Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey all,

To try and save some money, I went ahead and set up 4, 15 gallon aquariums with 1 male and 3 females each. They have been up for three days now. Today, in two seperate tanks, I found a dead mouse. They were just dead, not shredded by the other mice that I could tell, no blood at all. Just dead. They are set up with aspen shavings, food bowl with dogfood, and a water bottle. They are not old mice, but were small adults. Anyone have any ides? They are set up in my garage, which is anywhere between 65-80 degrees this time of year. I don't think its the temp, anyone have any theories?

If you got them from a pet shop and you are sure they didn't die from fighting, then it's possible they had some sort of illness. If that's the case then you may find more dead soon. If this happens I would feed them off, thoroughly wash out the cages (disinfect) and purchase new breeders from a healthy source. Good luck.

Just curious.......what sex were the mice that died??

Brian

>>Hey all,
>>
>> To try and save some money, I went ahead and set up 4, 15 gallon aquariums with 1 male and 3 females each. They have been up for three days now. Today, in two seperate tanks, I found a dead mouse. They were just dead, not shredded by the other mice that I could tell, no blood at all. Just dead. They are set up with aspen shavings, food bowl with dogfood, and a water bottle. They are not old mice, but were small adults. Anyone have any ides? They are set up in my garage, which is anywhere between 65-80 degrees this time of year. I don't think its the temp, anyone have any theories?

were the dead mice females because it might have been a fight to see who was gonna be the dominate female, also when you bought the mice were they already in colonies because once there set it's hard to readjust them ,they pretty much are set for life

The two dead were females. I bought them from a local shop where I ussually purchase live feeders when needed. They did come out of a very overcrowded tank at the shop. It could very well be disease. The "Alpha female" theory also might have wieght. I guess I will just wait and see if they continue to die off, or if it was just a dominance struggle.

S~

Did you buy them as feeders or pets? The one time i bought a couple feeder females from the petstore, I found they were first, filthy...which is bad for mice as they are naturally pretty clean. Two, highly stressed and unsocialized. Three, because of their bad conditions before I bought them, I determined they wouldn't make good breeders anyway and got rid of them.

I would recommend buying baby mice, about 5 or 6 weeks old instead. You will need a few weeks to a month to let them grow older before breeding (once they are 8 weeks would be fine to introduce the males). Get the males, or some of the females from another store, to hopefully get unrelated stock. Clean all the bins and introduce the new males to their harum at the same time you return the females back to the now clean cage. I find this is the best way to introduce new mice with others. The first few minutes they are re-exploring their environment, the male will mark his scent all over the place to make it feel like home and the females will by then be familier with his scent and hopefully, his introduction would be smooth. Of course, not long after he feels comfortable he will probably mate or try to mate with the females.