Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I need help diagnosing my sick ali snapper, 2 yrs old. she has a bacterial infection in her eyes, that i know. she also has small white "balls", for a lack of any other description, in her mouth. They are soft and squish with ease. She is also bleeding form the roof of her mouth.

The white balls reappear even afetr I clean her mouth of them. I took her to a very good herp vet. He took samples of the eye build up and its definatley bacterial. He also took smaples of the stuff from her mouth. He can not identify it. We can not locate the source of the bleeding either. It appears to be coming from the slits on the roof of her mouth.

The symptoms came on in the course of about two days. He prescibed an ointment for her eyes, and an oral antibiotic. Lucky she is an alli, she opens right up. And a med for parasites, just in case.

I think that I'm losing her though. Today she was very lethargic, actually thought she was dead. She finally got pissed enough to open up and let me know about it.

I thoguht of second opinions, but herp vets are limited where I am. This one, though, happens to be very experienced and respected.

Any experience or suggestions?

Thanx, Dave

Good luck and keep going to the vet.
Mine gave me antibiotic shots to give twice a day.

Also...raise the water temp to around 88-90.
This might help.

Stuff like this almost always comes down to water quality... double check what you have for water changes and filtration and double it until you have things sorted out.

If your turtle is going down hill it needs to be taken back to your vet. He/she sounds like they are very competent with herps (I like the fact that they did a culture and sensitivity, any results back on the sensitivity yet?). Your turtle sounds like a good candidate for hospitalization, IV, ICe or IOs fluids, and medical support. Your DVM will discuss this with you in addition to other diagnostics that he has available.

Good luck with your alligator snapping turtle, they truely are amazing animals

Ian

Thanks for the input. The cultures showed two bacterias. The diagnosis is mouth rot, AKA stomatitis (sp). We are waiting on the blood results. There may be an underlying illness that caused it. There is actually a lot of info on the net about it. I guess it's more common in tortiose.

The water quality is good. I'm anal about it. I change the water weekly and keep the filter clean. He can stink the water up quickly. I also have a filter for a 75 gallon tank, in about 10 gallons of water.

He did damage the side of his lower jaw/beak. This may be a result of the bacteria growing on the injury. He was trying to dig out a piece of shrimp from under a large rock.

Anyways, I have injections that i will give him for the next week, then evaluate again. I feel confident that we have it down. I gave him a few already, much easier than injecting snakes, let me tell ya'.

dave