Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just caught this story from a local pet store...

Unmentioned employee recieved an order of water dragons from an importer/wholesaler.

All water dragons arrived with mites.

Employee "treated" all water dragons with baby oil.

Two water dragons died within 24 hours of arrival.

Hmm... I don't know - would you say there was an underlying problem - or the baby oil killed the water dragons?

It could have been many things....

The dragons could have been very overly stressed, underfed, and overcrowded from where they came from in the first place...then shipping could have given them the extra push towards death.

Either way, pet stores are usually uneducated, and don't know how to keep the animals they are recieving properly in the first place.

I'm not a fan of pet stores in the first place...I would highly recommend buying your livestock from a trusty breeder.
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Chris

1.2.0 Bearded Dragons
1.2.0 Green Basilisks
1.1.0 Crested Geckos
1.2.0 Veiled Chameleons
1.1.0 Corn Snakes
1.0.0 Tokay Geckos
0.0.1 California Kingsnakes
2.5.1 Leopard Geckos

I've heard people say that they coated snakes with oil, and it caused some major skin problems but didn't make the snakes drop dead. I'd say it's likely that the dragons had some other major problems, mites are great disease vectors.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

It was probably something else besides the baby oil. Sometimes one of my cwds has trouble shedding and the only thing that will help him is a baby oil bath everyday until he finishes shedding. So far nothing bad has happened.

np

These were most likely babies waterdragons. This is a common surface-to-mass ratio error. The smaller an animal is, the greater the surface area is in relation to there over-all mass. This means that a baby water dragon covered in a chemical is going to absorb a higher ratio in comparison to its body mass then an adult similarly covered. Where the adult is fine, the baby overdoses. Another common surface-to-mass ratio error is thinking that a baby can withstand the same exposure to heat,cold, or sunlight as an adult.