Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My broad banded water snake, Jorge, had a retained eye cap in his second to latest shedding. After a few days the eye cap was off, by his eye was... swollen. There was fluid around his current eyecap and he couldn't really see through the cloudy fluid on that side of his face. Since I keep my snakes in the biology room at college, I went to my knowledgable bio teacher buddy who said that I should keep an eye on it, but that he'd probably scratched the eye somehow and that the next time he shed, he'd probably lose the damaged eye cap and be fine.

Yeah. Didn't work. His eye isn't as cloudy, but his eye seems pinched, his eye still looks... not round and normal, and there's what looks like scar tissue around his eye. his scale pattern is disrupted but he's just as feisty and bratty as ever and he's eating just as voraciously as possible. I'm not too sure what to do with this, but I'm going to take pictures tomorrow and post them. Any ideas till then?

I finally have taken the pictures! I tried to take them as well as I could, and hopefully one of you will know what's happening. In any case, Jorge has an appointment at 10:30 on friday to see a vet in the aea who specializes in herps, so yeah.

Here's the above image.

Here's the side image

And here's the eye that's fine on the other side, to show you the difference

I've seen this too. It may be contagious, so don't keep him with other snakes, and take precautions not to transmit the possible pathogen to other animals. I had a diamondback who developed this same condition, and soon after a broad-banded in the same cage developed it as well; they soon stopped feeding. A midland was also in the cage- I transferred him to another cage, and he never showed symptoms; in fact he's still going strong, 2 years later.

I don't know what it is- my vet was at a loss, but he doesn't deal much with herps. I couldn't find any info about it online, either. I ended up having to put both snakes down.