• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

RI again?!?

K

KelloggCornsnakes

New member
Kellogg had RI about 3-5 months ago. I raised his temps and did a "vapor rub treatment" and he seemed better about 1-2 weeks after I noticed he was sick. We moved him into his new enclosure about a month ago. Today I changed his water and noticed he was going in blue - his eyes were dull. I also noticed that he was opening and closing his mouth. It seemed different this time though, like he was realigning his jaws a tiny bit more than breathing. I was looking at him for about a minute and he did this about 4 times.

Now, his setup. It's a front-open enclosure. Hot side (heat mat w/ thermostat) is about 85 F, cool side is room temp, about 75 F. He has 3 hides, 1 on both ends and 1 in the middle. Aspen substrate.

This might be totally unrelated, but he normally hid in his moss hide when I noticed he was sick last time. I recently put moss in his favorite hide in his new enclosure (3 days ago), and I just noticed him opening his mouth tonight. When I treated him for RI last time and removed the moss, he was better. No symptoms until he started hiding in the moss again.

I already raised his hot side to 90 F and I might buy F10SC Vet Disinfectant.

NOTE: I heard from someone on another forum that he could be just pulling/stretching his mouth to loosen the old skin to start the shed. Hopefully this is true?
 
KelloggCornsnakes said:
It's usually dry. I mist it when he's in blue - which he is right now. So right now the moss is wet.
Click to expand...

Dry moss is dusty. Wet moss in a hide (especially over a UTH) creates a micro climate high in humidity. Moss molds easily and promotes bacteria growth. I'm not a fan of using it unless I have a chronic bad shedder or a snake that appears to need added humidity during the shedding phase.
If it does turn out to be another RI then the moss might be the cause.

I would still wait till he sheds before treating for an RI unless you see new signs of one like blowing bubbles or foam around the gums. No harm keeping the temps up a little bit for now.

Let us know how he is after the shed :)
 
Hopefully you're right. I'll take the moss out (he's never had a bad shed). I'll check on him tomorrow to see if he's still opening his mouth or showing anything else that could be a symptom. Keeping his temp up just in case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top