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Flame Eastern Garter Snake

Erythristic Eastern Garter Snake

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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake
Updated 9/6 NEW PICS/INFO

Snakes look good!good luck with them.

Had a snake in my collection catch crypto, and then die. And it basically spread. I'm not sure what all I've lost, but the flame caught it 2 weeks ago and died a couple days ago.
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake
Updated 9/6 NEW PICS/INFO

That's terrible with the crypto... I was curious about your experience with it though.

First of course, is if it definately diagnosed by a veterinarian. How long was your quarantine for any new snakes (especially with a wild-caught history) and did they show any signs of illness during this time? (perhaps not noticed until hindsight?) Did you see the characteristic mid'body swelling? What other signs did you see?

Thanks for any info you have, it's always great to learn what textbooks may not provide.

Ian

Back in August of last year I got a baby regal ringneck snake, it was captive born...

The snake was regurgitating meals(snakes) on occasion, I didn't think anything of it really, stuff happens. I told the person I got it from about this, and he said crypto immediately. He's had experience with the disease so he knew how it starts. Probably about 3 months after I got the snake, it was still alive, and it was time to hibernate it. I stopped feeding it for two weeks, but noticed a bump in the lower body like there was some prey item there it couldn't digest or something, maybe some swallowed substrate. I raised the temperatures a bit, made sure it had lots of water, but the bump didn't disappear. About maybe 2 weeks later, after I realized the bump didn't seem to be going anywhere, I fed it again, the meal was regurged, and the snake died a couple days later.

Disease snake dies, end of the disease, right? Wrong.

Got a eastern kingsnake baby around January, it was a problem feeder stuck on snakes. Which really wasn't a problem for me to supply. It was a nice snake, would eat in my hands, until it started regurging. It would eat a meal, digest it, eat a meal and puke it up. That was her little pattern. It got to the point where she didn't want to eat food when I offered it to her. She stopped eating for like 2 weeks, ate a snake, puked it up, and died a couple days later. She was never in contact with anything that was in the regal's enclosure, so I don't know the disease could've gotten to her, or even if it was crypto that killed her.

I got 2 baby texas rat snakes with the eastern king, after the king died, they did just fine. They were eating, everything was fine, until they too started regurgitating. They lasted longer, one died about 2 months after the regurges, the other died about 2 months after that. But unlike the rest of the diseased snakes, these 2 didn't take any meals after their first 2 or 3 regurges. They just flat out stopped eating. The bump was only present in one of them.

A couple months later I got some eastern milk snakes from a friend, they were fresh out of a bad hibernation, so they were a bit skinny, especially a smaller 11" or so one. He ate 2 f/t common garters, then puked them up and died. I don't think he died from crypto though. Ya just never know.

When spring came around a friend sent 1.1 eastern garter snakes. One was a blue female that was found in NY, and it was blue, so it's rare. The other was just a nice looking male who attacked mice with no regrets. Well like last month, the garter ate a hopper that could probably be described as too big lol. And he regurged it a couple days later. Well since then he has refused food and became skinny. Last night while feeding the collection, I looked into his enclosure, and he opened his mouth like he was yawning, but I know he wasn't. He's practicly getting ready to die. After that, that's another tank going in the garbage, and then hopefully, just hopefully, that's the end of the disease that destroyed some of my favorite animals.
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake
Updated 9/6 NEW PICS/INFO

Were you re-using cages? Crypto is pretty resistant to bleach / chlorine. It takes a fairly concentrated ammonia solution to kill it. I agree that it would be best to get rid of the tank, since there are always little scrapes and nooks that it could be hiding in. It is also easy to transfer by handling an infected snake or its furnishings and then handling another herp, its furnishings or food. Some snakes can be asymtomatic carriers (especially wild caught) so you may want to consider a 30 day freezing of all reptilian prey items before feeding. I'd even do this with the kinked corns you spoke of ordering. I know from friends that corns are very susceptable to crypto and they may unload sick corns in addition to deformed ones as feeders.

Some coccidia and nematode infections can also lead to repeated regurgitations and both are fairly common in wild herps and can be lethal if one herp gets a strain / species that it isn't adapted to dealing with (another reason to stick to ft when feeding wild prey). Both, however, are treatable and detectable in a fecal floatation so you may want to have any other snakes that fall ill tested.

Until then, I'd treat every herp like it has something that is potentially deadly to all your others (if you're not doing so already). Don't play musical food items or transfer any furnishings between enclosures, and wash your hands thoroughly after having any contact with one herp or anything that herp has had contact with before you move on to the next one or handle its food. In terms of placing snakes together of breeding, give each new arrival a minimum 90 day quarentine, this may mean that you have to postpone breeding, but it's better than having your animals die.

I've got a diverse array of wc and cb herps who I'm fairly positive have their own "cooties". But, doing the above and keeping the respecitive enclosures clean has enabled me to avoid any problems. I learned this the hard way a few years back when I got a sick lizard form the petstore, by the time it showed symptoms it was too late and the damage had been done.

I really hope you're over the worst of it,
Alice

I'll never be 100% sure as to how the disease ripped through my collection like it did. Most of the new snakes I've ever gotten were greeted with a fresh from the store enclosure.

I can't remember if I posted this in the last post, but the garter snake I have that is now dying is living in the enclosure the baby regal puked up a meal in.

There are no other snakes in my collection showing symptoms, and since all the enclosures are disposed of except for one, I'm pretty sure I've beat it. (Knock on wood lol)

I rarely ever freeze WC prey items, such as neonate snakes.. The last couple of times I caught a snake to feed to another and I froze it first, the snake that was supposed to eat it never did. So I basically killed a snake for no reason. By not freezing them, if something refuses them I could just let them go. But hardly anything in my collection refuses live snakes.
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
Helmz777@aol.com
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake
Updated 9/6 NEW PICS/INFO

snip " you may want to consider a 30 day freezing of all reptilian prey items before feeding."

While this is good for dealting with multiple cellular parasites it has no effect on crypto.

Straight household ammonia or live steam will kill the crypto zoospores and are the only two accepted methods for disinfection for crypto.
Crypto can spread through a collection quickly unless there are proper disinfection protocols.

Ed

When I did some research earlier on this subject, I came across this info:

http://www.wisc.edu/fri/briefs/crypto.htm
"However, oocysts are more resistant to cold and freezing temperatures (20). Oocysts suspended in water retained their infectivity after 168 hours storage at 5°C and at –10°C. At colder temperatures, infectivity was destroyed: at –15, –20, and –70°C, no infective cells remained after 168, 24, and 1 hour of storage, respectively."

-15°C is the same as 5°F and I was under the impression that most freezers were capable of going to 0°F (http://lancaster.unl.edu/food/ftmay04.htm#recommended).

Please let me know if I'm wrong about this. Right now I don't have any herp eaters, but if I do end up with one, I wouldn't want to proceed under the delusion that I'm killing everything by freezing.

Thanks,
Alice

That site is dedicated towards crypto that infects humans which has some functional differeneces form the species (up to 5 species) that infect reptiles.

For some better info see http://www.aazv.org/idn_cryptoreptile.htm (I used to work as a keeper under Dr. Wright when he worked at the Philadelphia Zoo and when I last asked him, freezing was not shown to work in rpetile crypto.)
I hope this helps,

Ed

Wouldn't releasing a prey item your snake had refused be even worse for the wild population than freezing it? If the snake that refused it was sick and not showing symptoms, the feeder could pick up the infection and then spread it and even healthy snakes from other localities can carry pathogens that your local species are not equipped to deal with.

For example, southern ringnecks definately aren't native to your area. If it had refused the short-head garter, in my opinion, it would be irresponsible to release it once it had had contact with your southern and its enclosure.

-Alice