Disease Brain Teaser

[elapid68]

Help needed - Disease Brain Teaser

Ok people, time to test those brains. A friend of mine in the UK has emailed me with a problem and I've got no ideas. Can anyone help. Below is a copy of the email :

In the past 6 weeks I have seen 4 cases of some weird contageous virus, infection, bacteria? in my collection. The first was Lily, the giant day gecko. Suddenly, on 20th Nov. she falls to the floor and appears paralysed from her back legs upwards. Vet diognoses a stroke. NOT MBD (you'll see where I'm coming from with this later..) she was Xrayed to rule out MBD. Given antinflamatory injections, and send home to ''see how it goes'' but sadly, Lily never eats again, and is syringe fed and eventually passes away on 24th Dec.

The second case was a baby beardie which was recieved in a shipment into work. He was lethargic and anorexic and didn't look well. It was the 15th Dec that he came in. 21st Dec, I come into work and see him looking dead on the floor. I open the tank and pick him up, and he moves. He is paralysed from the legs up, and stargazes. He is syringed reptile water-dissolvable electrolytes, and force fed baby locusts. I'm asked to bring him home to look after him over Xmas, but we see the outlook as bleak. 24th Dec, he passes away in the night.

The third and fourth cases come on the 26th. My barrel / oscillated skink gives birth to three new babies. One is born dead, but the other two are okay. One is weaker anyway, and we expect him not to pull through. The other is fine. We put them into a plastic tank, washed out, which the beardie had been in. New substrate, cleaned plant, water bowl, and a brand new plant. UVB 8% UVA 30% light over the top (nothing shielding it like mesh or glass, open tank) a heat strip over half the bottom, the tank placed ontop of the heat strip. Weak baby starts to show the pinned-back arm paralysis. He hangs on and eventually dies overnight. I put this down to him being weaker. This morning I get up, and the strong one is showing the arm paralysis and 'spazzing' like all others. I'm getting VERY VERY paranoid now. He is still alive.

I know that paralysis is a sign of MBD, but the first animal was tested for it. She had enough calcium in there to make a calcium pill! The new guys were only 12 hours old! and the beardie was being vitamin dusted and also had UVB 8%.

Now I can't find, or think of anything that can cause this in reptiles. That is contageous... because to jump between all those, it seems contageous. I'm not quite sure what to do... I have a collection of 5 snakes, 5 leopard geckos, 3 skinks, 3 day geckos, 3 water dragons, a terrapin... plus another 40-50 animals at work. Can you shed any light on this at all?

 

[Wrasse]

I can't shed any light.

However, it doesn't matter how much calcium you pump in, without the correct UV, they can't metabolise it anyway.
I don't know the UV requirements of each of those critters. Sounds like he knows what he is doing with UV. Could be the ones he got in didn't have enough UV previously and the babies he hatched were coincidence? Or could be something else. I am stabbing in the dark.

What I latched onto here is the common belief that if a critter is getting calcium, all is ok, but as I stated, without the correct UV, it doesn't matter how much calcium they get.

Good luck to him.

 

[MrBredli]

Poisoning??

 

[Hickson]

First of all, Elapid68, remind your friend that most of the people on this site are NOT vets, and very few have more than a basic knowledge (which is based on personal experience more than anything). So he needs to take that into account when looking at any responses here.

I'm with MrBredli, it could be poison or maybe some contaminated food. The young animals would be far more susceptible than older animals to the effects. And maybe the adult gecko had just been eating more of it than the others.

The Beardie came from work? Where does your friend work?



Hix

 

[OuZo]

What people don't seem to realise sometimes is that too much calcium has the same effect as not enough. So if the lizard who was tested had enough calcium in her to make a pill perhaps she had too much? When I worked at a vet we had a lady drastically overdose her Great Dane puppy with calcium powder. As he grew his front legs bowed so much he had to have multiple surgeries to help correct it. This was from an OD in calcium and I assume a similar thing could have happened if he hadn't been given enough. Ok, I know it's a dog but you get my point! How much calcium are these lizards being given? Is he dusting every single meal every day? With the bubs that were only 12 hours old, I would assume that if the mother had too much calcium in her some sort of problems could be passed on to the eggs/babies. We had a baby Freckled monitor that died from weird complications which we later found out was due to the mother having a calcium deficiency when she was gravid and laid. I know of 2 other bubs from the same clutch which also died mysteriously. His symptoms weren't quite paralysis, but basically he could move all his limbs and body separately, but when he tried to put it all together to walk or run it was very difficult for him. He also developed a small bony lump on his back. We tried heaps of things for him, even thought maybe it was MBD, but unfortuately he died . I would look into reducing the amount of calcium he's giving. Good luck

 

[Chrisreptile]

i dont know much about this sort of thing but poising, contaminated food and too much calcium are really good points.

 

[nightowl]

Seeing the beardie was only there such a short time before showing these symptoms I would lean more towards contaminated food rather than calcium OD/deficiancy.

What are the quarantine procedures like? Do feeding impliments or other items get shared between enclosures? Is there any way possible contamination could have happened between the symptomatic animals?

 

[elapid68]

Thanks for the replies people.

First of all, Elapid68, remind your friend that most of the people on this site are NOT vets, and very few have more than a basic knowledge (which is based on personal experience more than anything). So he needs to take that into account when looking at any responses here.

I'm aware of this. She just emailed me to see if I had any suggestions and I thought I'd throw it on here just to get some ideas. I never thought I'd get any definate diagnosis. You never know, someone might have had a similar problem and I was just after some ideas of what it could be just to give her a starting point on trying to figure out what the problem might be.

The Beardie came from work? Where does your friend work?Hix

She works in a pet shop

 

[Inkslinger]

What people don't seem to realise sometimes is that too much calcium has the same effect as not enough. So if the lizard who was tested had enough calcium in her to make a pill perhaps she had too much? When I worked at a vet we had a lady drastically overdose her Great Dane puppy with calcium powder. As he grew his front legs bowed so much he had to have multiple surgeries to help correct it. This was from an OD in calcium and I assume a similar thing could have happened if he hadn't been given enough. Ok, I know it's a dog but you get my point! How much calcium are these lizards being given? Is he dusting every single meal every day? With the bubs that were only 12 hours old, I would assume that if the mother had too much calcium in her some sort of problems could be passed on to the eggs/babies. We had a baby Freckled monitor that died from weird complications which we later found out was due to the mother having a calcium deficiency when she was gravid and laid. I know of 2 other bubs from the same clutch which also died mysteriously. His symptoms weren't quite paralysis, but basically he could move all his limbs and body separately, but when he tried to put it all together to walk or run it was very difficult for him. He also developed a small bony lump on his back. We tried heaps of things for him, even thought maybe it was MBD, but unfortuately he died . I would look into reducing the amount of calcium he's giving. Good luck

Tend to agree sounds like calciuym poisioning