Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi everyone,
I recently "inherited" 3 MHDs at work (science museum), I think the species is A. capra. One of the smaller ones seems to have some sort of rot on his/her lips, more so on the top than the bottom. Basically, it's like his lips are slowly disappearing, from the front of his mouth out to the sides and up a little. It's not red or discolored. It's progressing very slowly (over the last several weeks), and to be honest it's sometimes hard to tell if it's getting worse, since I see them everyday. Everyone is eating normally, I feed a variety of live crickets, red wrigglers, and mealworms. I haven't been weighing them, but I think I will start. Also, I just looked into his mouth and (this is disturbing) discovered that on the lower right jaw, the skin with scales seems to be separating from the bone! AHH! I put some hydrogen peroxide in there, then some triple antibiotic, and I've started feeding him Gatorade by eye dropper (which is what my vet told me to do with my chameleon when he wouldn't eat).
Any ideas?
By the way, in terms of going to a vet...I've been given a budget of $100 total to care for him/euthanize if necessary. It's $50 just to get in the door of our exotics vet. Hooray for working for non-profits!
Thanks in advance for any advice.

I may get yelled at for this but...

If by any chance you can get your hands on some chlorohexadine you may be able to use it on his mouth. i would probably do a search on using it in an oral cavity but i have used it on an iguana whose head had been terrorized by mites, a ball python with severe lacerations on its underside and on a burmese python that got bit by a rat. It takes some time and about three daily applications but it has always worked for me. Generally i diluted it in water and applied it with a syringe, no needle of course and generally tried to keep the area clean. I am by no means a vet but this is my personal advice.
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www.myspace.com/ThirdDimensionReptiles

My Kids:
The Scaled:
0.1 Savannah Monitor
2.5 Leopard Geckos
0.1 Green Iguana
1.4 Tokay Geckos
1.1 Bearded Dragons
0.1 Golden Gecko
1.0 Burmese Python
1.0 Het. Albino Ball Python
1.0 Lavender Albino Cali King
1.0 Black RatSnake

The Furred:
0.1 Ferret
1.0 Chinchilla
0.1 Hedgehog
1.0 Sugar Glider
0.1 Rat
1.0 Cat

The Feathered:
1.0 Citron Cockatoo
0.1 Goffins Cockatoo
1.0 Cockatiel

Thanks for the response! As it turns out, I took the lizard to an exotic vet and she gave me chlorhexadine and silver ... something. But I'm glad that you mentioned the chlorhexadine, that makes me feel better about what the vet told me. I'm going to force feed him once or twice a week some A/D diet mixed with gatorade, but give him the gatorade straight a few times a week. Thanks for the input!
-mel