Reptile & Amphibian Forums

buyer beware when purchasing animals from personal classifieds, i.e, not reputable reptile breeders or stores. I purchased this albig about a month or so ago, i saw pictures first and all that jazz, and she even came in in relatively good shape, a little underweight, and dehydrated but nothing too bad. well last week she took a huge health plummit. I went down and turned on her lights and found all her food regurged her tail sunken in, and just looking very week she also had blisters forming all over her legs and back. I had a fecal test done when she arrived but it was clean. So i took her back to the vet, once examined the vet diagnosed it as sepsis, which is a blood infection caused by bad husbandry but mostly mal nourishment, and sometimes can be caused by contaminated food sources, most common in rodents. A blood test confirmed the diagnosis and now she is on baytril injections every other day, and soaking, also have to give her pedialite, however none of these tactics seem to be working and her condition is getting worse day to day. I guess what im saying is be real selective and careful when buying animals, see them in person if at all possible and get lots of pics and as much history as you can possibly get. Also if your monitor ever acts slightly off get it to the vets asap, i mistook her shyness and lack of activity for acclimation and now it might be too late to save it.
heres a pic and thanks for checking out the post
scott

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"cant we all just get along?" rodney king.

ah, what a shame, she looked so pretty, to bad she end up with this, i hope she gets better. i'm sorry for your lost, keep us updated on her.

Seems to me your blaming others for your inexperience, your set up will not help this monitor in any way. You need to change your husbandry big time!
Your monitor should not have to wait for you to open his lights and allow it to heat up, he should be able to do so at will, ad to this any kind of neglect such as water changes and cage cleaning and you will end with the problem you have.

Hate to break it to you but this is NOT due to his inexperience. He's got plenty of others and no problems. He's been keeping reptiles for a number of years. Usually when problems like this arise, it was the previous owners fault. There was NO way this could of been prevented by Scott! One thing I hate about the forms, alot of people like to JUMP the GUN and put people down. If we were to help people rather then jump on everyone this would be a much better place and alot more would get accomplished!
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John Light
Pristine Pythons
ristinePythons@Hotmail.com" target="_blank">Contact Me

for real, people are quick to nail someone to a cross in here. In this case yes it was due to somebody before me keeping this particular animal. and yes it arrived in sad shape and progressively got worse over the month i had it, even with my excellent husbandry methods. I have ambient lights for display that i turn off at nite, not HEAT sources, heat sources, in my case are basking spots heated by 90 watt halogen floods run 24/7 the post was meant to warn people of what they get themselves into, not for you to make assumptions about my husbandry. Its all good though, im not mad or upset because you are ignorant, just pointing out that you are WRONG in making assumptions when you do not know the whole situation.
thanks for your comments though.
scott
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"cant we all just get along?" rodney king.

Thanks for your understanding Scott, but you should know that aim faced with similar problems on a daily basis, guys that think they got there husbandry covered when in fact they haven’t covered the bases, ask them what’s the lowest temp in there cage they don’t know exactly, ask how humid they never took any measurements, hec most haven’t even adjusted basking temps. Yet when confronted with sickness its never there faults.
Well maybe your right its beyond your control, however my own experience says otherwise, iv taken lots and lots of crappy monitors thru the years and with good husbandry they usually go up hill, not downwards, they do not wake up overnight covered with blisters and skin bones. Its very possible that you got your monitor with an internal infection, but you should have seen it coming and acted to correct the problem, this is what experience allows you to do. When confronted with a sick animal its your responsibility to either return the monitor or accept full liability.
Your monitors sickness is stress induced and your imposing environmental stress as part of the cure? And your saying aim ignorant about your husbandry?

I dont mean to be a prick... but you do know its 'I am'... not aim, right?

And also... not to be a prick. For someone with so many years of experience you sound like a pre pubescent twelve year old. Your entire reply is riddled with horrible grammar and spelling and very simple assumptions on care.

I think you dug yourself in a hole with your initial post and are now growing defensive. A wise man knows when to keep his yap shut. Just dont reply anymore. Its obvious to a pre-newb like myself that you have your head up your ass and that scott and pristinepython seem to be in the know. So stop yammering for the sake of it and say
"Thanks Scott. I really appreciate you coming on here and giving others a heads up that unfortunantley was derived from your own misfortune."

A different language, therefore makes alot of spelling mistakes/grammar mistakes. I agree that many of the problems with that lizard can be from a prior owner, but just maybe what Steve says could also be true and to point the finger would be back at himself for some of the blame also. Steve is very knowledeable and experienced as well breeds and raises many many beautiful monitors. I myself have seen firsthand some of the many problems that WC monitors have over CBB, some you could never believe. Im not pointing the finger at anyone but the blame shouldnt be focused in the wrong place completely, otherwise the problem may never be solved. Good luck to all, I hope the animal gets over the problem and lives long and healthy.

This has nothing to do with grammer or spelling, this is a forum. He offered advice it is upto the person to accept the advice or not. To get bent out of shape over it is silly. If the animal declines in your care whether you started its decline or not doesn't take full blame away from you.

All we see is words being typed, and a picture. in that picture there is nothing being offered that will benefit the animal.

By the way Steeve B is french, hence he uses aim. You obviously could figure out what he was saying, so what does it matter if he uses I'm or aim. I think you should reread what he was saying as advice and not an attack. Then you could man up and appologize for your post which is an attack.

To realise that Scot doesn’t practise what he preaches, he advises on dirt and leaf litter when he use an other medium. Then he advise someone on how beneficial bacterial built up in his enclosure is, well in my experience this type of substrata combine with faeces are directly linked to blister disease in many animals I have seen lizards and snakes, ad to this that he uses just enough substrata to cover the bottom of his cage, if only he used 6 inches then the bacteria would have little less contact with the monitor, next in one of his post he claims that this monitor is feeding well, the downfall is from his husbandry yet he blames others. My suggestion is to go read PE care sheet on this specie and apply it to your captives, your husbandry is deficient.

Being a varanophils is a constant learning experience, I pointed out the problem its up to him to make correction or not.

I hope you understand, this is not a spelling bee. Its also, sort of meaningless to think its one attacking another, as these are only words on a screen, and can be eliminated with a click of a button or non-click.

The reality of this situation is somewhere between these polarized opinions. A keepers responsibility is to be responsible for his charges and take blame first, then learn from it. To pass blame to others(even if correct) is not helpful.

Of course, the desease could have not been preventable. But it could have been noticed a lot earlier and had a better chance of saving the animal. Remember, this person is blaming the dealer/seller for sending a sick monitor, but this keeper also failed to notice it was sick. So how was the seller to know??????

I believe all along the keeper knew this was a wild caught imported monitor. If the keeper knew this, then he should have understood the problems that come along with that. Hidden problems are common and expected with wild caughts. What would you expect????????

In this case, I believe the Vet is not very helpful. As all she/he said was, that monitor is sick, and we will treat it with the most general of antibiotics. Kinda like a Doc giving you antibiotics for the flu.(has no effect what-so-ever).

Its not understood by most, that monitors are nearly impossible to kill when healthy. But as I said, "nearly", it can always be "nearly". But if you want to blame the "nearly", then be my guest. Its just not a good way to learn. Good luck, FR

ok, first things first, sorry to be confusing? in my post, i am not blaming the seller, i beleive i recieved this animal in poor health yes, not blaming though, just sharing the experience with others so they do not make the same mistake as i did, not only that im also sharing the whole experience of what was found, how they found it, what it looked like etc. because i remember seeing posts go unresolved about blisters and growths etc so i was only letting others know what was found out with my situation. I did get slightly defensive when someone made accusations that were bogus, with nothing to back it up with, I have one sick monitor out of 13, one sick monitor that was being cared for since its arrival that yes, even with good husbandry the animal's condition still worsened. That is one of the biggest problems with this forum, you try to share experiences and help others and your contributions get crapped on and ridiculed, not too cool.
thanks frank, for getting what i was meaning, nothing more nothing less, and thanks for the input on the vets, they arent as helpfull as i would of wished but i have no other options at this point.
I will try to get some pics of the blisters but they are very small and im not too sure how they will show up on my camera, but alas i will try.
scott
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"cant we all just get along?" rodney king.

Of course there are many problems with forums of all kinds, this is by far, NOT the worse. At this time I year, I follow our local basketball team, and man, those forums are full of WEIRDOS. Good thing I know little about basketball and only lurk.

Anyway, most things are polarized, that is, they are taken to the furthest extreme. No matter what you say, it will be stretched in all directions. All you can do is, say your say, and let the marbles fall as they may.

Oh by the way, the more monitors and the longer you have them, only increases the weird things you will see. It does not prove anything, yet. At least not 13, hahahahahahahahahahaha Thats not even one clutch from your albigs, hahahahahahahahahaha. Cheers FR

i hear you on that one, lots of weird forums and chats like people steeling chats. . . . . .lol It is alot for now, i am keeping all my albigs in my basement, its only about 450 sq ft and for four pairs of albigs that is alot... lol, thanks again, and have a happy holiday.
scott
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"cant we all just get along?" rodney king.

Hi Scott,

Was the infection diagnosed/confirmed by blood work, or just visually? I have seen some sandy soils that have scary ph levels (the kind you find at landscape places), that do seem to cause skin problems (with weaker individuals).

Unfortunately I have seen(caused) a couple monitors crash, and it is never a good experience. I hope you get it all resolved.

Good Luck,

--Robert

hi robert,
it was confirmed by bloodwork, and now seems to be doing somewhat better, by better i mean the blisters are getting smaller and drying out and she is keeping food down, Im also taking the advice of the forum and setting her back up with soil cypress and all the normal cage furniture.
thanks
scott
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"cant we all just get along?" rodney king.

I have seen sepsis with albig's before. It is often with w/c sometimes with LTC and twice with c/b. You can see didfferent symptoms depending how it attacks the animal.

I do have to agree with steeve, you show us a picture of the animal. To me it is not in good shape and not in the best of conditions either. The infection your talking about can come from food, typically being fed something it can't quickly digest. When this happens instead of being digested it has a rotting animal inside of its gut leading to bacteria growth. This bacteria can go into the bloodstream or it can travel up the spine. There are other causes as well, but all come back to poor husbandry.

However if your treating the animal and have it setup as you show in the picture the animal will stress. The added stress with the infection is not going to help.

I believe this is what steeve is trying to get across to you. You have other monitors and they look good, noone was arguing that. We are simply talking about the monitor in the picture you posted.

Please take this as advice and not an attack. I just thought I would add to this since it seemed to have went from a post about a sick monitor to a bunch of defensive posts of nonsense.

yes thank you jody, it just sounded more friendly when you said it, not like monitor police, just a guy giving another guy advice, with a hostile your an idiot type of tone. but anyway, my vet was unclear about it transmitting to other animals, im real careful about disinfecting and bowl tracking etc, but he didnt give me an answer one way or another if it is transferable from one animal to another. She kept her last two meals down, and if my set up is stressing her i will set her up in the normal setup i use, which is soil/sand/cypress mixture and just use elevated temps all over, it was my vets suggestion to put on newspaper for a "cleanliness factor" advice that is not so good from what i am seeing. words typed on a forum do take a tone, and unfortunately i dont find some peoples tones to be so freindly or helpful. Once again jody thanks
scott
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"cant we all just get along?" rodney king.

My sav has been in a downward spiral for the last month. He's developed large pus blisters on his back and yesterday I noticed they're migrating up his neck. I've been to two vets and neither has been a whole lot of help. He has stopped eating in the last two weeks also. I'd like to see the blisters your albig has to see if they look similar. Thanks,
Tony

hello tony,
ok, most of the blisters have subsided since admistering antibiotics, which hopefully is a good thing. I can explain what they look like, they were relatively large for this small monitor, most blisters were about 1/8" long and oval shaped, they were transparent with a slight color of the normal pattern on them. It looked like a bad case of sun burn where your skin bubbles up with clear liquid underneath. I have not found any with pus in them. They have all mostly dried up as of about an hour ago when i administered her antibiotics and soaked her, they dry up and flake of as if she was in shed. I have been told by two vets now that any kind of repeating skin infection/blisters/pustuals etc are a good sign of sepsis and if not healthy enough on their own will require a round of antibiotics. when i say repeating i mean as if there are several leasions at any one time, not just one here and one there, it starts out slow and then spreads rapidly if not taken proper care of. My vets offered no ryhme or reason as to why it happened only that it did and this is how to treat it, jody offered the reason in a post above which my vet concurred to....lol anyway hope this can help.
scott
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"cant we all just get along?" rodney king.