Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a two bedroom condo and the new snake goes in my bedroom while the older ones are in my other room, the rooms are next to each other, but when I do handle the snakes I always wash my hands and arm if it goes up there, and they do have seperate tanks, water, even when I wash the water bowls I do the new ones last and scrub them down. This might be a stupid question but what could peeps get from them, I know things like mites and and stuff like that but what else? I will keep it seperated for 90 days I read that it was 60 days to 90 days but I have no rush on that. Thanks for your input.

I would certainly suggest to keep your quarantine in a completely seperate room. Not only your touch can transmit bacteria, but flies and mites can and will too. In fact, in my humble opinion the single most crosscontaminating things are mites. They will bite a sick snake and can carry the actual virus or viruses to another well snake if and when it bites it. If you have mites I would suggest that you take serious steps to completely eliminate them. It's easier than most people think and I can help you on this if you need it from my experiences with severe mite infestations in the 80's. As far as anything transmitable to humans,... if I understand things correctly most viruses and or bacteria that can thrive in a cold blooded organism (reptile) can not exist and thrive in a warm blooded organism (mammal/human). It has to do with idealic temperatures and 98.6 will kill most cold blooded viruses. (I welcome any correction on this as I am a little vague and would like to know more about it) But a couple of bacterial exceptions that I can think of are Salmonella and Giardia (sp?). Both of these should be easy to avoid if one thoroughly washes their hands with antibacterial soap shortly after handling their snakes or cleaning cages, and keep as pristine an environment as is possible to keep these from multiplying in the cages themselves.
One last thing, when you wash your bowls and soak tubs use a water/antibacterial dish soap/bleach solution and you should never have any problems with germs spreading there. I use a generous amount of the soap to about 3 gallons in my wash tub and approximately a cup of bleach. But use as much bleach as your hands can comfortably cope with. Also, I use seperate bowl washing tubs for clean colonies and different quarantine levels.
I hope this has helped.

>>I have a two bedroom condo and the new snake goes in my bedroom while the older ones are in my other room, the rooms are next to each other, but when I do handle the snakes I always wash my hands and arm if it goes up there, and they do have seperate tanks, water, even when I wash the water bowls I do the new ones last and scrub them down. This might be a stupid question but what could peeps get from them, I know things like mites and and stuff like that but what else? I will keep it seperated for 90 days I read that it was 60 days to 90 days but I have no rush on that. Thanks for your input.
-----
The fastest way to achieve great wealth is by living more poorly for much longer.