Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've got four dead so far, and I fear for the rest of the colony I've got going.

Starts as dark discolouration and lump. I'm sure it's already dead, it's not moving.

What IS this?? I can only describe it as putrid, it smells HORRIBLE.

I've not got that many full-grown right now, so I definitely noticed right away. They were all fine last night.

I thought maybe the discolouration was a "getting ready to spin" thing, so I didn't pay close attention. But that's SO not a shed skin, it practically popped when I went to pick it up. *shudder*

I don't even want to feed any of the remaining to my reptiles.

I don't think I was doing anything wrong, and I've not seen this before.

Any ideas????

I accidently fed some bad ones once and within a few hours, almost all of them were "s" shaped and dead. I have no doubt that someone had sprayed the trees with pesticides. My guess is, that you're having the same problem...save what you can and get leaves from a different source. You should also give them a good rinse and pat dry before you give them to your cats.

I use the chow mix, there are no mulberry trees around here.

I had a problem with chow too. In my case, it ends up being too moist and molds, and that mold kills off my cats.

Make sure you bring the chow to the proper temperature when cooking, and that you use very clean utensils and containers for it. Also, keep it covered tightly.

When you feed the cats, don't keep their box covered...leave a gap so that you have some air circulation. You want the chow will dry out. If it's kept moist, the cats wont eat it faster than it will spoil.

If you can save just 5 or 6 of those cats, you should be able to get a pair of moths. With one mating they will give you 200-250 eggs. Even if she doesn't lay what she's supposed to, 50 will keep you going.

I'm thinking the chow was too wet. And boy was that gross.

I had 14 set aside for breeding, now there are only ten so it's not as bad as it could be. (yet! I hope no more die)

thanks for the help!

10 is doable. Just make sure to keep them clean and you should be ok.

You'd be better off keeping them in a container with no lid and replacing the chow often, then covering them and risking them getting too moist. Hatchlings need more humidity than adults. Just play with it until you find the balance.

I'm crossing my fingers for you.

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I seemed to have only been able to slow down the rate of death. I've only got 4 large ones left. One of which has cocooned, but I don't know what good that'll do if that's the only one that survives. I've got about 20 medium-small ones quaranteened off, but those aren't going to catch up.

I've ordered more, and I'm going to get new containers and everything and just start from scratch.

I would guess one of three possible problems.

1) Temps. are too high. I have noticed every time I have major problems like this, it is during a heat wave. Cooling them off by about 10-15 degrees slows the die off considerably.

2) Food is too wet.--This tends to cause bacterial problems because their droppings don't dry out quick enough (before bacteria can grow). If you are using silkworm chow, make it dryer as the worms grow. (As thick as possible for adult worms, while still being able to stir it.)

3) Humidity too high or too crowded.--again, the droppings aren't drying out fast enough. I make sure I can always see the bottom of their trays. If I can't see the bottom, then I thin them out--so the air can circulate to the bottom and their droppings can dry.

(All 3 of these are bacterial problems really. Bacteria grow much faster in warm humid conditions, and typically, bacterial problems tend to stink--I doubt that you would be getting that stink if it was pesticides, plus, you should probably see all of them die at approximately the same time)

Whenever I have this problem, I feed them off to my animals as quickly as possible. I haven't had any sick animals from doing this, but your case could be different.

Rodney

1) Temps. are too high. - if anything, it may get too cold in here at night (though I try to stablize that as best I can)

2) Food is too wet.-- Could be, normally I just buy a bunch of medium sized and a bunch of small, and raise the small ones up while I use the rest as feeders. I've been doing that for a couple months now without problem. But I decided to take a shot at raising a colony. So I wasn't doing anything different food-wise.

3) Humidity too high or too crowded.-- I've only got about ten big ones in a sterilite tub(used to be 14), then I had 100 small-medium in separate containers. I'm pretty vigilant about cleaning the containers and replacing food.

Another thing that I just thought of, after checking on them again this morning and finding 70% of the medium-small dead, was that I may have introduced something from a new delivery. I just got more silkies from Mulberry Farms about a week ago. Mostly small-medium, but there was one near-full-grown one too. So I put that with my potential breeders. Perhaps that delivery already had something wrong with it? I doubt it, since it took a week to show up, but it was a thought.

Dunno. No more big ones dead this morning. I took everybody out last night and cleaned everything. Noticed a couple dead small guys. Now most of those are dead. I'm going to have to order more anyway.

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