parasite injections... lol...

she still hasn't eaten and i'm going to try again tomorrow... thx for the reply and the time taken to read my thread...

gumbii...